DOE Shield DOE Openness: Human Radiation Experiments: Roadmap to the Project
Oral Histories
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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

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.

Personal Anecdotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Career Highlights

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.

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