Government team tracks radiation studies.

White House aides and federal investigators looking into government-supported radiation experiments on humans expect to uncover studies, conducted between the mid-1940s and the early 1970s, that relied on questionable research methods.

"We are in a massive information-gathering mode," says Sam Grizzle, a Department of Energy (DOE) spokesman.

The studies under scrutiny exposed retarded children, terminally ill patients, military personnel, and prisoners to radiation in order to test its effects including its lethal effects - according to government and media reports. Moreover, some researchers may have failed to tell subjects about possible risks involved in the experiments, according to some investigators.

DOE Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary initiated the fact-finding effort in December after reading in the Albuquerque Tribune about people injected with plutonium between 1945 and 1947 for an Army study The White House formed a task force in early January to coordinate government investigations.

Part of DOE's effort to learn more about the experiments included setting up a telephone hotline for callers with information on any human studies supported by DOE or its predecessor agencies, such as the Atomic Energy Commission. Since the hotline [phone]) was hooked up on Dec. 23, it has averaged about 400 calls an hour, a number that appears to have peaked, Grizzle says.

DOE originally estimated that about 800 subjects participated in 600 experiments testing radiations effects on human health. It may revise that number after reviewing the hotline calls.

Congressional committees have already scheduled hearings on the radiation studies. Clinton aides say they plan to learn more about the experiments and to seek compensation if they find anyone was harmed.

"We intend... to do our very best to get to the bottom of the facts," White House Communications Director Mark Gearan said Jan. 3. He didn't know when the task force's findings would be made public.

That university and government scientists conducted these experiments is old news to some people. In fact, some of the work was described in scientific journals and government reports years ago. The research has also received strong criticism before. More than seven years ago, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) called on DOE to investigate the experiments.

In October 1986, Markey released a report describing 31 government-supported radiation studies on 695 people between the mid-1940s and early 1970s. Some of the experiments were "repugnant or bizarre," the report stated. In one, researchers X-rayed prisoners' testes to study the effects of radiation on fertility.

Other radiation experiments have surfaced since Markey's report. From 1945 to 1956, researchers at Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and elsewhere fed cereal laced with radioactive calcium and radioactive iron to mentally retarded residents of the Fernaid State School in Waltham, Mass. The researchers sought to test the absorption of those nutrients, say a Harvard spokesman and Francis X. Masse, director of MIT's radiation protection program.

The amount of radiation remained within today's safety standards, but "it's not clear the kids or parents were told" about the radiation, Masse says. The studies' results appeared in a 1954 JOURNAL OF NUTRITION.

The Department of Veterans Affairs acknowledged on Jan. 7 that its predecessor, the Veterans Administration, conducted numerous human radiation studies in special laboratories and, according to a 1952 memo, ran a secret Atomic Medicine Division. Federal employees expect more such discoveries as they and others wade through reports, letters, notes, and more.

"We found 13 boxes that may have some supporting information" about studies conducted for DOE;s Hanford Site, where DOE once made weapons-grade plutonium, says Dawn Zimmerman of the Battelle Memorial Institute in Richland, Wash. In 1984, the lab described to Congress 10 radiation studies conducted between 1951 and 1975 for Hanford.