COL. BAILEY: This is our final panel. This is Colonel Bailey, Claud Bailey, Jr. This is our final panel for the day. It's going to be an open forum headed by my comrade in crime, Acie Byrd.

We want to, again, stay on time.

Name. Speak into the mike. Acie Byrd will be the primary moderator.

MR. BYRD: Hello, and welcome, everybody. My name is Acie Byrd and I'm an atomic veteran. I'm on the Executive Committee of the Taskforce for Radiation and Human Rights.

I'm going to call on Janet Gordon, who had a presentation to make, and we'll begin with that.

MS. GORDON: My name is Janet Gordon. I'm the Chairperson of the National Committee for Radiation Victims. As the Chairperson of that organization, I've had a lot of really wonderful experiences, one of the greatest of which was helping to nominate and be there for the award of the Right Livelihood Award for Senator Chetton Anchine from the Marshall Islands when he received that award, the alternate Nobel Prize award, the Right Livelihood award.

He also received an award of our organization, the Human Rights and Justice Award. It's a very important award for our organization and it is my great privilege today to make that presentation.

We chose this format to make that because we have more of our people here today than we've had together for a long time. We operate on no funds.

And so it is with a great deal of humility and thankfulness and pleasure that I would like to award to E. Cooper Brown the Human Rights and Justice Award of the National Committee for Radiation Victims.

(Applause.)

We love you Cooper. For many, many, may years, it's long overdue.

MR. BROWN: Thank you. I'm honored to have my own organization give me an award. And I'm also very embarrassed about all this. I got wind of this about a minute ago. Janet didn't see me but I was begging not to do anything that would embarrass me.

But anyway, thanks, gang.

(Applause.)

MS. GORDON: And since I'm going to be the first speaker on our panel, I'll just go right ahead then, and you can start timing me now.

I asked for that personal privilege without the timing and I appreciate, Colonel Bailey, that you gave us that little personal privilege.

I give greetings to everyone here. I say thank you for being here. And I say thank you to everybody who made it possible for us to be here. Many of the people who made it possible for us to be here, of course, are the people, the activists, the victims in this room, without whose hard work over decades this dialogue would not be happening.

I also am very thankful and happy and appreciative to the political process that has been able to be cracked open enough to make this possible.

So, I'm happy to be part of the dialogue and I would just like to say as a matter of course and as a matter of public record, the frustration, the anger, the vehemence with which you're sometimes address in this format recognize as pain. Pain that we have been living with for a very, very, very long time. Pain that has been ignored. Pain that has been laughed at. Pain that has been exacerbated by the process that we've been forced to go through.

So if we seem a little vitriolic, sometimes recognize it not as a personal attack but as pain of what we have been experiencing at the hands of our own government.

I would like to say that it is better now. This is an indication. The fact that we're here is an indication that it's better than it was in the past. But I would also like to tell you that it is vastly heartbreaking, vastly heartbreaking, to see an opportunity that then comes up with the kind of recommendations you got in the report that came out of the Advisory Committee.

Things like secrecy will continue. And even noting that it was probably justified. And that intentional releases can be secret. Not acceptable. Not acceptable at all. It almost hurts worse when we had some hope that the system could finally begin to be changed.

So, part of our anger and frustration is because it feels like we got done unto again.

My background is that I am the Chairperson of the National Committee for Radiation Victims, as I stated. I'm also the director of a downwind victim organization from the Nevada Nuclear Test Site.

I came before this committee a year and a half ago, before the Advisory Committee, a year and a half ago, and I begged that Committee -- I begged that Committee not to re-victimize victims. I told them of the history of what had happened. I talked to them. I was very candid in telling you about the kinds of processes we've been through.

And the epidemiological changes. The mainstream science changes. When we first started working on this issue, we were still fighting thresholds, for crying out loud. So putting in your recommendations that it's going to be based on the mainstream science is an insult.

The mainstream science is what caused the problem in the first place. We don't accept that. We cannot accept that. We have already been changing it and we will continue to change it. And we expect you to help us change it as an Interagency Working Group. Because it is not viable. It is not fair. It is not just. It is not reasonable. And it is not good science.

I would also say to you from my personal perspective when I came before the Advisory Committee and said you did experiments on us. This was not national security alone. This was not just even experiments of opportunity, was the term we used. Experiments of opportunity.

Okay. We were going to be doing the bomb testing anyway, so let's experiment on them while we were at it. But we have uncovered evidence that indeed deliberate experiments were set up, deliberate releases were done, specifically for experimentation.

We called that to the attention of the Committee and we were ignored. That was not addressed in the findings. It was not addressed in the recommendations. And those are not acceptable. It was done and if it's not recognized, if it is not addressed, it can be done again. They're getting ready to do more testing at the Nevada Test Site. We thought we had a test ban; right? Wrong. We're getting ready to do more testing.

And these experiments can be done to us again.

So I would say that in addition to the other things that we really highly resent and find unacceptable and beg as well as demand be addressed are that we are full-fledged citizens with full-fledged citizens rights and decisionmaking processes. That we do not have to justify something being done to remedy the problem by whether or not it was national security. That's not acceptable either. Or that it was mainstream science or that it would advance science.

That's not excuse for behaving unethically. Murdering people you're supposed to be making things better for doesn't really solve their problem, does it?

Downwinders, all the areas of downwinders, have been ignored, not just the downwinders from testing but at Hanford. And then they're suggesting a RECA type solution. RECA is not solution. It is not justice. It was a patchwork. And it does not provide justice for everybody that needed it.

The government did not have any trouble setting up a program to expose whole fast communities of people to radiation. The least they could do is provide some community health care, community clinics, community screening centers. The least they can do is acknowledge us and provide some medical benefits and assistance to our people.

It's nice to have this kind of a program. We love it. Those of us who have computers love it. Except I can't afford to get on the Internet, so I can't use it. And most of my people can't even afford to get any insurance. How are they expected to be able to use this kind of a system?

This is great and we need that, too, but we need basic medical care and assistance and that is what we are asking for. That's what we're demanding.

And we thank you, very much.

MR. BYRD: Thank you.

Okay. Next is --

MS. CAMPOS-INFANTINO: Please identify yourself by name.

MS. SOLLARS: My name is Darcelle Sollars. Originally a woman, Vina Collie was to be here today, but she was unable to attend. So I'm going to say a little bit on her behalf.

Vina Collie was a worker at Port Smith uranium enrichment plant in southern Ohio. She is President of PRESS, a member of the Taskforce. PRESS stands for Port Smith-Pikeston Residents for Environmental Safety and Security.

She couldn't be here today due to complications with pursuing workman's compensation.

DOE lawyers argued against her case on the basis of her participating on panels such as this today. If DOE is serious about openness, you must allow people to exercise their political rights.

Vina was going to speak about intentional exposure of workers and body snatching. This is most important because both the Committee report and IWG are silent concerning these issues.

Like I said, I'm Darcey Sollars. I fall into many categories. I'm downwinder. I'm a human experiment, a whistleblower, daughter of a Hanford worker, sister of an atomic veteran.

I was born and raised only a few miles from Hanford Nuclear Reservation. I've testified at three Advisory Committee meetings. In 1961-62 school year, I was in second grade in a public school in Richland, Washington. I was taken from my class and made to drink liquid that made me very ill. I was then sent through a body counter. I was studied and sent back through again in two weeks.

That day and that liquid that I drank that day made me very ill. Since then, I've had very many more illnesses and much too many surgeries. Two years ago I made that fact known and introduced myself to the Advisory Committee. They did not address this issue in their report, nor did they address the horrid harassment that followed.

From the very day I spoke out in public about this matter, I began to receive threats by phone, by mail, at work and at home. I was told to shut up and to leave town, and on many occasions, my live was threatened.

When that did not silence me, my family pets were poisoned and brutally mutilated. This is the attitude of the old culture in that area. My family and myself lived with this constant harassment for a year until I was so scared I left my home of 9-1/2 years and moved to New Mexico. I left my 18 year old daughter behind to finish high school.

I was running out of pets and I felt my family or myself would be next. This frightening issue also was not addressed in the Advisory report. I also brought up the issue of being a daughter of a Hanford worker. My father worked from 1944 to 1973 routinely as human experiments with and without consent or warning. These experiments are and were intentional; tracked, traced, followed on the Hanford site by their own medical doctors.

My father came home on many occasions scrubbed nearly raw from receiving too much radiation. Once my father was given orders to go pick up in a nearby town a truck and deliver it to a storage unit in Richland. Richland would not accept the truck, so he drove the truck back to Hanford. He was stopped at the gates and not allowed out of the truck, while people frantically scrambled around trying to figure out what to do and making phone calls.

He was informed he had to stay in the truck. Then he was passed a map on a stick with a clothespin through the window of the truck. They gave him instructions of where to take the truck. He drove the truck out into the desert and into the pit where he was instructed and to leave the keys in the vehicle and walk out of the pit.

Walking out he heard a lot of noise and turned around. There was a dozen bulldozers buying that truck.

He then was put in the back of another vehicle, a truck, and taken to his own vehicle which he came home in wearing the same clothes that he sat in that truck that day, that were put in our family laundry and laundered in our home.

I feel a great injustice by the Advisory Committee for overlooking and ignoring these issues. Much like that old culture I spoke of, when my father died, I watched tears fall from many a coal workers' eyes and now realize those tears were not only for him and not only caused by sadness or grief. I don't remember what year that truck was buried. I do remember the year we buried my father.

My voice must be heard. All our voices must be heard. Not only heard, but respected.

I feel my voice was not listened to and I was carefully appeased and apologized to. This is not good enough. I cannot leave it at that. Our group won't leave it at that because our group is too strong.

Thank you.

MR. BYRD: Fred Boyce from the Fernald Science Club.

MR. BOYCE: Hello, can you hear me? I didn't write too much down. Just some little points I wanted to make.

First of all, I wanted to -- what? My name and what?

MS. CAMPOS-INFANTINO: Talk into the mike.

MR. BOYCE: Oh, yes. Okay.

First of all, before I say anything, I would like to have Cooper Brown quickly come up here and have a couple of gifts for him and Wally Cummins for helping us with the Fernald -- he's done a lot of work.

(Pause.)

He'll be a little more embarrassed.

I just want to tell a little about the situation I was in and the kids were burned. I hope I don't get emotional. It's just really -- I never have been and usually I try not to, but first of all, I was at the Fernald State School. It was an institution for retarded children.

Now, there's a lot of things that we want to know. Among other things, why did they put so many of us in there, to begin with. I organized a bunch of the kids, had them over my house and they asked questions, so I'm just going to tell you what they want to know.

There was a lot of -- if anybody knows about institutions, during the '40s, there were overcrowding. You had like 36 kids to a ward, one employee, and you had like 105 in one building. And they had all kinds of strange rules.

Well, here was a lot of abuse, symptomatic abuse that kids went through, things like that. I don't want to try to get sentimental story here so I'll try to skip most of that. But the abuse was unbelievable. We have no idea.

They talk about the low dosages they gave at Fernald but yet I guess there's like I guess 2500 rems that are not accounted for, so I don't know what they're talking about in that thing. Testimonials from friends that were there that I know, like myself, were at the laboratory. They had their own laboratory on the grounds. They had their own food setup and things like that. And we're surmising they put a lot of us guys in there because of the labor factor. They had their own gardens. We did the shop work. We did everything.

By the way, it wasn't for a juvenile so I don't want you to get the impression it was a prison or a juvenile. I was 7-years old and in a foster home I left because the lady died. Four of us went right there to the Fernald. So I don't know where they came up with the classified us as being -- by the way, they classified us as being morons. It's on our records. Meaning simply this. If I went to get a job or something like this, what do you think I've been doing all may life. You think I filled out the application and told them I was in an institution?

So it prevented a lot of opportunities. Anyways, the autopsy books are missing at the Fernald School -- but they don't have the Fernald. They had their own autopsy rooms in the basement of the laboratory. So we're curious about where the autopsy books -- I think they should. Like Bob Dylon would say, there ought to be an investigation soon. It's kind of late but they ought to and go find out and go scrutinize those books and see. A lot of people got hurt in that place and it really, really was a bad place, so say the least.

And they did a lot of experiments. You know, they did group experiments with tranquilizers. They did sterile puncture on the Downs Syndrome patients. They were doing studies on chromosomes and stuff on the Downs Syndrome patients. And so there was a lot of stuff.

And like the Committee, you know, they didn't get this stuff. And not only that, me and a friend of mine, my friend Joey. I won't mention the last names. We kind of did our own over the hill investigation ourselves. But we got lucky. And the leading physician, Dr. Bender, had an auction at his house and we found out about it, so we got documents and everything we could out of there.

When Kennedy had a meeting there, a taskforce finding thing, I don't know what happened to that. We haven't heard anything about that. And I don't mean in any way to degrade Kennedy. I'm a backer of his because he's had experiences with retarded people and him and his family, Schrivers, did a lot for Fernald School and it ain't like that today. So don't go all rushing up there anybody, to see what's going on. It's a whole different ballgame today.

But I will say something. I need to tell you and this is very important. It's a little bit off the track but I think the environment for the radiation -- the environment set up a good environment for experiments. We were all there eating the same thing, Quaker Oats, great. They not only let them mix the calcium 45 into the oatmeal, they helped fund it. So they went really into it. And they were doing it in competition, we believe from other cereals and stuff. There's some documents on that.

But -- how much more time? A couple minute?

MS. MATHER: Two minutes.

MR. BOYCE: Oh, what I want to say is that you people, you've got to understand. These institutions in this country is just a disgrace for this country. And you wonder why we don't have faith in the people that are supposed to be looking after us.

If you watched Prime Time, January 10th, and you saw what they're doing to patients in this country. I mean, I talk about -- the Russians put in insane asylums in Siberia and that, and then they're right in this county. They had a Commission. They know what's going on. But it's a whole network. Why don't they stop it? Why don't they do something about these institutions? And it's prevalent. This ain't a think where it's a few bad eggs in there. You've got to get that tape on Prime Time if anybody didn't see it, and that will give you just a touch of what's going on.

I know it's a little bit -- talking about the institution is a little bit off the subject of radiation here, but the guys at the school that were there, they told me. They say tell those people. Tell them about the abuse. Tell them those things. Why don't they look this up? What's the power in this country? They let it go for years, for years. We were terrified.

I'm sorry. That's all I've got to say. I'm not trying to make a scene of sympathy or anything like that but they really need to get in these institutions. And I'm not talking about the mentally -- there's a different name. They mix up the mentally ill with the mentally retarded. The mentally retarded, Downs Syndrome patients, are the most loving people there is. They're not violent, the majority of them. So I'm not trying to mix that up. That's why I believe that they should get the little group homes like they're doing in Massachusetts. That way the community can look and kind of keep a watch on them.

Anyway, that's all.

(Applause.)

MS. MATHER: Thank you very much.

MR. BYRD: Thank you.

Now we're going to hear from Joseph Nardello, who is a survivor of medical radiation experiments.

MR. NARDELLO: It's going to be hard to testify after hearing Mr. Boyce's testimony.

My name is Joseph Nardello and I represent Survivors of Medical Radiation Experiments. Sherry Anderson is the Director. It's based in Cameron Park, California. Our group represents individuals who were exposed to various forms of radiation, to wit, to quote, "accepted medical treatments of the time."

My testimony today is directed to a then-controversial form of medical radiation therapy that has since been discredited by the medical profession as being injurious to the people who receive this form of medical therapy.

On January 30th, 1995 in testimony to the Presidential Advisory Committee meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I testified about our group's concern about our exclusion from the Executive Order mandating the Advisory Committee's investigation of radiation experiments.

To paraphrase the Executive Order, quote, "This category does not include common and routine clinical practices such as established diagnosis and treatment methods involving incidental exposure to ionizing radiation." Unquote.

The Chairman of the Advisory Committee tersely stated to me and the people in my group that the people who received the nasal radium irradiation treatments were not included in a group that is now recognized as basically a medical experiment, being nasal radium.

The Chairman of the Advisory Committee did not indicate to me what my options were as to addressing our concerns regarding our group's exclusion, thus summarily dismissing our request for inclusion in their investigation.

The Advisory Committee has since reviewed its mandate regarding our exclusion. I would like at this time to express my eternal gratitude and admiration to Mr. Stuart Farber. I believe he's here.

Stuart?

I hope he comes back. He's the wind in my sails. Mr. Farber is from the Radium Experiment Assessment Project. His extraordinary and eloquent testimony to various governmental agencies investigating the controversial nasal radium treatment procedure made us better understand the potential public health ramifications and I suspect -- and I'd like to emphasize this -- that his testimony was the main reason why the Advisory Committee changed their mandate and included us in the final report.

Since I do not possess the requisite academic and oratorical skills to put my point across, I would like at this time, if Mr. Farber and possibly Geoffrey Sea could restate their reasons why our group should be included. As it now stands, the final report does not recommend that we receive medical follow-up and I believe, if you study the contradictory statistical evidence presented in the report, I think you'll come to the conclusion that it's morally imperative that our group be included.

Mr. Farber?

MS. MATHER: You have three minutes.

MR. FARBER: I missed some of it -- I had lost the notebook, so I was just trying to find it.

Well, in terms of the experiments that were identified in the Advisory Committee report, the facts are self-evident. They looked clearly at two cohort or actually three cohorts. A group of submariners, 732 men that were clearly referenced in a scientific study that was stated by the Navy investigators when it was published as being an experiment, a carefully designed experiment. That was in a 1946 publication in a medical journal. That group was then reviewed in 1994 in a Navy memo that the Advisory Committee had in its possession that they gave to me in March of 1995.

It stated the initial use of radium was a human radiation experiment and should be followed. And Dr. Gladstein, as I said, was one of the members. Said it should be followed up.

There was a second group of 6,000 Army-Air Force personnel that, while it wasn't so clearly stated in the publication, the medical journal article about it being a radiation experiment, still, as noted by the Advisory Committee, was an experiment. They themselves said it had the elements of an experiment and that there were different exposure levels, different treatment protocols tried.

And in the final report, the authors from the various Armed Forces said that we've shown, after study of the various treatment modalities, this is a safe, effective treatment, per their limited follow-up of only a few weeks to months.

There's no doubt that it meets the definition of a human radiation experiment and the Advisory Committee included it as such. The only dispute is -- and then you had the child cohort that the Advisory Committee looked at in its report, about 1,000 children treated under NIH funding from Johns Hopkins -- at Johns Hopkins from 1948 to 1953.

The Advisory Committee, again, said this was an experiment. However, while the risk exceeds their threshold, the risk as they calculated it was 4.35 per 1,000. That's excess brain cancer deaths per 1,000 individuals treated over their lifetime. That was a bounding calculation and actually it was very nonconservative. There already is epidemiology on that cohort that suggests, per the National Academy of Sciences, that the risk to that population is about 9.5 per 1,000 or one in 100 of those children can be predicted as dying of brain cancer.

MS. MATHER: One more minute.

MR. FARBER: Okay. So therefore, every element of this cries out for yes, exceeding the threshold there's a risk. There should be notice. There should be follow-up. Why in the world should these people not have been given notice? And given that from 1948 to '53 research was being carried out to demonstrate, under NIH funding, that nasal radium was a safe, effective treatment, by that point medical doctors across this country had already treated between 400,000 and 1.5 million children.

You can make a very good argument, if you so chose, that those people, since it wasn't yet proven to be a safe, effective treatment, were also experimental subjects. That's a debatable point. It's moot. I mean, you can knock that one around. At least people deserve to know they're at risk and the public deserves to get accurate information about the possible health risks.

Thank you.

MR. BYRD: Gloria Nelson, Cincinnati Families Radiation Victims Organizations?

MS. NELSON: My name is Gloria Nelson. I'm Vice President of CFRVO. My grandmother, Amelia Jackson, went to Cincinnati Hospital in 1966 because she was having stomach pains. She had surgery in September '66. After the surgery, she was told she had one year to live.

She was irradiated with 100 rad of partial body irradiation on October 13th, 1966. March 25th, 1967, she died.

She was a perfect candidate for Cincinnati General Hospital and the government. In September '58, Dr. Sanger submitted an application for a contract to the Department of Defense proposing to research metabolic changes in humans following total body radiation. TBR, total body radiation didn't start at Cincinnati General Hospital until 1960, after Sanger received the Department of Defense funding.

You handed Dr. Sanger a gun which you then loaded and he killed patients at Cincinnati General Hospital.

You say your funding was for laboratory, psychological and psychiatric testing but you also had a stipulated contract where you reimbursed Dr. Sanger and his employees for the work done at Cincinnati General Hospital.

I'm upset because all of this was left out of the book. You look for patients to function well. Evelyn Hess, one of the consultants to the contract, in a Washington Post article in October 1971, she denied knowing that the Department of Defense had funded this program over at Cincinnati General Hospital, yet and still she was a consultant to the contract two years before in '69.

Contemporaneous reports stated that the TBR treatments may have contributed to the death of at least 8 and as many as 20 patients. The Advisory Committee then stated in the book that although it had reviewed some patient records it did not analyze the records of every patient which would be required to determine if the deaths could in fact be the result of the TBR.

I would like to know who is looking into this.

COL. BAILEY: Ma'am, you may be aware that there's current litigation involving the Cincinnati case.

MS. NELSON: I am aware. I'm one of the families involved.

COL. BAILEY: And so at this point, though, it's inappropriate to start specific details about the government's position.

MS. NELSON: At this point -- excuse me. But I have went before the Advisory Committee and grandmother's records were sent to the Advisory Committee. So how can you say you couldn't go through the patient's records to see what was happening. I sent my grandmother's records and I highlighted details in my grandmother's records where they had left out information. They had added information. She had someone else's information from another patient's chart in her record with that person's name scratched out and my grandmother's name put in.

This is some of the stuff that went on at the Cincinnati General Hospital.

COL. BAILEY: Ma'am, the point is well taken. What I'm saying, again, since we have ongoing litigation about specific cases involving about 70-some or more members who were participants in Cincinnati, it's inappropriate for us to talk about specifics about that particular litigation. That's totally inappropriate.

AUDIENCE PARTICIPANT: Excuse me. She's got the floor and I would appreciate if you'd let her continue to speak.

COL. BAILEY: I'm saying that we will not -- we should not talk about litigation. Cincinnati is a major litigation case that's ongoing currently and you all are aware of that.

Ma'am, if you know Colonel Bailey, I'll be the last person who would not want you to talk about Cincinnati. I'm aware of Cincinnati. But this is not just the appropriate forum to talk about it.

MS. NELSON: Okay. So I guess then that's why you really didn't mention everything that went on in Cincinnati in the book; right? Because of the litigation that's going on?

COL. BAILEY: Let me explain.

MS. NELSON: I mean, that's why you didn't mention the fact that Dr. Sanger had put a $5,000 in support of the whole body counter under the Charles Barrett Center and in this letter where he sent this check he said he wanted no publicity but he was the head of this project?

COL. BAILEY: Well, ma'am, let me explain what the DOD did because I was involved in part of the process.

We simply --

MS. NELSON: That's why I didn't --

COL. BAILEY: We simply provided to the Advisory Committee documents that we collected from Cincinnati and other repositories. Didn't make any judgments. Provided over 5,000 documents to the Advisory Committee. Based upon the Advisory Committee's review of those documents, they made the judgment, not DOD.

And so, again, because of the litigation, it's inappropriate that we talk about that specific issue.

MS. NELSON: I know it was a waste of my time to come here.

COL. BAILEY: I hope you don't feel that you wasted your time. We asked you to come because we wanted to hear your concerns. It would be very devastating to me as a solder who's been working this issue and know this issue. But the fact is that we have litigation and it's inappropriate that we talk about that, about the specifics.

And lawyer's know about the integrity of a case. We don't want to violate the integrity of that case, either side. So it's important that we be very careful what we say.

MS. NELSON: But you do have specifics in the book. When you have in there the names of the persons. When you put in that book the names of the persons, at least four Army Medical Corps and one Medical Corps officer reviewed the proposal, they recommended the contract application be approved.

MS. CAMPOS-INFANTINO: Just a moment. This is not the discussion period. Let's let the panelists finish up.

MR. BYRD: Doris, would you let us finish this panel and then I'll call on you first.

MS. NELSON: For this panel, I'm finished.

MR. BYRD: Let us finish that part.

Do you want to go ahead?