A spoonful of sugar helps the radioactive oatmeal go down (2017) | Hacker News Reader

A spoonful of sugar helps the radioactive oatmeal go down (2017)

smithsonianmag.com

56 pointsgeorgecmu21 comments

Fernald is a plainly terrifying place--the abandoned buildings are still there, and you can visit them[0]. It's a separate, isolated city from the rest of Waltham--on a map, you can see the 186 acres with no other exits other than the main one [1]. It actually operated until 2014 due to a court-order that the remaining residents (now adults) get top-of-the-line care for the rest of their lives, due to past abuses; this cost over $1M per patient per year, mostly since the whole "city" isn't connected to the grid, and has to run its own power plant. It's a chilling place full of wild animals--you can barely tell where the roads used to be--and surrounded by several layers of fencing topped with barbed wire.

The state maintains a huge number of archives relating to Fernald; you can view most of them, including almost every annual report, on the Massachusetts archives website[2].

This whole area of Waltham is truly haunted--just across the street, there's a forest cemetery with 298 unmarked graves, shared between Fernald and the abandoned Metropolitan State Hospital. A high school project recently dug through the records and figured out who most of the buried patients are[3].

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDYkDiNeS8s

[1]: https://goo.gl/maps/H6HGkDwhHEDaKFVf8

[2]: https://archives.lib.state.ma.us/handle/2452/214027

[3]: https://www.wbur.org/radioboston/2018/12/11/metfern-cemetery...

I see two street connections: Trapelo Rd and Chapel Rd.

I also find it humorous that the Google car shows some person walking the street behind the STATE PROPERTY NO TRESPASSING signs on the Chapel Rd entrance:

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3862146,-71.2062878,3a,90y,3...

The settlement was 1.85M in 1998, or a bit over 3M in 2021 dollars. Split 30 ways. That's absurd. No wonder companies like to do this kind of research when they can. Even during more enlightened times when someone tries to hold them accountable, it proves quite profitable.

And nobody goes to prison! "Mistakes were made," I guess.

Apparently the highest dosage anyone was exposed to was about 330 millirem.

So the issue isn’t so much exposure as problematic morality that didn’t allow for informed consent.

For anybody else who didn't know that was trivial

> “As to what are the medical and biological effects of that, with such low doses of radiation, it’s very difficult,” Litster said. A child exposed to that kind of dose, he said, would have a one in 2,000 chance of contracting cancer, which was barely higher than the average rate. A 1994 Massachusetts state panel concluded none of the students suffered significant health impacts, and radioactive tracers continue to be used in medicine.

Why single out companies here? The experiment in question was performed at a state-run facility by researchers from a university and funded by federal grants. It seems like they are all responsible.

That is an entirely fair point. I agree.

From the article:

> A 1995 lawsuit pinpointed the purpose of these experiments: Quaker’s commercial interests. “What was the genesis of these particular experiments? It seems simply to be what are the relative benefits of oatmeal and Cream of Wheat,” prosecuting attorney Michael Mattchen told the Associated Press.

Almost fifty years between 1949 to "justice" in 1998.

I wonder what experiments today are the most likely candidates for settlements in 2071?

> I wonder what experiments today are the most likely candidates for settlements in 2071?

We probably will never know. The only reason that anyone even found out about the experimentation from the article is because some documents from the Atomic Energy Commission were declassified. I'm sure there are plenty of experiments going on that won't see the light of day because of "national security".

I wonder if the videogame Fallout’s vault experiments are based on these horror stories or if it’s just strange coincidence.

There were many quite similar stories from the mid-century US (never mind the rest of the world) so you wouldn't necessarily need this specific one as inspiration. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemala_syphilis_experiments is one of the real eye-openers.

This was my first thought. There are so many similarities.

This CBS article[1] is linked in the OP and provides more details about the experiences of children at Fernald. It's awful.

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/americas-deep-dark-secret/

And then people are surprised that QAnon has such a following. Sure thing people will believe in conspiracy theories when it turns out that bunch of conspiracy theories are true. Veritasium had a nice video on that.

Likely none of these were conspiracy theories at the time, but rather public experimentation that was later declassified. This was true with many experiments at the time.

None of that suggests that just because you read a conspiracy theory now that it's even remotely true, especially when it involved every democrat and rich person running a secret pedophile ring and drinking the blood of children, and somehow Donald Trump of all people is the savior to expose it all. Pretty far from not understanding the effects of radiation and lack of informed consent (both no longer the case).

> None of that suggests that just because you read a conspiracy theory now that it's even remotely true

I don't see where I'm saying that modern conspiracy theories are true and I don't see how your comment resolves the "lack of trust for established sources of information" issue I'm raising.

You go again blaming it on people being idiots instead of suggesting fixes that address those people's concerns and underlying reasons for their concerns.

Disabled people. Blacks. Poor people. Etc. We often de facto treat such people as being less entitled to human rights.

It's one of the reasons I don't like the emphasis on organ transplant as a treatment for some things. I'm convinced it's not about quality of life for the recipients. It's about other people's egos and desire to play God while not really caring about quality of life for their "patients" (potentially their victims).

There is no way all those family members giving kidneys to sisters, brothers, parents, or children, are victims. Why would you even care about the motivations of the doctor if a person is dying and the donor is informed and willing?

I have a genetic disorder that, iirc, accounts for a third of all adult lung transplants in the US and half of all pediatric lung transplants.

I would like to keep my own lungs. I think that's more doable than is generally believed because I'm healthier than I'm supposed to be and I've gotten insane amounts of hatred for trying to talk about that online for purposes of furthering my own understanding of my defective body.

From where I sit, it looks obvious that quality of life for disabled people like me is not the top priority of most of the world. I occasionally foolishly express such views in spite of knowing that more hatred and casual dismissal of my views and my feelings is the most likely outcome.

It has nothing to do with judging the people who accept a transplant nor their relatives who are very often making personal sacrifices to try to keep them alive.

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