SCIENTISTS’ SURPRISE: STUDENTS SERVED RADIOACTIVE OATMEAL GOING DANGEROUSLY ROGUE
Students at a state special-needs school in Massachusetts decades ago flocked to join the school’s Science Club, lured by gifts, promises of field trips, and hopes of emotional support from the scientists in charge. What they received instead was a daily dose of radioactive oatmeal. As part of a secret experiment by the Quaker Oats Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), dozens of boys at Fernald State School during the late 1940s and early 1950s were fed oatmeal laced with radioactive tracers. The goal was to study their bodies’ absorption of iron and calcium and prove the cereal’s nutritional benefits. Some boys also were injected with radioactive calcium.
10–17 were eager to join the Science Club mainly for the perks enjoyed by members. Boyce, who was sent to the school after his parents abandoned him, also hoped the scientists might intervene on the students’ behalf and report dismal conditions at Fernald, where students, many of whom were mentally disabled, were abused and treated brutally. Boyce and others received no help from the scientists, however, and weren’t even informed they were subjects of a scientific experiment until more than 40 years later. “We didn’t know anything at the time,” Boyce told Smithsonian magazine.
objections at the time. At the dawn of the Atomic Age, most Americans saw science as a powerful force for progress — the Atomic Energy Commission approved dozens of human experiments with radioactivity. The importance of ethics review boards and informed consent of research subjects was nowhere on scientists’ radar at the time. Not until 1972, when the Associated Press reported on a Tuskegee Institute study in which Black men with syphilis were promised treatment they never received, did Congress finally pass legislation protecting people from unethical research. Scientists later determined the boys at Fernald didn’t suffer serious health effects; one said the exposure was about the same as 30 chest X-rays. For students like Boyce, however, the injuries ran deep. Thirty former Fernald students later sued Quaker Oats and MIT and were awarded $1.85 million in a 1998 settlement.
“We just thought we were special.”
The study at Fernald,
originally named the Massachusetts State School for the Feeble-Minded, was led by an MIT professor of nutrition. No one raised
A student named Fred Boyce and about 70 other boys ages
Ancient Settlement Opens a Window on the Distant Past Unearthing History in Scotland
Modern-day adventurers exploring antiquity usually stop at Stonehenge or perhaps the Egyptian pyramids. But hundreds of years earlier, on the Orkney Islands off the western coast of Scotland, prehistoric people built an even more ancient marker of civilization. The settlement of Skara Brae was occupied for about 600 years, beginning around 3180 B.C., hundreds of years before people built the first pyramids in Egypt or placed the earliest stones at Stonehenge in England. Covered with sand for many years and sunken deep into the earth for stability and shelter from Scotland’s harsh winters, the little village remains the best-preserved Neolithic site in Western Europe.
What were the lives of these prehistoric people like? An estimated 50 inhabitants occupied a series of homes about 430 square feet in size. Stone doors covered low entrances, secured by bone bars. Several houses contained stone-built cupboards, dressers, seats, storage containers, and a stone hearth for warmth and cooking. Two beds, a large and a small one, were situated near the door. The inhabitants made and used grooved ware pottery. Some of the dwellings had a small anteroom with access to what appears to be a primitive sewer system that flushed waste out to the sea.
preserved artifacts appear to have been abandoned in a rush. Experts disagree on why occupants abandoned the settlement, but visitors are welcome to develop their own theories. Skara Brae is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Skara Brae is sometimes called “the Pompeii of Scotland” because its well-
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