Flashback: The Time MIT Fed Children Radioactive Oatmeal

It all began with a question: which absorbs iron better; cream of wheat or oatmeal?

Quaker Oats wasn't about to lose money on finding out the answer, so a plan was formed:

In the late 1940s and again in the early 1950s, Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists conducting research fed breakfast food containing minute amounts of radioactive iron and calcium to a number of students at the Walter E. Fernald School, a Massachusetts institution for "mentally retarded" children.[1] The National Institutes of Health, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Quaker Oats Company funded the research, which was designed to determine how the body absorbed iron, calcium, and other minerals from dietary sources and to explore the effect of various compounds in cereal on mineral absorption.

It took about 40 years for this to be revealed, and when it was, let's just say the tone could have been better:

The state task force on human research concluded Monday that MIT nutritional studies in the 1950s, which used tiny amounts of radioactive tracers, caused "no significant health effects."

The Task Force on Human Subject Research, examining the use of radioactive materials in research between 1943 and 1973 involving residents of the Walter E. Fernald State School and other state residential facilities for youth, issued its report at a news conference at the school in Waltham.

J. David Litster, MIT vice president, dean for research and professor of physics, said in a statement:

"Chairman Fred Misilo, the Rev. Doe West and the entire Task Force on Human Subject Research are to be congratulated for the hard work and thought they have put into completing a difficult mission over the past four months.

"As MIT President Charles M. Vest said in January, MIT has expressed its sorrow that the young people who participated decades ago in the nutritional tracer studies-and their parents-apparently were not informed that the study involved radioactive tracers in very small amounts.

"I am pleased that the Task Force has confirmed MIT's initial impression that no harm was done to the participants in the cereal nutrition studies that were the initial focus of publicity," Professor Litster said.

Not surprisingly, the participants were not happy and filed a class-action against MIT. MIT did not seem to understand exactly what they did wrong, as evidenced by their reaction to the court's decision to approve the class-action:

"The Fernald School studies were conducted to gain an understanding of how iron and calcium are absorbed in the human digestive systems. The studies used minute amounts (less than one-billionth of an ounce) of radioactive iron and calcium tracers to chart the absorption of calcium and iron in the body from eating oatmeal and farina cereals. The exposures to radiation were approximately equal to the amount of natural background radiation we all receive from the environment each year.

Both a Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a federal investigation of the studies found no discernible effects on health of the study participants.

When information regarding these studies was published in early 1994, MIT President Charles M. Vest expressed his concern and regret over the apparent lack of informed consent of the parents of the children at the Fernald School. MIT has had in place for more than two decades numerous safeguards and approval processes that assure informed consent of human subjects of any research.

MIT believes that its researchers acted properly under then-existing standards and denies any charges of wrongdoing. Nonetheless, MIT has agreed to the settlement in order to avoid the substantial expense and diversion of continued litigation and to bring this matter to a final conclusion."

In the end, MIT and Quaker Oats gave the victims $1.85 million (as a fund).