Radioactive Oats, Anyone?

After my last blogpost, I found the question I pondered last time still lingering in my mind; how many other stories of exploitation are out there going without notice? In my journey to discover more under appreciated stories of those victimized by the medical field, I came across another intriguing excerpt in Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington. This time, the story involves a group, not just an individual, being manipulated. Also, uniquely, the group is being undermined by professors. In this case, those victimized were a group of young orphaned boys.

During the 1940s and 1950s, Quaker Oats Company teamed up with Fernald State School to conduct radioactive experiments on the young boys the school housed (Boissoneault, 2017). The professors conducting the research gave the boys radioactive laced oatmeal and milk, specifically radioactive iron and calcium (Boissoneault, 2017). The boys at Fernald State School were also directly injected with radioactive calcium, as these experiments were conducted to see how the body absorbs and processes calcium and iron (Boissoneault, 2017).  At the time these experiments were occurring, Quaker was being backhandedly targeted for its products possibly inhibiting iron absorption due to the high level of phytate in the oats. Therefore, the company invested in the researchers conducting the radioactive experiments to prove the media’s claims invalid (Boissoneault, 2017). Quaker Oats Company provided the oatmeal that was then laced in the experiments (Boissoneault, 2017). As stated in Medical Apartheid by Harriet A. Washington, not only were these boys orphans, they were primarily African American, as revealed by video footage of the school’s housing (Washington 233).

It shakes me to my core to process this story, and I once again am questioning the world with how this is even possible. This story in Medical Apartheid baffles me and makes me want to dive deeper to uncover the details. How could researchers take advantage of such young boys that are without any form of parental representation? Those in charge of the experiments derived data that showed calcium enters the bloodstream and then quickly advances to the bones. They later claimed these results provided the foundation for osteoporosis research (Boissoneault, 2017). I wonder, was the advancement in medical knowledge worth the violation and exploitation of children? My animosity of this experimentation fuels my inquiry of the medical field and those who provide the data for advancement within it. When further looking into those who ran these studies on the orphan boys, I discovered the unimaginable; a research article was released for publication on these experiments in 1955 (NCBI).  Not only were these young orphans used as test subjects as they ate their breakfast, they were made into a publication. It appears the link between medical advancement and exploitation of human beings finds strength in not only unvoiced adults, but children as well.

The text we are continually revisiting in this course, Medical Apartheid, has brought this story of the Quaker Oats Company and Fernald State School to my attention. This book consistently raises awareness to these low-profile cases of those who are neglected through the medical field. I hope to repeatedly bring these stories to my readers’ attention so that they too continue to dig deep into uncharted paths. If we do not uproot these problematic tendencies of the medical world, who will? The lack of information available to us, the public, regarding these unvoiced stories is shocking and truthfully unacceptable. With these blogposts I hope to uncover even more stories like the one I have just discussed and provide them the voice their victims never had.

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