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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
|
Cesium-132 Research on Humans (Mid '60s) |
| FISHER: |
The high quality of scientist that you are, but I was
certainly there.
In this same time period, we see some publications on
the retention of cesium by humans after intravenous injections, and it's
interesting that the isotope cesium-132 was used, and secondly, that it was
administered intravenously. Can you remember some of the details of this
experiment? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Yes, [but] I'm not remembering very much at all, and I'm
surprised that I am [not,] because I was the honcho again on that one; I don't
know why. I've almost got a total mental block; I cannot even remember the
actual people who were involved or anything like that. I took a quick glance at
the report and it still doesn't trigger anything. I may have mentioned to you
that I thought the injections were done some place else. They were done at MIT
by the physician that I talked to you about who was licensed to do this— |
| FISHER: |
By the name of? |
| MALETSKOS: |
[Martin] Lubin.86 He's not on the paper, [but] I
think there is a footnote. Do you have a copy of the paper? |
| FISHER: |
I don't have a copy of the paper. |
| MALETSKOS: |
It was all done during this period, when I was developing
this [absorption study] according to Hoyle. What I can't remember are the steps
that we took. My thinking wasn't a step function [(a smooth progression)] from
that experiment to the next, to the absorption experiment. My [moral] conscience
was the same, as far as I know. So all the things I described [(all the
precautions I followed during the radium experiments)] should have gone through
that whole thing, but I don't remember a thing about it. |
| FISHER: |
I came across this by reading a report from Los Alamos and
where your worked is referenced. (reading from the report) It says here,
"Maletskos et al., report a two-exponential retention for five elderly
subjects given cesium-132 intravenously."87 |
| MALETSKOS: |
Yes, it probably came from the same place. I don't remember the routine of
what I just described to you; I'm drawing a blank and I'm sorry, right at the
moment. Keep in mind, you asked if it was intravenous instead of giving it
orally, for example. Again, you're going to do an experiment, you want to
extract as much information as you can; nobody had any information on the early
retention. That's why we gave it intravenously: so we could use it not only as a
calibrating device, but as a means of measuring fallout.88 In the
early phases because you never were getting anybody immediately, except in an
accident situation or from fallout. |
| FISHER: |
It also says that the BHL, which I assume was biological half-life, was 80
to 90 days. |
| MALETSKOS: |
Right, we could see that even in the short period of [measuring] that
short-lived radionuclide. |
| FISHER: |
When only about two-tenths to three-tenths of a microcurie was
administered. |
| MALETSKOS: |
That's low enough, isn't it? Again, remember, when you asked me the
philosophy of "How much do you give," [well,] you give the least you
could get away with, and do the experiment well. |
| FISHER: |
These subjects would have probably also come from the Age Center and they
would have volunteered? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I'm sure that's where they would have come from. This is why I'm saying
I'm drawing a blank. I'm sure we went through the same motions. Now whether we
documented it as well as I described, I don't know, I cannot remember, I'm
sorry. Matter of fact, I even missed starring it [(putting an asterisk by it)]
when you asked to see my bibliography. That's how much of a blank it was for me;
that's the first time I've gone through my bibliography in a half of century,
practically. |
| FISHER: |
It was interesting to read of that first cited in the literature, and then
secondly to come across it in your list of publications. |
| GOURLEY: |
I was looking through the materials and I guess we're up into the '60s
now. I notice that you were chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on intracomparison
of human, I guess it was cesium-137 body burdens for the AEC Division of Biology
and Medicine. |
| MALETSKOS: |
That's correct. |
| GOURLEY: |
How did that come about? How did you get to that position? |
| MALETSKOS: |
The AEC people were tracking to see what was in the body [with respect to]
cesium, and they were getting all kinds of numbers; some of them didn't jive. It
looked like it was a calibration problem. It turned out to be a calibration
problem; I've forgotten what the test was. I didn't do the test; Ernie Anderson89
at Los Alamos did the test. As a matter of fact, he was the chairman first, but
then he had to do something else, and got off sometime during the first year of
this committee.
And so, when the committee was put together by the
headquarters, and said "Look, we got to find out where we stand, because
we're getting all these data on cesium body burden, and how fallout is going
around the world, and everything else. We don't know that we're comparing apples
and oranges between the different measurements." The questions were, "What
is the problem, what do you do to correct it, and how to find out what the
situation was?"
We decided that what we would do, is that we
would literally—and it wasn't always clear that the people had correct
[calibration] sources or good sources that they were using [as] standards. We
determined what was going on by making a special set of radioactive sources that
were under the jurisdiction of one person, so that they would be done right and
correctly. They'd all be calibrated [and] each person involved in these
measurements would get a set of three sources that would give a range of
radioactivity, to see how well they could do with something that was close to
background, something that was [higher than the background radiation and thus]
easier to measure, and something that was intermediate. Then find out what was
going on.
Eventually, the real test would be, two people would come
around with cesium deliberately in them, and be tested by everybody. This is
what the committee [planned], and I became the chairman, I oversaw the
production [of these sources] up over here [by] what is called the New England
Nuclear Company. |
| FISHER: |
Let's go to that just a little bit more. |
| MALETSKOS: |
I wanted to mention that we ended up here because, it turned out that they
could make little beads containing not only radium, which is what I wanted—that's
how I found out about it—but beads of cesium-137. There would be little
baby BBs as a source, in a plastic rod, at a particular point in the rod. The
rods had to be manufactured well; the cap after sealing had to be sealable, so
that it could never pull apart after you sealed it. Even if the glue failed, and
that sort of thing, because otherwise you would have [radioactive] beads
[bouncing] all over the place.
This was done, these were sent around,
and it took a little bit longer than we had intended, because people knew this
was coming. They were working hard to get themselves up to snuff. So the
pressure was on them to see if they could do a good job; they were building up
to do a good job on their own. By the time we did the experiment, we found very
few that could not do it well (it was a two-year period), and it was only from
then on that you could say all the data were comparable. |
| FISHER: |
What you're saying is that there were some subjects, normal subjects, who
ingested solution containing cesium-137 beads? |
| MALETSKOS: |
No, I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying these beads were used to make
radioactive standards for calibrating, for measuring the device and calibrating
the device and determining, by their methods, how much radioactivity was in each
bead. |
| FISHER: |
Were they taken in vivo?90 |
| MALETSKOS: |
No, no: these were in a plastic rod! Each of these laboratories was
monitoring their own group of people because the AEC asked to follow this. We
had at the Radioactivity Center six or seven people that we monitored on a
monthly basis, and so did all the various laboratories. [The question was,] "Was
everybody was on a common baseline or not?" The answer was that we [were]
not. |
| FISHER: |
Cesium was from fallout? |
| MALETSKOS: |
This was the cesium-137 from fallout. And, so we went through this whole
routine. Then two people at Los Alamos, put a little extra cesium-137 above and
beyond what they had, so it would be a little bit higher [in radioactivity].
Then they went around to the laboratories to measure in actual human beings. I
don't [know] whether it was two of them or it ended up as one; I know one person
came around. That was the final test on the comparison, and then I put together
a report of what the status was and the committee members reviewed it and
submitted it to the Atomic Energy Commission. |
| GOURLEY: |
So there were one or two persons at Los Alamos? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Whatever they did down at Los Alamos, I don't know what the routine [was]
for getting the radioactivity. |
| FISHER: |
Do you remember who the subjects were that went around to the different
laboratories? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I remember one, Phil Dean,91 but I don't know anybody else. I
think that there were going to be two, but I think they ended up as one, but I
can't verify that right now. |
| FISHER: |
From Los Alamos? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Yes. He's no longer there; he left there and went some place else quite a
while ago. I don't know where he is right now, if he's still alive, he should be
my age. |
| FISHER: |
You published a paper in 1963 on cesium-137 measurements in normal human
control subjects. These would be people from the general population and the
cesium would be fallout cesium from normal ingestion of food and water. |
| MALETSKOS: |
That is correct. One or two people might have been from the laboratory at
MIT, and the other would have been people at MIT or something like that. |
| FISHER: |
This was also at the height of the nuclear testing era, prior to the Test
Ban [Treaty of 1963].92 |
| MALETSKOS: |
That's why the AEC was interested in this information, and wanted to have
it be on [a] good common basis. And why we were doing it. It was an extra
measurement, as far as we were concerned. We did it and we followed them and
watched it do whatever it did over the years. |
| FISHER: |
Was there any additional experimentation on human subjects where cesium
was administered either orally or by injection? |
| MALETSKOS: |
No, the cesium-132 experiment that we talked about was done to make sure
that we were calibrated correctly. We used cesium-132 because it's a short-lived
nuclide [(6.2 days, vs. 30 years for cesium-137)] of the cesium nuclides. |
| FISHER: |
Where was the cesium-132 made? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I don't remember; I know the paper describes where it was done. It was
done as a special radiation with some [bombarding] particle—it was done in
an accelerator of some sort. |
| FISHER: |
But you don't know where? |
| MALETSKOS: |
No, I'm sure it says it in there, but I don't know what it is now. It's a
radionuclide you come by easily. |
|
|
Radium Burden Examination of Radium Dial Painters
(Mid '50s to 1985) |
| FISHER: |
You were also involved, I think during this time, and maybe also before
and afterwards, in the measurement of radium burdens in body tissues of former
dial painters. |
| MALETSKOS: |
That's correct, and still have been, up to last measurement at MIT, which
was about 1985 or something like that. I mentioned earlier [that] I started
working by measuring people with radium out in an open room with a good
old-fashion Geiger-Müller counter. Then we ended up building the whole-body
counter with a huge sodium iodide crystal, which made life an awful easier.
We had a major set up for measuring their breath thoron [(radon-220)] and breath
radon [(222Rn)] because we made gamma ray measurements, and we made breath
measurements of both radon[-222], which comes from radon-226, and radon-220,
which was called thoron in the old days, which comes from the thorium series. We
always did that, so [that] we always knew what the ratio [of the exhaled to the
retained radon] was. We could average out a ratio that we could use [as] an
average ratio for those people we could only measure one way. However, [it]
turned out to be [that] a lot of people were measured only by breath radon using
flasks,93 for example. |
| FISHER: |
How was the work done in conjunction with the radiobiology center at
Argonne?94 The human radiobiology study? |
| MALETSKOS: |
This work was being done at MIT long before Argonne ever got involved. The
source of a lot of these subjects was New Jersey; that was where the bulk of the
radium work was being done. The people who had been treated medically [with
radium] were all over the country. Then there were people we called chemists and
physicists, who happened to work with radium; they were eligible candidates to
be in the [experiment] cohort [(sample)] because those people work with the open
vials or material, [which] would allow [potential] ingestion or inhalation.
[For] a physician who used a radium needle—for example, for therapy—[we]
wouldn't bother with that person; there would be no access to them [of] the
radium to the body.95
Argonne found some people that had
been working with radium in Illinois, and so they decided to get into those
measurements, [which] they did, and proceeded to follow their ideas and so
forth. This was good, because it became a competition of how to do the job well.
Eventually, we had to calibrate with each other, in terms of what we thought
were the right [measurements to use].
Then we actually sent the same
subjects to both places, so that we could see if we could get the same value for
the[se] subjects, using somewhat different techniques, and so forth. This went
on as two separate entities funded by the AEC, and as a matter of fact, there
was a[n additional] small group in New Jersey that acted more as a source of
finding new people, as opposed to making any measurements. The [people] came to
MIT for measurements because they were closer to us, and this parallel study
went on for quite a while. Then, when Robley Evans's time came to retire, he
wanted to be sure that this whole study would continue, with the hope that you
would catch every last person. You [wanted to] catch the last person, because it
was possible to do that before the end of the century.
He set up the
concept of the human research center at Argonne.96 Its main
function would be to study the radium cases, and anything else that involved
radioactivity in people. It would be something that would be directed by Argonne
[because] Argonne was going to be a continuing organization [and] it would have
a Congressional line item [for] its own budget. People couldn't interfere with
it, and therefore, all the information would go over to Argonne, and all the
data would be collected by them. We had started doing that anyway, because that
was going to be a good way to handle [the data] in the first place. That's how
the center started at Argonne. The work started at Argonne, and the Center came
to life. |
| FISHER: |
So Robley Evans had a big part in this. |
| MALETSKOS: |
It was his idea, he [(Evans)] went and talked the AEC into doing this; he
presented it to Congress, I believe, with the AEC, to make sure that everybody
understood what the purpose of this was.
Here was a very select group
of people of internal exposure to radiation that we had studied for quite a
number of decades already. We had learned an awful lot: the standard [for
internal radium] was set back in 1940 [by Evans], and there was no reason [to]
change [the] need [for] all this information. We were learning new things; now
we could do dose–response relationships, which we couldn't do before.
There was a chance to finish this in a decade with not too much of an
expenditure to complete it. It was a great idea, [and] it went on for a while
and then Congress decided they didn't want it in their line budget. [The] AEC or
DOE eventually decided they didn't want to support it anymore, even though there
was still less to do. I personally [am], and I'm sure Evans is, disappointed
that it's not coming to its proper completion.
The reason for that is,
when Robley Evans retired, we decided we wanted to do one last analysis, [but]
before we would do the analysis we would review every piece of information on
every subject, and see if we got it right. We would leave the data in as best
shape as we could by the people who were involved—that was Robley Evans;
Mary Margaret, his secretary and deputy director of the Radioactivity Center
(eventually); and I. We did, we took two years to go through all those pieces of
paper [and] we found errors, not only in our own reports, but in the reports of—presumably
the same data [in]—the Argonne reports, for different subjects. This was
peculiar; we found errors in different ways. |
| FISHER: |
Mary Margaret is Mary Margaret Evans.97 |
| MALETSKOS: |
Yes, right, Evans. We had our set of data that we had to reanalyze in a
new fashion. It shows a [safety] threshold of around 1,100 rads, which is big
when you show a straight-line relationship to the abscissa [(the x-axis)]. I've
given a talk on it [but] I haven't finished writing the paper, which I'm now
making first priority. |
| FISHER: |
1,100 rads dose to bone surfaces or bone volume— |
| MALETSKOS: |
—to average bone volume— |
| FISHER: |
—as a threshold for induction of late effects? |
| MALETSKOS: |
For sarcoma98 in the skeleton and for carcinoma99
in the sinuses. It's unusual that they both come out the same way. We can talk
about that later. We've done that [reanalysis], but the whole operation at
Argonne has now ceased, and the official data still are those [previous data of
Argonne] rather than Argonne correcting their half as well, to get them all on a
common new basis.
So I don't even know now how to handle the data; DOE
has left us in a very bad situation. I don't know what could be done about it,
because it took the three of us, with the help of two technicians, to do this on
a semi–full-time basis because we were making measurements of radium
subjects at the same time; this [reanalysis] was done on the side. It kept on
going, and it would take you a long time. You wouldn't want to do [it] all the
time, because it's nerve-racking to do. You have to go through every piece of
paper and make sure the information you need is there in this great big table to
make the dose calculations, and everything else, in some correct form.
A couple of years ago, we had a workshop at Argonne as to what the retention
function [should be]. What do we know now that we should modify the retention
function from the ICRP-20.100 We all agreed that lambda,101
which is [a] factor [in the] retention function, should be changed from 1.5
percent to 2.5 percent, as a function of radium content. You find that people
with a higher radium content excrete more rapidly than those who have a lower
radium content. The bone apparently is getting either some damage or whatever is
happening; in effect, you have greater osteopetrosis102 is what it
amounts to.
The [Argonne] dosimetry has been corrected, but our data
[are] based on the old dosimetry. [The MIT cohort has] the best set of
information on the data, but we have to convert our analyses to the new
dosimetry. Argonne has the new dosimetry, but they haven't reviewed their data
for the last time.
So what do we leave for posterity? I'm disturbed
with this. Evans and I hoped that everything would be done well. We rechecked in
the workshop what the dosimetry would be: we would make one new dose calculation
and [so would] Argonne separately[; anyway, each of us] wanted our own data
first. Then [the two sets] collectively, with everybody's data, would be
available to anybody else to analyze anyway they wanted. [Neither of us] can do
that now. I find that highly disturbing when we spent six decades on it already,
and a few more years would do the trick [ to finish up the scientific analysis
of the data]. I think that's really bad policy. The importance of it [(this
data) is that the problem of radium ingestion] is chronic, it's not only
internal, but it's chronic[, taken into the body a little at a time]. |
| FISHER: |
We were talking about why the data should be analyzed to completion. I
think we concluded that radium toxicity is still a concern, because we ingest,
some more than others, radium in our drinking supplies, on a chronic basis, and
some people drink more radium than others. |
| MALETSKOS: |
That's correct, it's one reason, but there [are] other, [even] more
important reasons. One of the most important ones is that this is a long-term
study of chronic irradiation over a long period time, because the radium stays
in you for so long. Even though it's constantly excreted, but slowly, and this
is the way you get exposed whether you are drinking the water like you just
described. Whether you're getting radiation on a continuing basis from natural
background or as a worker—if you're in a position to get any radiation at
all as a worker, everything is done on a chronic basis. It's not done [on] an
acute basis, except for an occasional accident or unusual situation. In the case
of nuclear medicine, you get a single jolt of radioactivity for the test
purpose, but you're not expecting any difficulty there, because presumably, the
amount that is being administered to you is low enough to do the experiment, but
not [high] enough to produce a health effect. Certainly it is not enough to
produce health effects that compare with the seriousness of the health effects
that are being checked for.
This is an important comparison. Something
like the chronic irradiation of radium studies are the only thing we have that
allows us to do a complete study of dose–response for people who have been
studied very well. This is from the standpoint of the health status, including
the x rays of their bones, and so forth, and from the standpoint of the fact
that you can measure what is in them. The dosimetry is not based on the guess
[of] what might have happened, like you do [for] the Atomic Bomb studies.103
There it's a calculated number and you hope you are in the right
ballpark, never mind coming close to the right value. You don't know that you're
going to be very high for one person, very low for another person, and hope that
these things will cancel out and maybe make things come out right. But you don't
know that [(the actual dose spread)], and you'll always be [suspicious of] that,
and you'll always be [suspicious of] what the real dose was.
Here we
have a situation where we may have a problem of deciding how to calculate the
actual dose, but we were awful close to the right value. We are closer to the
right value in these studies, where you can make the measurements of the content
of radium in these people externally without taking them apart. That is a
fundamental importance in the quality of the result. |
| GOURLEY: |
How did it come about, that—for some of the radium painters,
exhumations were done? |
| MALETSKOS: |
That's correct. |
| GOURLEY: |
How did that come about? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Once you start getting your cohort and [it's] getting big now, you're
maybe getting these people because they have a symptom, or you found them by
some specific method. The two methods are different, and therefore you can
prejudice your result. What you want to do is get as much of the cohort as you
can so that you can say, "I can treat everybody equally" without
saying, "These people are biased, and those people are biased in another
way."
The next step, you work at finding people who are not
alive, as well as those that are alive. Remember, the radium is in the
bones; bones take a long time to disintegrate, if they are going to disintegrate
at all. Measure those bones and know what that person has for a content of
radium, and then you have all the diagnosis prior to that, if you can get it;
you certainly have a death certificate and whatever else is available. You can
also relate what the final findings on that person [were] from the health status
to the amount of radioactivity found in that person. And that becomes a
perfectly good subject in your study.
There were disinterments, [but]
there's a lot of rigmarole finding people and getting the permission. There are
major problems with handling dead bodies that are deteriorating. Especially at a
place like MIT, where you don't even have a mortuary and [it was] rather
gruesome sometimes, I might say. |
| FISHER: |
But in handling these tissues [obtained from graves] you went through some
procedures to honor them, to pay due respect to the tissues, to watch over them,
and to interact with the families? |
| MALETSKOS: |
Absolutely, everything was done in as nice a way as you can imagine. I
mean that "nice" in all ways, and everything was returned after
analysis. |
| FISHER: |
For proper internment? |
| MALETSKOS: |
For proper internment, this was all done ahead of time. Matter-of-fact,
people could come in and look to see what we were going to do. I don't know if
anybody actually did, but it was meticulously well-done. There would be an
exception—for example, obviously you wanted to have a clean skeleton that
you measure, because you couldn't afford to have decomposing tissues. In a
laboratory where your doing the measurements, there would be occasions where you
want to get rid of that decaying tissue; the permission was obtained that we
would digest the skeleton in a caustic [solution, or] something like [that].
That material would have to be disposed-of correctly, but not go back to the
original place. |
| GOURLEY: |
What percentage of [survivors] gave permission [to exhume the bones of
their deceased family members]? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I don't remember. We've done I would guess we done on the order of a
hundred bodies, but that's guessing, right now. |
| FISHER: |
Were most of these radium dial painters? |
| MALETSKOS: |
I'm sure there were [also] some people who had been medically treated.
They would be harder to find, because they are scattered all over the place; so
I'm sure that the bulk of them, if not all of them, are dial painters. |
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