Warren Tested Workers at Harvard Cyclotron for Radiation Exposure

A late Harvard Medical School professor--whose work is now the subject of a U.S. Department of Energy investigation into the use of human beings in tests with radiations--studied the threats posed to workers by radiation-exposure at the cyclotron physics laboratory in the 1930s and `40s.

There of the 34 workers studied showed "probably significant" fluctuations in white blood cell count and were "advised to stop work with radiation" as a result of the study.

"Some persons have an unstable bone marrow as shown by marked fluctuations in white cell counts when subjected to only minor exposure to radiation," the study concludes. "Such persons should not work where they are exposed to radiation."

The study, published in 1942 in the medical journal Radiology, was authored by Dr. Shields Warren, then a pathology professor at the Medical School. The radiation laboratory at the Medical School is named after him.

While naive in its pre-Cold War understanding of radioactivity, Warren's study at the cyclotron evidences a concern for workers at the laboratory. And it serves to balance recent portrayals of Warren in the national press.

Warren was involved in radiation experiments on humans that U.S. Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary has criticized in recent months as ethically improper. O'Leary's department is investigating the experiments with an eye towards compensating humans who were used in them.

"This would have a little of the Buchenwald touch," one scientist warned Warren in 1950 after seeing plans for experiments the Harvard doctor was conducting for the Atomic Energy Commission. Buchenwald was the name of a Nazi concentration camp.

There have been no reports questioning Warren's use of radiation in this particular test.

In Warren's cyclotron experiments, most of the workers showed no significant changes in health due to their exposure to radiation. Four showed minor variations in white blood cell count because of the radiation, according to Warren's published results.

The study, which measured white and red blood cell counts in both Harvard and MIT workers, determined that "the precautions for the safety of these two groups of cyclotron workers appear adequate." The MIT group included 51 workers.

Dr. Bernard Gottschalk, who is one of four chief scientists at the Harvard cyclotron, says Warren's study is likely "hocus pocus."

"It has a rather archaic ring," says Gottschalk, adding that he is not familiar with the particular study. "They didn't know a lot about radiation. There are still some things we don't know but we know a lot more."

And the level of radiation is Harvard's cyclotron today is certainly different from the amount of radiation in the laboratory in 1942. The old laboratory, in fact, was shipped in pieces to Los Alamos in 1948 to be used in the government's Manhattan Project, according to Gottschalk.

Today, Gottschalk says radiation emissions are carefully monitored by Harvard physicists and the University's Office of Environmental Health and Safety.

"We have a very complete and ongoing program of radiation protection programs," he says.

Current safeguards include film badges which detect gamma ray and neutron emissions, regular monitoring of areas around the cyclotron and special locks on doors to ensure the cyclotron cannot run if there is an exposure risk. Workers are checked monthly.

"When the cyclotron is running, there are areas near the machine which have intense radiation but there are safeguards against those areas to make sure no one is exposed," Gottschalk says.

Gottschalk acknowledges, however, that the cyclotron can propel some neutrons a great distance and raise radiation levels at nearby buildings. But the emissions do not pose any health or environmental hazard, the professor says.

"The neutrons we're emitting are way below any detectable level, way below what anybody thinks could be detected biologically," he says.

Dr. Joseph P. Ring, lecturer on radiological health in the Exposure Assessment and Engineering Program, says the levels of current exposure to workers at the cyclotron are "very small."

"We try to minimize radiation exposure--period," Ring says. "In the eight years that I've been here, I've never seen a significant value."

Ring also says he is not familiar with the Warren study.

Warren and his fellow researchers took blood samples from the workers at 4 p.m. one day each month, according to the study. When the blood of workers showed abnormalities, it was "taken at more frequent intervals until the significance of the deviation could be determined."

"With the increasing number of cyclotrons in operation and the wider use of radioactive compounds in quantities larger than for tracer work, the problem of possible dangers to the works from radiation must be considered," Warren's report on the study says.

Before his death in 1980, Warren held positions with the Department of Defense, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Veterans' Administration.

His New York Times obituary says Warren "directed his efforts at learning to identify and control the hazards of radiation for those who had to confront them."

While considered a respectable scientist, Warren embarked on experiments that experts have questioned on the grounds of efficiency and ethics.

In the 1940s and early `50s, Warren considered a proposal to develop an atomic-powered airplane. To model the craft, scientists, including Warren, proposed testing humans to determine their threshold for radiation exposure.

Gilbert F. Whittemore, who is writing a book on the atomic-powered plane project, says Warren was well aware of the ethical concerns of the time.

"All of the people involved in the nuclear-powered airplane project were aware of the ethical concerns because the Nuremburg trials were going on," Whittemore says.

At Nuremburg, some Nazi war criminals were accused of conducting radiation experiments on humans.

Warren's involvement with the atomic-plane project likely concerned radiation containment, his area of expertise.

Colleagues say most of Warren's research involved giving large doses of radiation to terminally ill cancer patients, but that such experiments were acceptable at the time. Warren was a pioneer specialist in the biological effects of radiation.

"Warren was a giant in the field, the first physician involved in the study of the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," says Dr. Francis X. Masse, the director of radiation protection programs at MIT.

"He was very much in the forefront in everything to do with radiation and medicine," says Masse. "He was a wonderful gentleman and I knew him very well. He did an enormous amount of excellent work."