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Oral Histories
Health Physicist Constantine J. Maletskos, Ph.D.
Foreword
Short Biography
Early Education and Career (1920 to Mid '50s)
Early Dosimetry Research (1940s to 1960)
Radium Dial Painter Research (Early '50s–60s)
Fernald School Calcium Metabolism Studies (1948 to Early '50s)
Iodine-131 Thyroid Research (Early '50s); Additional Calcium Metabolism Studies on Elderly Subjects (Early '50s)
Iodine-131 Research and the Fernald School (Early to Mid '50s)
Robley Evans's Role in Experiment Oversight and Funding Information
Experiment Safety Protocols, Clarified (1950s)
Radium and Thorium Ingestion by Human Subjects (Late '50s to Early '60s)
Volunteer Inducements and Informed-Consent Procedures
Cesium-132 Research on Humans (Mid '60s)
Radium Burden Examination of Radium Dial Painters (Mid '50s to 1985)
Other Radionuclide Research
Personal Anecdotes
Research as a Private Consultant and Additional Publications (1972–95)
Comments on Human Radiation ExperimentsationControversy
First Knowledge of Plutonium Injections
Thoughts on the Use of "Disadvantaged" Populations in Human Radiation Experimentsation
Career Highlights
Work With Manomet Bird Observatory (1975–95)
Additional Comments on Human Radiation Experimentation Controversy and Closing Comments
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Other Radionuclide Research |
| FISHER: |
I've noticed in your bibliography there are some papers on
the metabolism and retention of activated products, such as sodium-24,
potassium-42, and potassium-43. Do you remember any of these studies? One in
particular by Tang and Maletskos, 1970? |
| MALETSKOS: |
That didn't involve human beings. |
| FISHER: |
It was just an analysis of sodium-24 and potassium in
tissues? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Those were neutron activation studies. |
| FISHER: |
That was ex-vivo [(outside the body)].104 There
is one, however, though that says, "Exchangeable Potassium in Man Using a
New Radioisotope, Potassium-43." Zollinger, Van DeWater, Maletskos, and
Moore. Do you remember that one?105 |
| MALETSKOS: |
Sure, that's an experiment that got into being because I'd
happened to have an appointment [at the Harvard Medical School]. This was when I
was working with Shields Warren,106 who was [one of] the great
pathologist in this country, and also the first to head in the Division of
Biology of Medicine for the Atomic Energy Commission. I had a double appointment
when I was working for him at the Cancer Research Institute at the [New England]
Deaconess Hospital [in Boston] and also at the Harvard Medical School.
Jim Johnson,107 who use to be (and still is) at Colorado State, had
a sabbatical, and he came over here to do some work with Dr. Francis Moore,108
who was the Chief of Surgery at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital [in Boston]. Dr.
Moore was always interested in body composition, and that's why Jim came along
[so] they decided to do this experiment. I knew Jim Johnson, and he knew me, and
we got together to collaborate on this sort of thing. It was all done under the
auspices of the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. I just happened to be at the
Harvard Medical School at the time; I had nothing to do with the actual
execution, except participate in the work. |
| FISHER: |
Was there an injection? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I had all the equipment to make the measurements you see. |
| FISHER: |
Was there an injection of potassium or ingestion of potassium? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I'm sure it was injected. |
| FISHER: |
Do you remember, did you do the counting? |
| MALETSKOS: |
All the measurements were done in my laboratory at the Harvard Medical
School. |
| FISHER: |
Do you remember who the sponsor of the work was in any way? Do we have to
look at the paper? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Yes, you have to look at the paper, and now, it could have been the Atomic
Energy Commission. I don't remember what potassium it was; may have been from
Oak Ridge, I'm not positive; I think that's a cyclotron-produced material,
though[, so it probably didn't]. |
| FISHER: |
It was potassium-43. |
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| GOURLEY: |
So, how well did you know Shields Warren? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Very well. I knew him from the time I came to the Radioactivity Center.
There was always interaction between Robley Evans and Shields Warren. I had
enough interaction with him, so that he invited me to come over [to Harvard] and
join his group and be the head of biophysics. He was interested, that's why I
went over, because it was a good challenge and he wanted to see to what extent
neutron activation analysis could play in research medicine and in forensic
medicine. That's why it was in the Harvard Medical School. He put me in what was
then the Department of Legal Medicine; that was a whole new experience, to be in
a Pathology Department that was devoted to death by non-natural means. |
| FISHER: |
One of the questions I've been dying to ask you—it doesn't relate as
much to human experimentation, but here we are interviewing you overlooking a
beautiful lake, and a forest surrounding on a hill near the ocean. Did you
commute every day from Gloucester down to Boston to work, and then come home
again? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Absolutely, I commuted by train. In the early days, I commuted by train,
there were quite a number of trains. In many respects, it was very good, because
[during the long commute] I kept up with my references very well. I learned how
to write reasonably well on the train so the secretaries could read my writing.
So I got a lot of writing done and it was a good time not be bothered by anybody
because I knew I didn't want chit-chat with the other people on the train. |
| FISHER: |
I wanted to mention that, because where you live now is where you've lived
for how many years? |
| MALETSKOS: |
47 [or] 48 years. |
| FISHER: |
So you've made this commute quite a few times. |
| MALETSKOS: |
Yes, until it got so bad because I had to have meetings in Boston or
Cambridge in the evenings, and I started getting home way too late. I decided
that I'd better start driving, which I did. I did drive while I was at MIT for a
while, and then I drove all the time when I was over with Shields Warren at the
New England Deaconess Hospital and the Harvard Medical School. Finally, I went
out on my own, as you know, back in 1972, when my research funds went down the
drain because it was all "soft money." I decided that I would to go
out on my own and see what would happen, and luckily I could do half-time
research, even as a consultant, so I had my cake and ate it with no
administration. |
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Research as a Private Consultant and Additional
Publications (1972–95) |
| FISHER: |
That's a remarkable aspect, also, of you career. I think we should mention
for this public history that in 1972 you left MIT and became a private
consultant; [for] the last 23 years you've been self-employed. You also remained
very active in professional society activities, and you belong to numerous
professional societies, and you served on numerous scientific committees that
are all listed on your résumé. |
| MALETSKOS: |
A one-man operation, that's correct. |
| FISHER: |
I'm curious about another experiment mentioned in your list of
publications, a paper by Reeve, Green, Maletskos, and Neer. The first author is
Reeve, "Skeletal Retention of Calcium-45 and Strontium-85 Compared: Further
Studies on Intravenously Injected Strontium-85 as a Tracer for Skeletal Calcium."109
What do you remember about this work? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Reeve110 was a fellow that came to work with Bob Neer111
at the Massachusetts General Hospital; he came from the United Kingdom. One of
the things that they wanted to pursue was what other tracer could they use for
long-term studies of calcium metabolism, as opposed to the calcium-47. It was
easy to measure, but for the long-term studies you had to use calcium-45, which
meant an awful lot of analytical measurements: you can't measure [it] any other
way because it's a beta emitter only. So, they decided to do this experiment,
and this experiment was essentially [a] Massachusetts General Hospital [study].
I participated on a combination service and part of the team basis, because I
could do the measurements on the whole-body counter on these people at the
Radioactivity Center. |
| FISHER: |
Do you remember who the subjects were? You counted them? |
| MALETSKOS: |
No, I don't remember now, I just don't remember. I don't know whether they
were patients of Dr. Neer, who [were] okay from the standpoint of the calcium
metabolism, because Dr. Neer was an endocrinologist112 and he was
also head of the endocrinology group. So there could be something else wrong
with you, but it wouldn't interfere with the skeleton measurements; [or] they
could have been just regular normal people, [obtained in the] usual way.
That was all done through the Massachusetts General [Hospital, and samples were]
then brought over to MIT for counting. Then all of us on the team, sat down and
analyzed the data, and calculated everything else, and put the paper together.
There were other experiments in there, like in the Krohn's disease [(a
congenital disease of the GI tract)], where you are using natural
[radioactivity], namely the potassium-40 that's in the people, to study the
disease. |
| FISHER: |
There's another paper listed, a little later on by Shipp, Maletskos,
Dawson-Hughes, "Measurement of Calcium-47 Retention with a Whole-Body
Counter."113 |
| MALETSKOS: |
That was done at the Tufts Human Nutrition Research Center [at Tufts
University in Boston], where they do a tremendous amount of work on calcium
metabolism; being a nutrition center, that's one of their interests. One of the
interests of Dawson-Hughes was osteoporosis, and they had just received the
whole-body counter from MIT. It had been set up, because MIT didn't need it
anymore, and they wanted it, and it was transported to them and [set back] up.
They needed to get somebody to set it up and make sure it was going to run well,
and also show them how to do the experiments. So they called me in, and I did
that. I did a big development job on knowing how to measure [the calcium-47]
using a scanning technique, so that they could use even smaller amounts of
radioactivity. [I] developed the whole technique and then [we did] a little
study on it.
It turned out to be a really good way of developing the
technique. I finally solved the problem, and I guess everybody start[ed] to copy
them now, [that is,] those who still want to do those sort of things. Again,
that was all the permissions and that sort of things; they have a very good
setup over there [at Tufts] for doing all the requirements of the Independent
Review Board. They do it very meticulously well, and all that was done on their
side. |
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Comments on Human Radiation ExperimentsationControversy |
| GOURLEY: |
There has been all this publicity, [and] one of the things that we are
hearing about is that these radiation—there were secret radiation
experiments, and [that they were] Government-sponsored. I was wondering what
your experiences were with Government secrecy, and was it ever a problem for
you? Did you have trouble getting information? How secret was it? |
| MALETSKOS: |
The words "secrecy" and "secret" were never mentioned
until the [so-called] scandal came up. Everything was out in the open; we talked
about it with everybody. Everything is in public form, either as a peer-reviewed
paper, or a progress report. Soon after the experiment was done, you had a
chance to write it up, so there hasn't been anything [secret] that I've been
involved [in] or anything the Radioactivity Center has been involved [in], as
far as I know.
Even the original iron studies that I mentioned on
blood preservation came out right after the war. As a matter of fact, dated in
1946, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, everything was out in
the open. So it's false, as far as I'm personally concerned. |
| GOURLEY: |
Okay. Well I wanted to get that on the record. More on this strain of
secrecy: One of the experiments that the press has really been very concerned
about were the plutonium injections. At what point did you know about those, and
were they available amongst academia? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I haven't been able to recall when I first knew, I tried, [but,] I knew
before. The first thing that came out publicly, was Pat Durbin's114
1970 report, if I remember correctly. I don't know why hers came out before
Wright Langham's report came out, when it was in 1980, I believe, about ten
years later.115
I was aware of it before that; what I
don't know is [if] I was aware of it nearly from the beginning, because after I
finished my Ph.D. thesis, there was a lot of information that was adaptable to
Wright Langham['s studies] and that bunch hadn't thought much about how you
[analyze] these metabolic experiments, and everything else. [So], they wanted to
know how you analyze them. He asked me to talk about my thesis to provide a
background for his people to know. By inference, I am suspicious that I may have
been told that, but I don't remember at all that they had these experiments
going, and they needed to know how to analyze it. |
| FISHER: |
So you went down to Los Alamos and lectured on the how to conduct a
metabolic study? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Right, I talked about mine, because it was in great detail, and you could
look at it if you want. This is the first computer model of a dynamic study for
any [calcium] radionuclide. There were no digital computers in those days. This
was an analog computer that Gordon Brownell [built]; does that ring a bell to
you? He developed [it] over at Massachusetts General, because he wanted to study
the metabolism of iodine: the first detailed metabolic [study was conducted] at
Massachusetts General, using his computer. Fortunately, he designed it just in
time for him to do his work, and then for me to come over, and apply my data to
it. Otherwise, I wouldn't have this detailed analysis that I have in here. |
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First Knowledge of Plutonium Injections |
| FISHER: |
Do you recall how you learned of the plutonium? |
| MALETSKOS: |
No, I cannot recall. I'm sure I learned it between whenever they started
and Pat [Durbin]'s [review], but I can't remember where, and it might have been
only a little bit before Pat's for all I know, but I don't remember.
It always struck me as being an unusual thing to do an experiment where you
couldn't tell a subject what you were giving [them], if in fact, they were truly
doing that. I've asked myself the questions since this situation has developed,
"What would I do in a case like that? What would I, personally, do?"
Well, I don't know what I would do. Remember the conditions, you had a war on,
you were developing something that was absolutely brand new and you knew that
there were potential problems, from an occupational health standpoint. |
| GOURLEY: |
The name itself was classified. [Plutonium was referred to as "product."] |
| MALETSKOS: |
Yes. I know that, that's the problem. You had to find out how this
material operated in the body, so that you could deduce from excretion
measurements or whatever what the person might have gotten. The other
alternative was to use the whole workforce as a guinea pig, if you want to use
the word guinea pig. That's not good, either.
So you had to do some
kind of an experiment. It had to be on human beings, because they had already
done a few [animal] experiments, I think it was on mice and a few rats; you knew
what was going on [in terms of plutonium's fundamental behavior]. These were
done at Berkeley, if I remember. Something like this is really important; [it]
lasts in the body a very long time, [so] you really want to do it on human
beings. And [there is] nothing better for knowing something about [the
metabolism in] a human being than doing [an experiment] on a human being. You
can't use animal data all the time. If you could do it, you do it well, and you
could do it safely.
My thinking is, "Yes, if there is a benefit
to mankind, or a benefit to them or a benefit to a group of people like them, or
something like that[, do the experiment]." So I don't know how I would have
handled myself under those conditions. |
| GOURLEY: |
When did you met up with Langham's group, to talk to them? |
| MALETSKOS: |
That was way, way back, its got to be before 1955, I think. This [(my
metabolism research)] came out in 1954, so it was shortly after. |
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Thoughts on the Use of "Disadvantaged"
Populations in Human Radiation Experimentsation |
| FISHER: |
It may be the most difficult thing for future generations to understand,
[why] what may be considered "disadvantaged" populations were used for
tracer studies. You've already told us today that they were institutionalized
and so they were on carefully controlled diets, samples could be obtained, and
they were a manageable population. Was there any concern about the fact that
maybe they didn't quite understand what they were participating in, because of
their mental retardation, and that this was a humanitarian concern at the time? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I've always worried about that, and it turns out that the Fernald School,
if you look at the Massachusetts Task Force Report, the superintendent allowed a
lot of people in his population to be used for a variety of experiments. I don't
know whether he personally himself felt that he could wholesale his subjects in
this particular fashion.
Until I knew about that, I thought there were
only be a few isolated situations, like iron experiments, and that was it.
Apparently there were an awful lot of experiments that were going on like that,
where these people were being used; that sounds like a wholesale misuse to me.
You always have that problem when you get a[n ideal control] population. I
worr[ied] about the same thing when I went to the Age Center of New England: "Is
this the right thing to do? Would I volunteer if I were in the same position?"
If you have any kind of a conscience, you ask yourself these questions.
Remember I said, "We went to them two or three different times, because
they were the only source. Without going down the street, and grabbing people
off the street." What do you do now? You have advertisements in the
newspapers; have you seen them? They're in there. They're little blurbs and they
say, "We're doing this experiment and we'd like to have people of this type
come in, call this number," and [they indicate] if there is a stipend, or
[state what] the stipend is or whatever the [dollar] number is. We didn't do
that in those days because we didn't think that was necessarily the way to go;
this is the evolution of thinking.
Why is that okay now, and it might
not have been okay back then, I don't know. What is the difference, going to an
organization that has a large population from which you could draw. They are
themselves volunteering, for example, to study aging, even though you may not be
using them for aging all the time, as opposed to putting out a notice. Isn't
that enticement, that notice? I don't know where that fine line is. |
| FISHER: |
But you're overriding. The thinking probably was [that] the levels of
[radio]activity were negligibly low, [not] sufficient that there would be any
physical harm. |
| MALETSKOS: |
That's correct, but you see, you wouldn't have gone to them in the first
place if you thought that the activity was too high—at least I
wouldn't have, let me put it that way. Remember I told you the effort was to
strive to keep it down low; can you do an experiment today where only ten
millirem are ever going to be given [to obtain metabolic information]? That's a
pretty good target that we achieved back then, that you can't [improve on,] even
today for the same type of experiment. |
| FISHER: |
There was probably also the consideration that we live in a natural
radiation environment. We have radioactive material naturally in our bodies, we
have internal dose on an annual basis of at least 30 to 40 millirem from
[natural] internal sources[, mainly from carbon-14, potassium-40 and tritium];
this [radiation exposure] would be small compared to that? Was that thinking
involved? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I don't know that we broke it down in that detail, but certainly
background was a very important consideration. This [experimental exposure] was
[a] fraction of background. That initial paper that I'm talking about, the paper
on the preservation of blood, which describes all the basic thinking that we're
talking about, is there. Whether it's spelled out or not, it's there. It's a
classic paper; I think people ought to read that and see how good it is. |
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| FISHER: |
One thing that we would like to ask, in conclusion, is, as you look back
on your career, which is a very distinguished career, and a very honorable
career, what have been the highlights and what are you most proud of? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I really don't know. The reason I say that is the thing that I like about
my career is, that I keep growing. I've never had a case of saying, "Well,
I've done all I can or my gray cells [(brain cells)] are starting to deteriorate
so quickly that I'd better stop." That sort of thing has always been a new
type of challenge; this is one of the nice things; there was no way to
appreciate [it] in the early days. As I mentioned to you, my background is
highly multidisciplinary, even in getting my Ph.D. in three different fields.
That has made me open up my avenues [to] things that I would be doing, compared
to only one, and I could float between these fields without any difficulty. I
can change my thinking automatically and it's intrinsic in me [to] do it, but
it's also gotten me into things that would be highly unusual, if you look at the
bibliography. |
| FISHER: |
Are there any particular aspects of your research that you are
particularly proud of that you would like remembered? |
| MALETSKOS: |
There are several things. One, being near the beginning of an era has been
tremendous. I probably never would have looked back, unless we had this episode
of what I keep calling the "scandal," and will continue calling it "the
scandal." I never would have looked back in the same way; I would never
have gone back and looked at some of those papers, that sort of thing. I don't
go back through my bibliography to just reread the titles, and that sort of
thing, so that part is great.
The interaction with different types of
people, from different fields, has been fantastic. That has been great; I've
enjoyed that. The challenge of working in different fields has been great. The
challenge of doing things that involved things that are important in terms of
peoples' health, has been good, because a lot of it directly involved human
health, one way or another, or the effects of agents on health, and that sort of
thing. The absorption experiment was a major experiment in my whole career. I
probably will never do anything as difficult as that again [and] I don't want to
do anything as difficult as that was. At one point, I had the whole
Radioactivity Center working for me. There was so much going on because of the
short half-lives, and everything else, and the logistics for them were
unbelievable, never mind the good science and the good measurements and all this
sort of thing.
By the way, you asked about, we were talking about
people being confined when you do these experiments. Every experiment that we
talked about that involved me, [also] involved people being confined. Those
people in that absorption experiment, were put in a little, small hospital that
was adjacent to MIT, and that became our clinical center. The clinical center
was actually being built at the time, and we couldn't use it. MIT now has a
clinical center. It can do any kind of experiments on human beings, anytime it
wants. That capability was not available [then].
You never do an
experiment like that without putting them in a clinical center, because that's
the only way you could control the total experiment; you don't lose samples, you
don't lose measurements at the right time, and everything else. So those people
stayed in there, they stayed in there for a week and ten days, whatever it was,
based on the half-life of the material. You have to have them confined if you
want to do a good experiment. If you don't, you're not going to have control.
Why bother to do it? So confinement is an important thing, and it's fundamental
to that experiment. Anything that involves metabolism has to have confinement,
certainly in the early stages. And then later on you don't necessarily need it.
So that's fundamental.
It's been a lot of fun with two people, who are
two pretty good scientists and physicians, namely Robley Evans, and Shields
Warren. Not many people get a chance to have two good people to work for, and
that's been fun. It's been even just as much great fun being on my own, even
though there [are] problems with being on your own: you don't have a secretary
available to you in the instant you need somebody. Or, until you get all the
fancy equipment, you don't photocopy when you want to photocopy. There [is] a
lot of little housework that you have to do that somebody else normally does,
but the independence is tremendous.
I'm very fortunate: how many
people can do consulting and do real research as a consultant? That's unusual;
it's been unusual, and I guess it speaks well for whatever I've done prior to
that. I've only advertised once, and that was when I first decided [to do
consulting work, when] my funds stopped. And I still had proposals out,
supposedly to be approved, and if they had been approved, I probably never would
have done what I did do [(consulting)]. But I let everybody know that I was
available, and if they needed help I'd be available for a few months anyway, and
in about two months, I was working at a 100 percent plus; it [has] never ceased
since then. That's been remarkable. |
| FISHER: |
That's amazing. |
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Work With Manomet Bird Observatory (1975–95) |
| MALETSKOS: |
There have been some nice, challenging things that you may have noticed in
there [(my résumé)]—that [I] worked with the birds, for
example. Why would I ever get involved with a bird observatory? They even ended
up making me a trustee; I've been a trustee for 20 years, and on the executive
committee, and everything else. Well, that was a challenging thing.
They started to do that, they got funded, they wanted to use birds as a measure
of what's in the environment. And it's an ideal situation, because the bird
metabolism is so high that they first pick up [(absorb)] quickly, but then they
get rid of it [(excrete)] quickly. You are, in fact, following it on the basis
every time you catch them. Here is an experiment that birds were recapturable,
you're using the same birds over and over again, you're doing a laboratory
experiment in the field. The question was, they needed more funding, [so,] they
went to the AEC after the money the local nuclear power station gave them ran
out, and they were interviewed by a review team that came to Wood's Hole that
didn't know that the
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