Experts debate merits of radiation studies.

At two congressional hearings in the past two weeks, researchers, federal officials, and people believed to be victims of government-sponsored radiation experiments gave conflicting testimony on the value of the studies, carried out from the mid-1940s to the mid-1970s.

At a Senate hearing Jan. 25, Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary said the Clinton administration% panel investigating the studies will have an interim report on its findings by July 15. The President asked the group to find out whether the research had a clear medical or scientific purpose, included appropriate follow-ups, and met the ethical standards of its day and of today. O'Leary initiated an investigation in December after learning about the federally supported radiation experiments (SN: 1/15/94, p.39).

Some scientists conducting the studies neglected to tell those studied that they would be exposed to radiation, according to experts testifying about the research. But the ethical lapses went beyond failure to provide informed consent, physician David Egilman of Brown University in Providence, R.I., said at a hearing of the House subcommittee on energy and power on Jan. 18. Egilman has studied the history of the radiation experiments.

One study he said fell short of the ethical standards of its time examined how the body retains and excretes plutonium. Although it would provide no medical benefit, scientists injected plutonium into 18 terminally ill patients. Only two patients knew they were being exposed to radiation, said Patricia W. Durbin, who worked at the Energy Department's Lawrence Berkeley (Calif.) Laboratory.

The average dose amounted to nine times the quantity allowed workers by federal regulations, she said. The radiation may have damaged one subject's bones, but none of the subjects died from plutonium exposure, she testified. In fact, nine of the subjects in the study, conducted from 1945 to 1947, lived considerably longer than expected.

Egilman, however, said the medical records reveal that not all of the patients were terminally ill. Moreover, the study had many errors and "didn't provide meaningful information," he asserted.

But Durbin and health physicist Kenneth L. Mossman of Arizona State University in Tempe testified that this experiment, like most of the other radiation studies, provided considerable data for current radiation exposure standards.

Others at the hearing testified that while the plutonium may not have killed any participants, in some cases it made their lives miserable. Elmerine MIen Whitfield said doctors injected her father's injured leg with plutonium and, for reasons that are still unclear, amputated it three days later. Her father, Elmer Allen, often suffered seizures and other illnesses during the 44 years he lived after the injection, she said, though no one has directly linked the two.

Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), who chaired the Jan. 25 Government Affairs Committee hearing, asked witnesses what laws nowadays would bring "a rogue operator" doing improper research "before the bar of justice." No one knew, so the committee is now looking into whether a law with criminal penalties is needed to govern human experimentation, a Senate staffer told SCIENCE NEWS.

Coincidentally, shortly before Glenn's hearing, the Jan. 15 newsletter SCIENCE AND GOVERNMENT REPORT revealed that the National Institutes of Health is helping to finance vaccine trials in Europe that would be forbidden in the United States. In these studies, designed to test the efficacy of new vaccines against pertussis, or whooping cough, 10 to 25 percent of the child volunteers do not receive the pertussis vaccine.

The trials do meet the legal standards of the two European countries, says David L. Klein, who heads the project. But in the United States, researchers would have provided the new or old vaccine to all volunteers.