Radioactive Pills Blamed in 3 Child Deaths

Three children born to women who took radioactive pills during their pregnancies as part of a nutrition study likely died because of the research.

The study was conducted in 1948 on 751 women who sought care at a prenatal clinic at Vanderbilt University.

The women were given iron pills bombarded with radiation designed to trace their absorption of iron.

University officials said it wasn’t known if the women were informed about the radiation or any possible side effects. At the time, the long-term negative effects of radiation were not known.

The pills exposed the women and their fetuses to radiation 30 times higher than natural radiation, about the same as an X-ray. The doses were not considered unsafe at the time.

The research at Vanderbilt had been reported years ago in medical journals but received little publicity until the Department of Energy announced earlier this month that it was gathering documents on secret nuclear research done on civilians during the Cold War.

On Saturday, Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.) asked Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary for more details on the radiation experiments.

A follow-up study, published in 1969 in the American Journal of Epidemiology, showed higher fatality and malignancy rates for the children whose mothers were tested at Vanderbilt than for a control group.

The study showed that four of the radiation-dosed children had died of cancer, but one of the deaths was determined to be unrelated to the Vanderbilt research.

Vanderbilt officials said researchers kept documents of the study until they were destroyed in the 1970s.

Sasser asked O’Leary for an expanded report on the radiation experiments.

“If they did not give consent, I would like to know why the experiments were performed without the knowledge of the subjects,” he said. “I would also like to know whether DOE continued to monitor the health of these women and their children.”

The Department of Energy promised last week to find and declassify evidence of a dozen top-secret radiation experiments conducted over New Mexico, Tennessee and Utah from 1948 to 1952.