Nation IN BRIEF : WASHINGTON, D.C. : Researcher Alleges She Was Poisoned

A pregnant researcher at the National Institutes of Health contends she was deliberately poisoned last summer with a radioactive isotope placed in food stored in a lunchroom refrigerator at her laboratory. Dr. Maryann Ma, a postdoctoral researcher in a cancer lab at the NIH, said at a news conference in Washington that she was “contaminated on purpose by someone at NIH” and that doctors at the federal health agency then failed to give her proper treatment for internal radiation poisoning. NIH spokesman Thomas Flavin acknowledged that there was a contamination on June 28 that was “apparently deliberate” by a radioactive isotope called P-32 and that Ma was one of 27 people affected at the NIH. He said the radioactive material was found in a kitchen and in a water cooler.