Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, January 10, 1994 TAG: 9401100048
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: C4 EDITION: STATE
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Often anxious and breathless, callers are reaching deep in the past to recount charges of how government scientists used them as human guinea pigs. Andrew Frosini, a World War II veteran, recalled a 1945 incident in which Army doctors flew him across Florida in a military jet to insert into his nostrils a needle tipped with radioactive capsules.
"For my personal satisfaction, I need to know whether my health and well-being were sacrificed for the sake of some experiment," Frosini, now bedridden with many health problems, told the hot line operator. "And if they were, I deserve to know why."
Others reaching the Department of Energy radiation hot line range from a former federal prisoner in Oregon, who remembers researchers exposing his testicles to radiation, to a Boston factory worker who, as a teen-ager in a school for the mentally retarded, apparently was given breakfast cereal combined with radioactive material by government-backed scientists.
Initially an attempt to give fair hearing to survivors of Cold War experiments, the administration's radiation project has grown quickly into a grievance board for a far wider range of potential victims. DOE officials who initially estimated that there were 800 participants in federal radiation tests now concede that the number could climb much higher.
Although some of the cases are questionable, said Peter Brush, a DOE radiation specialist who has helped staff the hot line, about half appear to be credible accounts of involvement in some form of test.
"We never expected to get this kind of response," he said. "Suddenly it feels like we're under siege."
The biggest explanation for the overwhelming response is the possibility of compensation. On Dec. 29, the day after Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary publicly recommended financial settlements for radiation experiment victims, several thousand callers jammed DOE's radiation hot line, a department spokesman said. In earlier cases, federal agencies have paid radiation victims up to $100,000 in damages.
Encouraged by O'Leary's proposal, hundreds of participants in various scientific endeavors, including many not involving radiation, are waging their own campaigns for damages. From an advocate for children used in sexual experiments to a spokesman for victims of chemical warfare probes, all ask why their cases are any less urgent or serious than those of radiation test participants.
Beyond the compensation question, news reports of experiments also have led federal officials to broaden the radiation probe. Until last month, when the Boston Globe published an article documenting experiments performed on mentally retarded youths in Massachusetts, federal officials were unaware of the tests, a White House official acknowledged.
Wide use of humans in federal radiation experiments initially was documented in a 1986 report released by a congressional committee headed by Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass.
An Albuquerque Tribune newspaper series, which investigated the injection of plutonium into five people in the 1940s, sparked renewed interest in the experiments after its publication in November.
O'Leary has stressed that the federal government should take responsibility for the experiments and any damage they caused victims. However, her department has released little information beyond that contained in the Markey report. DOE staff members, reviewing 32 million classified documents pertaining to the tests, said they expect to report their findings in June.
Already, however, the experiments appear to have been more widespread than first believed.
The Atomic Energy Commission, a forerunner to DOE, at first was believed to have conducted the majority of the tests. But it is now apparent that other agencies were involved.
Many may have been conducted by the Department of Defense. A heavy percentage of callers to the radiation hot line are retired veterans who say they were subjected to experiments during military duty, a DOE spokesman said.
Navy veteran Cornelius Koritko, for example, remembered a 1957 episode on a ship in which an intelligence official dropped a canister that caused the entire crew to become bedridden. The Pentagon is still reviewing whether it conducted such tests, a spokesman said.
Other agencies that probably carried out some radiation experiments include the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Veterans Administration, predecessor to the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Central Intelligence Agency said it has found no records of agency radiation tests on humans but is still checking files.
Contrary to early impressions that the tests were concentrated in the 1940s and '50s, they occurred for decades afterward.
As late as 1973, federal scientists exposed prisoners in Oregon and Washington state to increased doses of radiation to help determine the risks faced in high-radiation environments.
Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, last week proposed that the White House canvass every federal agency to determine whether any dubious experiments on people are still being conducted.
Meanwhile, to handle the onslaught of calls, the DOE has expanded its hot line from three to 32 operators and increased the hours of service. With 6,000 to 10,000 calls arriving daily, however, the telephone often goes unanswered.
\ The Department of Energy Human Experimentation Hot Line can be reached at 1-800-493-2998 from 8:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.
by CNB