[HN Gopher] A spoonful of sugar helps the radioactive oatmeal go...
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A spoonful of sugar helps the radioactive oatmeal go down (2017)
Author : georgecmu
Score : 43 points
Date : 2021-11-08 20:53 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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/
| rootusrootus wrote:
| 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.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| And nobody goes to prison! "Mistakes were made," I guess.
| mc32 wrote:
| 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.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| 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.
| jonas21 wrote:
| 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.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| 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._
| rootusrootus wrote:
| That is an entirely fair point. I agree.
| p2t2p wrote:
| 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.
| azinman2 wrote:
| 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).
| p2t2p wrote:
| > 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.
| hammock wrote:
| Almost fifty years between 1949 to "justice" in 1998.
|
| I wonder what experiments today are the most likely candidates
| for settlements in 2071?
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _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".
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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_ ).
| merpnderp wrote:
| 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?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| 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.
| chronogram wrote:
| I wonder if the videogame Fallout's vault experiments are based
| on these horror stories or if it's just strange coincidence.
| leoc wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
| 404mm wrote:
| This was my first thought. There are so many similarities.
| ag8 wrote:
| 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...
| jdmichal wrote:
| 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...
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(page generated 2021-11-08 23:01 UTC)