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Oral Histories
Biophysicist Robert E. Rowland, Ph.D.
Foreword
Short Biography
From College to Argonne National Laboratory
Initial Argonne Interest in Elgin State Hospital
Early Radium Injections at Elgin State Hospital
Radium Studies by Argonne National Laboratory
Medical Treatments Using Radium
Research Into How Radium Deposits in Bone
To University of Rochester for a Ph.D.
Wartime Plutonium Injection by Metallurgical Laboratory Staff
Director of the Radiological and Environmental Research Division
Establishment of the National Center for Human Radiobiology
Making Contact With Radium Cases for Follow-up
Tracing the Effects of Radium in Bone
Funding for Radium Study Ends
Recollections of Argonne Scientists Participating in Radium Studies
Radium-Induced Malignancies
Differing Perspectives on Radium Retention
Seeking a Threshold for Radium-Induced Malignancies
Radium in Ground Water
Obtaining Consent to Exhume Remains of Radium Cases
Human Use Committee at Argonne
Termination of the Radium Program
Potassium Studies in Cooperation with Loyola University
Arsenic-76 Study
Reassessment of Plutonium Injection Cases
Information Provided by Argonne to People in Radium Follow-up Program
Public and DOE Awareness of Plutonium Injections
Analyses of Thorium Workers
|
Obtaining Consent to Exhume Remains of Radium Cases |
| FISHER: |
—I wanted to get back to asking you — I think I got you offtrack when we were
discussing the exhumation. |
| ROWLAND: |
The exhumation. Back in the early days, when I was studying the deposition of radium in
Elgin State Hospital people — and I was talking about this banding effect of repeated
injections — we had some bone from Elgin State Hospital people, and we were able to see
it, and they lived about 20 years.
Then I got the idea, "But wouldn't it be interesting if I could get a bone from a person who didn't
live very long?" And, looking at the records, there was a person who died four or five later, not
of radium. Not of radium, but died one way or another. |
| YUFFEE: |
A prisoner? |
| ROWLAND: |
Well, an inmate. |
| YUFFEE: |
An inmate. |
| ROWLAND: |
An inmate. A client, nowadays, the word is. But, in those days, it was an inmate.
What we did is, we looked into the possibly of an exhumation. We went through the legal
maneuvers to get it, and — |
| YUFFEE: |
This entailed — |
| ROWLAND: |
It entails court orders and next of kin, and the state got in the act, because they were
[responsible for] the [hospital patient]. But, anyhow, we got permission.
That turned out to be the second exhumation of a radium case. Robley Evans beat us: he did one
before that. I don't know any of the details on that, but I know we got one a few months after he
did his.
Anyhow, we exhumed this body of this individual who was a short-term case. He died of
tuberculosis. We were then quarantined. We couldn't take the body off the cemetery, because of
the tuberculosis. We had a professor at the University of Chicago come out and remove a portion
of the leg bone, which we took back to the laboratory — buried the man, and took it back to the
laboratory.
What we found, to make a long story short, is that the embalming process, using formalin, 50
ruined the deposition pattern. It smeared it. It gave more room for exchange of radium. We could
still estimate the body content, but we couldn't really study the deposition patterns that we
wanted to, in the way we wanted.
However, that did demonstrate that we could exhume. From then on, we and MIT combined [our
efforts], before they [(MIT's radium bioresearchers)] went out of business. We did this in,
maybe, '67 or something like that. It's a guess, but I'm guessing 1967 — we exhumed at least 100
people in an attempt to determine their total body radium remaining in the skeleton and to look
and see if we could see anything about malignancies, bone malignancies. |
| YUFFEE: |
Were any of these people some of the dial painters that you mentioned that just got so
much exposure and died — |
| ROWLAND: |
— promptly. |
| YUFFEE: |
Fairly rapidly? |
| ROWLAND: |
We didn't emphasize those, although they had been exhumed earlier by Martland and
[coworkers]. We were more interested in either to fill in our knowledge base of working
in a certain area, a certain plant, or questioning, "Did this person die with a sarcoma or
not?" We were trying to fill in this kind of information.
And, net result, we had about 100 exhumed bodies. They varied from beautifully intact cadavers,
in which the clothing, the facial expression, everything was perfect, to nothing. You go down,
and you dig, and you dig, and you dig, and there's nothing there, couldn't even find bone, just
gone.
Depends upon the burial. If somebody has a lot of money and wants to last for a while, they can
be buried in lead vaults, the casket inside and soldered closed. It keeps a body very well. Or, if
it's in a pine box, nothing. It depends upon the condition of the ground water. |
| YUFFEE: |
After — how long after — |
| ROWLAND: |
— Well, that depends upon the ground water levels. If the ground water is high, it doesn't
take very many years until there's nothing there. If the ground water is low, if you've got
a pretty well-drained burial site, they can last a long, long time, even with a poor casket. |
| YUFFEE: |
Wow. |
| ROWLAND: |
It's amazing, the difference. |
| YUFFEE: |
Now, in the process of trying to exhume the bodies, were the family members of these
people — were they usually willing? |
| ROWLAND: |
They had to be. They had to be. We had to get written approval from every living — what
I will call "next of kin," the closest relatives. We had to get their approval, and we had to
get a court order. So we had a double process there.
The approvals were obtained by a physician by — primarily by this man, Jan Lieben, who was
from the Boston area, and he worked for Robley Evans. He wasn't a member of MIT, but he was
hired on a contract basis. We kept him on, and he went around and got the next of kin. |
| YUFFEE: |
Were there cases where people said, "No"? |
| ROWLAND: |
Oh, my, yes. There were lots of cases where people said, "No." |
| YUFFEE: |
So, you would say that far outweighed the people who were willing? |
| ROWLAND: |
Surprisingly, I don't think it far outweighed. I would — I don't have any statistics, but I
say — maybe we got 30 to 50 percent.
I mean, we had a good [reason]; that "Your long-lost so-and-so worked in the dial industry, or
was given radium by a physician, or was known to have purchased a few of these bottled
drinking waters containing radium. And we're trying to study the effects on people, and many
people died with no effects, and your relative" — often that was the case — "your relative was one
of those who apparently lived with no effects. And, what we would like to do is look at the
distribution of radium that remains in the skeleton.
"Now, what we will do is this. With your approval, we will exhume the body. We will make the
studies, and we will reinter the body, obviously all at our expense."
The only part we didn't do as well as we should have is, we should have been better at getting a
report to these people, ultimately. Unfortunately, this process took years. |
| YUFFEE: |
Right. |
| ROWLAND: |
After the exhumation, it might be years. And it was done in various groups — the
chemical group; Bob Schlenker, might have certain interests; the medical people would
have an interest.
And so, there were all these various interests, and they never came together in a sense where we
had one person say, "Hey, let's get all of this stuff together and give some sort of report to the
family." We weren't very good at that. |
| YUFFEE: |
One other thing: You mentioned that, depending upon how the person was buried, it would
depend upon if anything was left, in terms of remains. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. |
| YUFFEE: |
Did you often — did you come across cases where you got all the consent, the court order,
went through the song and dance, and then there was nothing? |
| ROWLAND: |
Nothing. Amen. We certainly did. There was nothing there. |
| YUFFEE: |
That's a huge disappointment. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yeah, and we got permissions, and we exhumed people, and there was no radium. |
| YUFFEE: |
Did you then try — |
| ROWLAND: |
(laughs) You know, "How did we get a mistake here? Or was it a mistake in burial, or a
mistake in identification?" There were some weird ones.
I've been trying to go over the exhumations in order to make a summary for this book I've written,
and I really ran into cases where I couldn't figure out what had happened. In one case, we exhumed
three people with the same name, bing, bing, bing, and never got one with radium in it.
(laughter) |
| YUFFEE: |
You also mentioned that they would usually take a piece of the leg bone. |
| ROWLAND: |
Well — |
| YUFFEE: |
— Was it the femur? 51
|
| ROWLAND: |
For the kind of work I did, the femur was useful. With permission from the family, we
would exhume and keep the whole skeleton. We did that in a lot of cases, and these are
now out at the university — |
| FISHER: |
Washington State University? |
| ROWLAND: |
Washington State University. All of the radium sample materials — skeletons, skeleton
remains, and things of that nature — have been transferred out to the — |
| YUFFEE: |
— Trans-Uranium Registry? |
| ROWLAND: |
Well, I don't know if it's exactly the Registry. I think it went to the university. |
| FISHER: |
Or is that the National Radiobiology Archive? |
| ROWLAND: |
Well, yeah, it's an archive. But it wasn't what I used to call the Trans-Uranium Registry. |
| FISHER: |
Then, it's not the Trans-Uranium Registry, it's the National Radiobiology Tissue
Archive. |
| ROWLAND: |
That's right; all right. All of that material went out there. |
| FISHER: |
Different. |
| ROWLAND: |
Have I covered the exhumation business for you? |
| YUFFEE: |
Yes. |
| ROWLAND: |
One other important thing I ought to cover, and that's the termination of the program. |
| YUFFEE: |
Uh-huh. |
| ROWLAND: |
I left in '83, and I left the program in '81. The Radium Program in '81 and the Lab in
'83, and I moved away.
I got involved — I think this is relevant — in a consulting business in which lawyers would come
to me and ask for help having to do with radiation cases involving radium. So, I began to see a
different side of the picture. I became involved in the lawsuits. |
| YUFFEE: |
Were you a witness? |
| ROWLAND: |
Well, I was a witness when necessary. More often than not, I would basically prepare
briefs for the lawyers but, if necessary, I would testify, and I've done that on a few cases.
But, I became involved in this side of the problem and I began to realize the problems of the
lawsuits that did come up and the complications one got into.
I was also at that time approached by Argonne and asked if I would write a history of the
Radium Program at Argonne. I started this in retirement when I lived down in Kentucky. I
moved back here in 1989, so I've been living here in this retirement facility for five years, now.
Since I moved back, I have been working on this history at Argonne, and I also have been
writing a couple of papers, making use of the data, and I also have been employed by Argonne to
help in these human health studies that you people are involved in, in the sense of what do I have
in my corporate memory that — what can I add?
I have also done a lot of looking through manuscripts, annual reports and what have you, to find
out what did go on that I didn't know about. We have found quite a little that some of us didn't
know about. |
Human Use Committee at Argonne |
| YUFFEE: |
A couple of things. First of all, a while back you had mentioned what became Human
Use Committees, or Subcommittees. When, to your knowledge, was the first Human Use
Subcommittee formed at Argonne? |
| ROWLAND: |
That has to be in the very early '70s. |
| YUFFEE: |
Okay. |
| ROWLAND: |
We started the Center for Human Radiobiology in 1969, and it was shortly thereafter, I
believe, that a Human Use Committee was formed at Argonne. |
| YUFFEE: |
Now, do you know if there was any administrative procedure prior to that where, if a
person in the Biology Division or wherever was interested in doing research with human
subjects, they would have to go through an administrative procedure? |
| ROWLAND: |
I frankly don't remember. I don't remember, for example, that we went through any
administrative procedure in asking dial painters or others to come into the Lab to be
measured. I don't know what procedure was used in the Medical Division when we
brought these people in and blood was taken. We did give skeletal x rays, and here we
asked these people to sign off. We asked for permission for skeletal x rays, and many
were refused. |
| YUFFEE: |
Sure. |
| ROWLAND: |
Because of the fear of x rays. |
| YUFFEE: |
Sure. |
| ROWLAND: |
When the Center for Human Radiobiology was formed, one of the things that was also
formed was an Advisory Committee to the Center. We would take problems to the
Advisory Committee.
One of the problems I took over and over again to the Advisory Committee, as long as it existed,
was on the question of skeletal x rays. Skeletal x rays are extremely valuable for diagnostic
purposes, for looking for early radium symptoms and what have you, but they seem to me to be a
minefield of problems. The Advisory Committee wanted us to do complete skeletal x rays. |
| FISHER: |
Well, it's analogous to mammography for breast cancer. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. |
| FISHER: |
As a diagnostic aid. |
| ROWLAND: |
Right. The argument was, "Is the dose we're giving for a complete skeletal x ray
justifiable on the basis of the diagnosis that we can get, early diagnosis of a
malignancy?" That sort of thing.
This bothered me very much, and I kept asking the Advisory Committee for advice on skeletal
x rays, because I did not want to have our institution giving complete skeletal x rays, because
there is a big dose involved from the toe to the head. |
| FISHER: |
What is a whole-body dose for a skeletal x ray? |
| ROWLAND: |
I couldn't tell you now, and I couldn't tell you what it was then. But, I can tell you one
thing about [them]. We've had some radiologists in, coming [to] looking at our skeletal
x rays, and they would rave about the beauty of them. |
| FISHER: |
The quality of them? |
| ROWLAND: |
The quality, because we used, in the early days, much higher doses than are used today. |
| FISHER: |
Sure. |
|
| ROWLAND: |
And, they think there's a marvelous reservoir of information in our skeletal x rays which
has nothing to do with radium. There have been a couple of teams that have used [them].
That's why I wanted to bring up the name of Bob Thomas.
Bob Thomas — where was he from? He was from — was he Hanford or was he [from University
of California at] Davis? |
| FISHER: |
Well, no, he worked at Los Alamos [National Laboratory, New Mexico] for many years. |
| ROWLAND: |
That's right, he was at Los Alamos. |
| FISHER: |
Then went to [Department of Energy] Headquarters. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yeah. |
| FISHER: |
A good friend of mine. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yeah. Well, Bob was sent out from Headquarters to Argonne. I don't know why, but at
that point, they asked that he be put in charge of the Radium Program, what was left of it.
See, this was in the '90s. He ended up in charge of the Radium Program, getting rid [of]
it. There wasn't any program, because almost everybody has transferred out of the
Radium Program. There was — at the very end, there was one technician left and Bob
Thomas.
And then, a couple of us that he hired on a part-time basis, were on the payroll, which, of course,
didn't amount to a hill of beans in terms of money.
But, he was here at the time that the final close-up took place, and so he was dealing with
questions like, "Where do the skeletal remains go? Where do the tissues go? What do I do with
the records? What do I do with the x rays? Do you want me to copy the records?" All this sort of
stuff.
And the answers Bob kept getting in the last few years were, "Yes. No. No. Yes. Do this. Do
that." They all contradicted each other as various people became empowered in DOE.
It was truly a mess, and the net result of Albuquerque's breaking [the news about] this plutonium
business was that everything came to a halt, and all that he was able to do was send the skeletal
material out to the state of Washington. Nothing else has ever happened.
They're sitting there, still an expense, now, to an Environmental Research Division, for
laboratory space in the Biology Division —very expensive — for this fabulous set of records on
6,000 people who were alleged to or did get exposed to radium, their x rays and what have you.
It was a huge — |
| YUFFEE: |
— It was just sitting there. |
| ROWLAND: |
Just sitting there, locked up, because no one has made a decision of where it goes. There
was lots of talk about putting these in a computer system, in a database.
I don't even know what has happened to the databases at Argonne. They were on tape, and I
think they've been taken off the computers, because that's a big expense, but they're still on tape
there, of all the cases.
That's a problem that is yet to be settled. This human use — this human studies stuff has put a real
freeze on it, not that it has anything to do with it, but no decision has been made on what's going
to happen to all that data. |
Potassium Studies in Cooperation with Loyola University |
| YUFFEE: |
A couple of tie-up questions. In your experience at Argonne, are you aware of any other
studies, aside from your studies, with bringing in people to be measured and such,
counted? |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. |
| YUFFEE: |
Are you aware of other studies involving human subjects with radiation? |
| ROWLAND: |
Oh, yes, yes. Well, Charlie Miller, in our division, originally, and then, later, in the
Health Division, participated with Loyola University [(in Chicago)] on a study of natural
body potassium in people of different builds and of different diseases.
These people were often given potassium-42 and either measured at Loyola or brought over to
Argonne and measured both for potassium-42 and natural potassium-40.
Now, this was a study involving, in one case, about 40 [patients]. We came across all this
because we were looking into the fact that, in the early days, not really having to do with radium,
but having to do with whole-body counters, as you're well aware, there's normal potassium in
the body, and it really is what prevents us from seeing other things in the body. It's the limiting
factor.
In order to quantitate it, it was quite customary to have people drink solutions of potassium-42 as a
calibration, so we knew how much was in them.
There were a number of such studies, but looking, trying to find both studies and identify the
people involved, brought us to the fact that there was this big study that was going on at Loyola
University, in which the people, I believe, would come to Argonne, where the whole-body
counters were.
So, there had been a number of studies which involved isotopes in humans given at other
institutions, but only [measured] at Argonne. |
| YUFFEE: |
And, would they be healthy volunteers? |
| ROWLAND: |
Not necessarily. |
| YUFFEE: |
So a mixture of volunteers [and] patients? |
| ROWLAND: |
Yeah, a mixture. It would be patients, more likely. |
| YUFFEE: |
More likely patients? |
| ROWLAND: |
Right. I think Loyola has a connection with the Veterans Administration Hospital, but
whether any veterans were involved, I don't know. But anyhow — |
| YUFFEE: |
And these were tracer doses? |
| ROWLAND: |
Oh, yeah, these were tracer doses that were given, so as to — [it's] difficult to quantitate
the amount of potassium in a person. Even if you count it, what if the person weighs 300
pounds, versus somebody who has a body content total of 100 pounds?
You need some way to calibrate, you know, what the effect of the changing distribution of the
muscle had to do with the response of the counter, and you can solve that with potassium-42. |
|
| YUFFEE: |
Were you aware of any other studies with human subjects, radiation of human subjects? |
| ROWLAND: |
I'm aware, now, only of those that we have reported in this recent review for DOE. Yes:
we found a couple [such experiments]. Arsenic was used, arsenic-76. |
| YUFFEE: |
So, have you been helping out Bob Schlenker? |
| ROWLAND: |
Yeah, I'm on the committee. |
| YUFFEE: |
Oh, okay. |
| FISHER: |
That's actually a study that I located and forwarded to Bob Schlenker. I found it in the
records. |
| ROWLAND: |
In the annual reports or in the 189s? 52
|
| FISHER: |
No, I found the arsenic-76 study in the Argonne files at the National Archives in
Washington. |
| ROWLAND: |
I see. |
| FISHER: |
Sent it to Bob [Shlenker]. Very interesting study. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. |
Reassessment of Plutonium Injection Cases |
| FISHER: |
Also in wrap-up, I think we should mention, for the purpose of the oral history, that you
did some reassessments of the original plutonium injection cases with Pat Durbin. 53
|
| ROWLAND: |
Well, we haven't mentioned that. |
| FISHER: |
Published several articles, reports on that study. I don't know if you would like to say
anything about that, but you did get involved in the reinvestigation of those plutonium
injectees. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. |
| FISHER: |
Identifying who was still alive and what the causes of death were among those who had
died. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. There's a paper by Rowland and Durbin that summarizes the 18 injection cases after
we had brought three of them in for metabolic studies and attempts to count plutonium in
the body. |
| YUFFEE: |
Is this in the early '70s? |
| ROWLAND: |
This is in the early '70s. I think it was given in a symposium somewhere, a big red book,
Radium and Plutonium or Plutonium and Radium. |
| FISHER: |
That was the Sun Valley meeting. |
| ROWLAND: |
That's the Sun Valley one? |
| FISHER: |
Yes. |
| ROWLAND: |
Anyhow, to give you a concise, quick history: Pat contacted me at some meeting,
sometime probably in '72, telling me that she had found that some of the people in that
group of 18 were still alive and suggesting that we had the organization that, one, could
find them, and two, could bring them in and handle them. She knew her university
[(University of California)] would never allow it.
I think I visited her lab [(Crocker Laboratory)] in the mid-'70s — '72 — and she was going to
hand over the files on these people that she thought were alive, but the files weren't copied yet.
So, what happened was that she brought them to Argonne, I think in about, approximately,
December of 1972.
At that point — I don't have the dates — I went to [AEC] Headquarters to talk about funding to do
this nonradium program. I thought we had been very successful at radium, and I went and I
talked to Jim Liverman, who was head of the Biology Program at that time.
And, I also talked to Sid Marks at the same time. You know, Sid Marks was serving a period, I
think, at that time, two years in Washington[, DC at Headquarters]. I talked with the two of them
about doing this, and the immediate reaction was, "In no way, shape, or form do you touch those
people."
I was appalled at this, and I said, "You know, you funded our program for years, not because you
give a damn about radium, but because radium is an analog for plutonium. We could learn so
much about plutonium if we can bring these people in." |
| YUFFEE: |
That seems like a natural extension. |
| ROWLAND: |
Right. And they're living, they're human; we know (we think) how much plutonium they
got, and we would like to measure the ones who are alive, and we would like to go out and
try to exhume the ones who are not alive and see what we can learn about the deposition in
the skeleton.
And, the answer kept coming back, "We can't touch it with a ten-foot pole. We can't do a thing."
Naively, I keep saying, "But it's good science." And obviously, what I didn't realize, it was bad
politics, or bad public relations, because you [would] have to admit that it's out there.
Finally, I was able to get approval to take it out of my own funding: "Don't write anything about
new funding for this." I would take it out of my funding, on one condition, and that condition
was that I did not tell these people they had plutonium in them. |
| FISHER: |
Was that something that Liverman requested? |
| ROWLAND: |
That was — Jim Liverman [who] requested that in no uncertain terms. But I'm naïve; I'm
stupid. I didn't get it [in writing]. See, I don't think "legally." So, I agreed. I mean, he's
the boss; he funds us, you know. You do what he tells you.
And he said, "Do it, but don't tell them they have plutonium in them."
So, what do we do? And so, it was agreed that we would say they have an unknown mixture of
radioisotopes. They were given an unknown mixture of radioisotopes. That has an element of
truth. |
| FISHER: |
Sure. |
| ROWLAND: |
Because you never get injected with pure [plutonium]-239 or -238; there's always a
contaminant. |
| FISHER: |
(smiling) It was an unknown mixture of plutonium and americium.
(laughter) |
| ROWLAND: |
So the only fib was, we just left off the plutonium and americium: "Unknown mixture of
radioisotopes." |
| YUFFEE: |
Now, when you approached these people who had no idea that they were ever given an
isotope, how did — |
| ROWLAND: |
— Well, I can't give you firsthand information there, because I never approached any of
these people. The fact of the matter is, we only ever approached one person to begin
with, and that was Mr. Elmer Allen, the unfortunate man who had his leg damaged in a
railroad accident which was the cause of his getting plutonium.
He was given plutonium in the muscle of the leg 24, 48 hours before it was scheduled for
amputation on the suspicion that it had a bone sarcoma. As you well know by now, he lived a fairly
normal life afterwards.
When we approached him — we found him very easily — when we approached him, we were
making arrangements to bring him to Rochester, to Strong Memorial Hospital, where the
metabolic studies would be done, because the other three living cases had been injected there and
were being followed there by the physician Christine Waterhouse. |
| FISHER: |
Christine Waterhouse. |
| ROWLAND: |
Christine Waterhouse was there, and she had said, "Yes," she would. She routinely
brought these people in and it would be very easy to bring them in, and they would go
into a metabolic ward for two weeks, and she would collect excreta for us, which she did.
Elmer Allen came up, as you know, not by airplane, so he had to go through Chicago, and so, while
he was in Chicago, we invited him — we had him out to the Lab, and we got to meet him and tried
to do plutonium counts. Rundo tried to do plutonium counts, and he couldn't see a thing. 54
The answer was pretty obvious, we learned later, because then he went on to Rochester for two
weeks and collected excreta.
He had very, very little plutonium in him, and the answer to that was, it was injected
intramuscularly, and then amputated, so that he had less plutonium than anybody had in them.
But, we could certainly detect it by chemical analysis, radiochemical analysis of the urine.
So, three cases were done. Dr. Waterhouse contacted the other two cases and was very loathe to
tell them about plutonium, obviously, even later, when she was told to. I don't know what she
told them when she brought them in. Maybe she told them nothing, because she did bring them
in other times.
We told Elmer that he had an unknown mixture of radioisotopes we wanted to learn about, but
we never told him it was plutonium until shortly thereafter.
I don't know what prompted the investigation by the Inspector General. It [only] says [the
reason] on the invitation [to the IG] from Liverman. But, I don't know.
Somehow or other, the story must have broken, some way or other, because the investigation was
taking place, and we were all investigated as to why we didn't tell these people about the
plutonium.
I'm sorry about the whole mess, because we should have told them right off the bat. We always
made a big effort in the radium cases to explain what we were doing, why we were doing it. |
| YUFFEE: |
Sure. |
Information Provided by Argonne to People in Radium Follow-up Program |
| ROWLAND: |
In fact, we have a lovely little book. We had written a little booklet that we sent to these
people before they came, and we probably didn't to Elmer. |
| YUFFEE: |
Did you keep a copy of that? |
| ROWLAND: |
Yeah, I have a copy of that. |
| YUFFEE: |
Do you think maybe you could send a copy? I would be interested in seeing that. |
| ROWLAND: |
I can't send it, but I can send a xerox of it. |
| YUFFEE: |
Yeah, that would be fine. That would be interesting to see. |
| ROWLAND: |
It's a nice little book. We have two of them, one on willed bodies. I don't know if I have
that one, but [the other one described what took place during the visit to Argonne]. |
| YUFFEE: |
That would be interesting. |
| ROWLAND: |
And, basically, what we tried to do is treat these people like you and I aren't treated
when we go to a clinic. We had one of our search-and-contact people with them every
moment, always, explaining what's going to happen before they got there, being with
them. Wait for them, lead them on.
And, all this involved: "We're measuring the radium here. We're going to give you skeletal
x rays here to see if there's any effect of radium." So forth and so on. |
| YUFFEE: |
That's very interesting. |
| ROWLAND: |
So, it went against our normal operating procedure, the way we were dealing with Mr.
Allen, because we couldn't tell him about the plutonium. We could just talk about
radioisotopes. How much of this he would have understood, I don't know, anyhow. |
| YUFFEE: |
Sure. |
Public and DOE Awareness of Plutonium Injections |
| ROWLAND: |
Because, as you well know, the lay public is — radiation and radioisotopes just all mean
the same sort of thing, and they don't mean very much, as I see it.
Anyhow, subsequently, we went ahead with exhumations, and subsequently, we were told to
inform all the people, and subsequently, all contacts were informed that were contacted by our
people.
Dr. Lieben in Boston for the exhumations, Austin Brues, and Walter Weisen, I believe his name
was, from DBER, 55
a physician on the staff, went down to Italy, Texas, to tell Elmer Allen's
doctor about the plutonium. Whether they told Elmer to his face, I don't know; I wasn't there.
But, everybody eventually was told that it was plutonium. And eventually, something like a
dozen papers were published on various aspects of plutonium in the bone, what have you.
But, the interesting thing to us, in retrospect, was the [so-called] secrecy of the whole
[plutonium-injection study]. We all knew about the plutonium injections. Pat Durbin had written
an [informative] article on the cases revisited that appeared in a symposium volume.
We published all our stuff on it, and we talked quite openly in the public about these people. |
| YUFFEE: |
Sure. |
| ROWLAND: |
Because there was no classification; there were no secrets left. But, it seemed to come as
a big surprise to DOE. |
| YUFFEE: |
I'm sure. |
| ROWLAND: |
And, that has a lot to do with continuity of information. All the people in our day at DOE
knew about it. Well, you probably have seen what we call fact sheets.
We used to write fact sheets for Headquarters use, because they would always call up and [ask],
"Can you tell us about this today so we can tell so-and-so tomorrow about it?" or something. So,
we kept sending them fact sheets on what we had done and what have you.
So, we were, I think, pretty good in keeping everybody informed, particularly on plutonium, but
on everything else we did, too. |
| YUFFEE: |
I think that we've asked the questions that we had, and you mentioned that there were
certain things that you wanted to say that you were able to. |
| ROWLAND: |
I was saying I would probably think of things after you leave. But, on the whole, I'm
blank right now. |
Analyses of Thorium Workers |
| FISHER: |
Well, I do want to mention very briefly that you've also done analyses of thorium workers. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. |
| FISHER: |
And especially women, maybe, and men who worked in the preparation of thorium mantles [used in Coleman lanterns]. |
| ROWLAND: |
Actually, [regarding] the study [at] Argonne, I was peripheral to it, because I was division director at the time.
We were very interested in the thorium workers, because there were a very large number. They
were very close to the Laboratory; West Chicago was not far from Argonne. There were
thousands of them.
The firm gave us complete records, employment lists, and we were interested in knowing
whether we could measure thorium in their body. And, as you know — or may know — we did
bring several in and found that, yes, we could detect residual thorium in the lung area.
We did — we, again, [meaning] my institution — we did crude studies of causes of death. The very
first one that was done was fascinating in the sense that, statistically speaking, only two causes
of death deviated from expected.
One was heart problems, and it deviated in a negative direction. I've learned — and I don't know
why — epidemiologists never seem to look at deviations in the negative directions, even if they're
statistically significant. They never look at those. I haven't had enough epidemiology to know
why you don't do this. |
| FISHER: |
For the benefit of the transcription, in the negative sense is the lack of cancers. |
| YUFFEE: |
Or the lack of heart problems. |
| ROWLAND: |
[Those] less than expected. |
| FISHER: |
Less than expected. |
| YUFFEE: |
Less than expected. So there were less than expected heart problems. |
| ROWLAND: |
Less than expected heart problems. But we did find more than expected traffic accident deaths.
(laughter) |
| YUFFEE: |
Maybe it affects the optic nerve. (more laughter) |
| ROWLAND: |
Neither of these, offhand, seems to be related to the fact that they had a potential exposure to thorium in the form of dust and other rare earths, as well.
But, you know, if you, as a person who is on the fringe of epidemiology, but doesn't wear the
hat, why you don't look at the negatives with equal glint in your eye as you look at the positives,
the excess of malignancies, I never did understand. But both of them, I was convinced, were
unrelated to the thorium.
(laughter) |
| ROWLAND: |
And then, apparently — |
| YUFFEE: |
So thorium doesn't make you a bad driver? (more laughter) |
| ROWLAND: |
That's one of the pitfalls of this type of analysis. You just don't know all the things you need to know about the population.
Subsequently, a second study was done by a visiting postdoc or something from China, perhaps.
I think he found all sorts of things that I have not paid much attention to and am not really
convinced that they're real. But, there was a second study published by a postdoc, who seemed to
find some causes of death which he seemed to think were significant.
But, we did do this [study]. This was supported by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, because
they had more interest in thorium than our funding agency at the time. |
| YUFFEE: |
(turning to Fisher) Does that finish it for you, Darrell? |
| FISHER: |
Yes. I would just like to finish up by adding that it has been a pleasure to meet with you this morning and conduct this oral history interview.
You're now retired. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. |
| FISHER: |
71 years old? |
| ROWLAND: |
72, now. |
| FISHER: |
72. Still active in supporting work at the Laboratory. |
| ROWLAND: |
I have been involved in the study of human uses of isotopes on a sort of an ad hoc basis.
As long as the Radium Program was in effect, which it is no longer, I was employed whenever needed in the Radium Program, primarily as a source of information.
I also am employed by a city in Wisconsin, trying to circumvent the requirements that they spend
a lot of money to get the radium out of their water before — well, they're hoping to wait long
enough for Congress to act and put new regulations in effect. |
| FISHER: |
Do you know of any sources of radium that could be obtained and used at our Laboratory for other purposes? |
| ROWLAND: |
By a source of radium, you mean a little bottle that says, "radium"? |
| FISHER: |
We're looking for radium, radium-226. |
| ROWLAND: |
It's a very good question. I don't know where you'll get it, because I think most laboratories have tried to get rid of everything of that nature. |
| FISHER: |
If you think of it in the future, we're interested in radium, not so much radium-beryllium sources, but radium carbonate [or] radium chloride. |
| ROWLAND: |
How about radium in the form of pottery? |
| FISHER: |
Perhaps not so interested in solid forms of radium.
(laughter)
But we are interested for transmuting it to other short-lived radionuclides for medical
applications, one of which is radium-223. |
| ROWLAND: |
Mm-hmm. Well, how about Canadian Radium Corporation? They still mine up in Canada. Don't they separate radium anymore? We used to buy our radium from Canada. |
| FISHER: |
We'll check on it. We're not interested in buying it, but in taking it off of other people's hands. |
| ROWLAND: |
Off somebody's hands. |
| FISHER: |
Because there is a disposal cost associated with radium. |
| ROWLAND: |
Oh, I'm sure there is. I'm sure there is. |
| YUFFEE: |
I also wanted to note for the record that you got an M.B.A. in 1975 from the University of Chicago. |
| FISHER: |
Oh, that's right. |
| ROWLAND: |
Was it '75? |
| FISHER: |
Yeah. |
| ROWLAND: |
I guess so. I don't remember the year. |
| YUFFEE: |
We did not talk about that, which is interesting to note and, I guess, as we were saying, it fits in with your duties as a — |
| ROWLAND: |
As an administrator at the Lab at that time. |
| FISHER: |
We should also mention your term of service on the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yes. I resigned when I left the Laboratory. I thought that that should be a position held by active researchers, not retired researchers. So I submitted my resignation when I left the Laboratory. |
| FISHER: |
But, it's a distinguished calling, you might say. |
| ROWLAND: |
Yeah. It was a great group of people to work with. |
| YUFFEE: |
We appreciate your taking the time to speak with us. It has been very interesting. |
| ROWLAND: |
Well, I hope it's worth your while. |
| YUFFEE: |
It has been, definitely. Thank you. |
| ROWLAND: |
You're welcome. |
|
