Episode 2: 500 Thousand-2 Million

This episode covers more details about a dangerous radium experiment on young children, a government study that declined to address it, and a present day estimate of how many people received the risky treatment. 

Transcript

spk_0:   0:00
the morning of August 29th 2018 started out just like any normal morning with a hot cup of coffee. But as I sat and sipped my coffee, I found myself thinking again and again about something called Nace Affair in Jewel. Radium irradiation, a treatment that my grandfather apparently remembered receiving that morning, with a bit of caffeine in my system and a powerful computer at my fingertips, I began digging. And what I found that day radically altered my understanding of what was happening to my grandfather as any young person who discovered that their grandfather was irradiated by a world renowned medical institution. Would I turned to my mother.

spk_1:   1:05
My name is Diane Drechsler. Um, my father was Ron Rose senior, and, um, Kelly Purtell. Here is my daughter. So I remember the day that is Dad and Lynn, um, shared this story with me. We were sitting out on their patio. Um, was during one of my visits down to North Carolina. Dad had completed his radiation treatment for the brain tumor, and, um, and basically what they were trying to do was just give him some more time to shrink the size of the tumor, Um, eliminates some of the swelling and that type of stuff so that he had kind of clearer thoughts or he was actually an in pretty good shape at this point. Um, so Lynn was telling me that the doctors had explained to her that this radiation treatment that he was receiving for the brain tumor was a lifetime dose, meaning that he could not have any other radiation ever again. Um, they had asked her if he had worked around radiation, and she said no, that he had never worked around radiation. But she said, I forgot to tell him about the radium rods, and I I had never heard this. I said, What what do you mean, the radium rods? And she said, Well, when he was a child, they put radium rods up his nose to help with his allergies. And I said, I've never heard this story before. And so I asked at about it, and he described having these rods put up his nose, laid back on a table and having them inserted into his nose. He didn't remember how many times that it happened, but he had very vivid memories of it happening to him As a kid, we had heard these stories about how he could never give relief. It's allergies were so bad and they, you know, they would tell us about him going to the movie theaters. And that's why I hate going to movies because he used to spend all this time in the movie theaters because it was the only place it was air conditioned. So we kind of went on about her day and next day I was texting with you and I was like, Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you

spk_0:   3:43
Here she is, referring to the Facebook message that I read out loud in the last episode, the Facebook message that sparked my obsession with researching NASA. Farron jewel, radium irradiation. So on the morning of August 29th I sat down and wrote my mom. Another message I wrote, uh, I'm reading more about Johns Hopkins and nasal radium therapy. It's still so mind blowing. I followed up with the following quote. According to Farber, brain cancer mortality excess risk among entire I treated Children in any given sized group would exceed total all site cancer mortality observed in an actual study oven. Identical number of survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The mean dose in rad, the unit used to measure radiation exposure off the Japanese victims was 27.2 rad to the whole body. The dose to Children exposed to enter I for 3 12 minute treatments ranged from 2000 rats to the nasal pharynx and declined with distance from the radiator. The thyroid gland of very young Children received up to 100 Rad and the pituitary gland received from 51 to 207. I also found a quote saying that Johns Hopkins had declined to notify subjects of the experiment because it was assumed that anyone who was at risk of terminal cancer from the 1948 experiment would have died prior to 1995. To this, my mom responded. OMG, send me that article. I sent her a link to the website that I had found it belonged to one Stuart Farber, the director of the Radium Experiment Assessment Project, which, according to the news release on the website, was a private, nonprofit public health initiative devoted to outreach and identification of an Arai treated individuals to public awareness of potential health risks to encouraging right to know initiatives to promoting proper medical surveillance and follow up for treated individuals. And for research and documentation of known facts about an R. I. Now I'm not knocking anyone's Web design skills, but I could tell just from the design and layout of the website that it was kind of a dated Web page. I wasn't sure if this organization was even around anymore, but this showed me that people had obviously been talking about this and researching this for a while, So I weren't we made aware of this. I asked my mom. So do we know for sure that he was treated at Hopkins? I need to know that before I deep dive into this and start trying to contact people, she said she would ask Lynne, but I kept searching. Anyways, I sent her the following message. There's someone who completed their thesis on the nasal radium therapy in 1997. It's called health effects. After childhood in a so inferential radium irradiation, they may still be alive and willing to point us in the direction of records or legal assistance, potentially apparently, when the thesis was first published, Hopkins allowed strict access to it, but now the thesis can be found online. I just called and left her a message at her office at Hopkins. My mom asked me what her name? Waas. I said, The sin share. Yeah, and I sent her the link Two years Faculty directory page on the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Epidemiology is website. I thought I would easily be able to find a copy of yes, dissertation using my university's library database. But upon a pretty thorough search, I couldn't find it. At this point. My mom started researching as well, so we decided to set up a shared Google drive where we could dump. All of the resource is that we were finding we added Lynn as well as my uncle, Ron Rose Jr Before I continue the story of what happened on August 29th I want to go through some of the most important details of some of the documents we have in our shared drive. Here's my mom.

spk_1:   8:36
In our research, we came across this picture of a boy laying down with a a man, presumably a doctor above him, um, preparing to insert one of these rods into his nose, and this picture is exactly what my dad described. Although none of us had seen this picture before. The picture was from a Saturday Evening Post article from 1948 August 14th of 1948 and the article was basically singing the praises off this treatment. Four Children who had had exhibited some signs of deafness or loss of tone. One, um, has a diagram and a photograph of the actual applicator Ayman El Metal Neza Fair NGO applicator and underneath the diagram it since 50 milligrams of radium element in a 21.5 millimeter by 2.3 millimeter by 0.3 millimeter capsule on a six inch handle. So it's a six inch metal rod with the radium at the tip of it.

spk_0:   10:10
A medical diagram of the applicator in use was used for the artwork for this podcast. Here's my mom again describing another important document that we uncovered that day, Um,

spk_1:   10:23
Acre a c H. R E advisory committee on human radiation experiments. So this is that of a report that was done by the United States Advisory Committee. One Human radiation experiments and it covers a lot of the yeah, basically human radiation experiments that have been done throughout history that were sponsored by the US government. Um, they mentioned the Baltimore Third Graders group

spk_0:   11:05
here. She means the 1948 study that we suspect my grandfather was maybe a part of

spk_1:   11:11
at the end. But they say that they did not include them in this study because that experiment with those third graders was not an experiment. They considered it as being a therapeutic treatment rather than an experimental in those third graders. So therefore they excluded it from the, you know, exposing it in this document.

spk_0:   11:36
Yeah, So the government declines to investigate this particular experiment because it was considered therapeutic, irradiating third grade Children was considered therapeutic. Here's an excerpt from the only document we found that goes into any detail about the 1948 study. It's called observations from a controlled study on the effectiveness of varying jewel irradiation in a group of school aged Children by William Hearty PhD and John Board, Lee M. D. Of Baltimore, Maryland, The first paragraph reads. In 1948 a five year joint research project was undertaken by the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, the Department of Auto Larry Oncology of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the Department of Health and the Department of Education of the City of Baltimore. It was supported by grants and aid from the U. S. Public Health Service. The object of the project was to carry out a controlled study in the Public Schools of Baltimore to determine one the efficacy of naso pharyngeal irradiation for the reduction of lymphoid tissue in the NATO. Ferencz too. The changes taking place in hearing acuity following nay Sofaer Angela Radiation three. The effects of purity on lymphoid growth and hearing acuity for the efficacy of modern diagnostic techniques on predicting hearing loss in a school age population. And five practical methods for carrying out a Conservation of hearing program, which could be adapted to a municipal school health program. So not only is Johns Hopkins complicity in pioneering this dangerous treatment, but so is the Department of Health in the Department of Education of the City of Baltimore, along with the U. S. Public Health Service. So what exactly are the after effects of the treatment? So now I'll turn to one of the most trusted sources of information about disease in the United States. The CDC. The CDC does have a Web page about NASA. Fair angel radium irradiation, it says. How do I know if I was exposed? An estimated 500,000 to 2 million individuals, mostly Children, were treated with dry. Do you recall lying down on a table, perhaps having your no sprayed, followed by your doctor? Removing a rod from a cylindrical container, inserting an up your nasal passage and leaving it in place for 5 to 15 minutes? Question mark. If you do not recall the above situation, but do remember having at an order hearing problems as a child, you may want to ask any family members or your childhood doctor if they recall you receiving a treatment. Since studies are inconclusive. But an R I. Macon for a modest increased risk, the best thing for people who are treated to do is notify their doctor. Your doctor may wish to conduct a thorough head and neck examination at your next check up. I just want to emphasize here for a minute that yeah, the CDC estimates that 500,000 to 2 million people. I received this treatment. But their website still says that current studies do not indicate substantial increases in risks for neo plastic or other disease among those who received treatments. So we don't covered all of this information and piece together. This Google drive of resource is, but we couldn't get a clear picture of what the actual effects of this treatment were. But I knew that there was 500,000 to 2 million people who weren't aware that maybe they were at risk for cancer. So on August 29th 2018 I continued my search and I began making phone calls. The name Stewart Farber had come up in a number of my searches, so I googled the name. The first thing that came up was his website for the Radium Experiment Assessment Project, and the second thing that came up was his LinkedIn profile. It turns out that he had retired from the public health sector to begin distributing medical equipment that is used to treat cancer. I found a phone number for that business, so I called a woman, answered the phone. I told her who I waas and said that I had found Stewart Barber's website on an R I. She immediately asked, Had I received the treatment? I said no, but my grandfather did, and that he now had brain cancer. I was hoping that Stewart Farber could offer my family some guidance as if this was a routine call. She asked me to leave my phone number and told me he would call me back. Later that afternoon, around 11 a.m. my phone rang, and it was Stuart Barber at the time where I was living. Her house had no cell phone service, so I actually had to walk out of the house with no shoes on into the heat of August to have this phone call with this stranger who's website I had found full of information about the treatment that possibly gave my grandfather brain cancer. After only 1/2 an hour on the phone with Farber, I message my mom and said, OMG, what have we stumbled into? Tune in to the next episode to hear some of the details of my conversation with Stewart Farber, the man who could help me expose Johns Hopkins theme music for this episode is Mama Said by Cat Clyde