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143. When MIT & Quaker Oats Tested Radiation on Children · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hello, delicious friends, and welcome to Hooded What Now the
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: history podcast That's not your history class with me, your
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: host Katie Charlewood, History Harlotte and reader all Books. So
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I'm not long back in Ireland after being in like
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the US and Canada, and I had somebody say to
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: me today like, how like far away from you from Dublin,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: I'm like three and a half hours. So well three
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: and a half hours in a car. If I try
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: and get a bus it will take me longer. But
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: if anyone wants to give me a lift from Doneygill
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: to Dublin, not gonna say no, but yeah, that's it's
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: not too far, like I can get there. It's not
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: a huge imposition, you know what I mean. And so
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I'm working on a few bits and pieces and I
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: am excited to just get things going because like oops,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: I'm in Canada tour for next year. So if you
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: have suggestions for little places like I'll go up to
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Winnipeg because that's in Canada and I'll do it right.
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: I want to hit some border towns for the US
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: for people who want to like crossover. I want to
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: just like go from one side of Canada to the
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: other and like, I can basically do it in two
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: week blocks, so there's nothing to stop me taking two
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: weeks going over one part of Canada and then going
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: home for two weeks, and then flying back to Canada
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: and then doing another two weeks. You know, I can
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: do that. It's fine. So we're gonna see how that goes.
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I'm really excited to go, just like visit places. And
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: I know this is gonna sound silly, but I really
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: want to see I'd love it as all the time.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I want to see the world's largest ball of twine.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Right It's in my head, It's been in Nelson's childhood,
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: and I want to go see it. I want to
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: go see it. I want to go to Wisconsin Cheese Festival,
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: like I want to live my best life. Anyway. I
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Katy, quite your jibbil
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: jabba in fact me, In fact you I will. But
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: first we've got to get our source on. Our sources
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: are radiation experiments on children at the Fernyld and Rentham
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  Speaker 1: Schools by D West. A spoonful of sugar helps the
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  Speaker 1: radioactive oatmeal go down by Lorrain Boas and no sorry, Lorrain,
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: think I'll bugger up your name. Cold War Radiation Tests
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  Speaker 1: on Children Haunt Harvard by Andrew Wright. Acres of Skin
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  Speaker 1: by Alan Hornbloom. Congressional Record, Volume one, forty, issue forty five, Thursday,
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  Speaker 1: April twenty first, nineteen ninety four. Radiation Experimentation Victims Act
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  Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four. Radioactive Oatmeal for Fernyld Boys by
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: Roxana Sokan. And of course we have our old favorite
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: history dot com and biography dot com are use eating
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: comfortably good. And then let's begin. So I may have
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: a little bit got into some trouble with religious people
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: because I was talking about stuff people dead, yah yah YadA, Mormons,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: I think, and I mentioned Quakers in a sort of
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: off hand joke. And then it became very clear to
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: me that many people were unaware of the Radioactive Children study.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: And I thought, oh, I should talk about this sometime.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: But when I brought that up initially, it wasn't too
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: long after I spoke about the Willow Brooks School, which
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: is hard hitting, and so I thought, best not do
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: that right now. But it has been a wee while,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: so I thought, well, why not do it now? Because
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: as we know, history as a general rule is terrible
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: bad things have happened, and they are so often swept
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: under the rug. And you know me, I like to
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: just air the dirty laundry for all to see. Now
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: I realize I have mixed my metaphors there, but you're
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: just gonna have to learn to live with it. That
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: being said, this episode is going to be fairly heavy.
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  Speaker 1: So if you have any sensitivities towards children, children with
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: developmental difficulties, experimentation, medical trauma. If any of these trigger you,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: you may want to skip this episode, and I won't
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: blame you if you do. But if you want to
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: hear how bad it was, well buckle up because I
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: am going to tell you about the terrible things that
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  Speaker 1: happened at the Walter E. Fernel State School in Waltham, Massachusetts.
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  Speaker 1: And you may be thinking to yourself, well, just how
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  Speaker 1: terrible could it be? Well, the children attending this institution
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: were used as labrats in radiation experiments conducted and overseen
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  Speaker 1: by Quaker Oats. That's right, the breakfast food Quaker Oats MIT,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: and quite possibly the American government. And by American government,
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: I do mean the government of the United States of America.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: And how did an experiment like this come to pass? Well,
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: it's not a butterfly effect. It's a domino. It's a
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: domino effect. It's just one thing direct alading to another.
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  Speaker 1: Starting in the eighteen hundreds with the eugenics movement, of
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  Speaker 1: course eugenics is involved. Why are we even surprised? For
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: those of you who are not on the up and
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: up when it comes to eugenics, it's basically racism and
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: ableism sandwiched together in a medical format. It's basically trying
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: to give justification for these narrow minded ideas. Now, eugenics
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: is a controversial movement because it's absolute bollocks and it
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: may not originated with but it was definitely developed quite
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: a bit by a British man. Are we surprised, No,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: we are not, Sir Francis Galton in eighteen eighty three,
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: he was bumping his gums that there are a person's health,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: you know, whether how healthy they were, how physically capable
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: they were, how susceptible they were to disease and other conditions.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: And also oh that intellectual and social characteristics were hereditary, right,
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  Speaker 1: you inherited them from you know, the loins of your
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: fruit like it was passed down from mother to child
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: or father to child, it, et cetera. Granted, this is
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: a period of time where they thought that lazy sex
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: led to ugly children. So pinch assault so effectively like Darwinism,
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: it's like survival of the first but it's via like
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: selective breeding. It's basically genetic modification. What genetic modification, it's
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: selective breeding. It's wide. Dalmatians are very sick because they
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: are so interbred with one another that they have a
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: whole host of medical concerns. It's why pugs don't breathe properly,
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: like they're panting so hard because they're struggling to breathe
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: through their little squashed faces. So eugenics, they thought that
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: if you bred the right people with the right characteristics,
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: you could quote unquote improve the human race. Now, this
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: is actually what they did with the lebens Born program.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: So you know Nazi Germany and they're breeding the Aryan race. Yeah,
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: that all comes under this. So this viewpoint, this very bad,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: very wrong, very terrible viewpoint originated in the late eighteen hundreds,
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: but it didn't really start to become popularized until the
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds and It was in the nineteen twenties where
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  Speaker 1: the idea really took hold and men of sciences were
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: really taking hold of it, like they were really believing
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: in it, right, they were taking stock in this concept.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: And I mean you still get people today who were like,
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  Speaker 1: you need to breed people, right, they don't have the
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: right breeding, which is creepy and also wrong. Again see
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  Speaker 1: the Dalmatian and eugenics. It was popular all across the globe.
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  Speaker 1: You had eugenics conferences in the UK that Winston Churchill attended.
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  Speaker 1: You had them in Canada, which is where Elon Musk's
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: technocratic grandfather got into the frame. It was in the US,
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  Speaker 1: it was in Mexico, it was in Italy, like it
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: was everywhere. It was also in Germany clearly also, Yes,
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  Speaker 1: and a lot of these governments. What they thought was
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  Speaker 1: they could genetically modify humans, right, that's what they wanted
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  Speaker 1: to do. They genuinely thought that they could just breed
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  Speaker 1: out the bad stuff. They thought they could eliminate ailments, issues,
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  Speaker 1: mental illness. They thought they could just get people to
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  Speaker 1: shag the bad stuff away, because that's what it is, right,
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  Speaker 1: You're trying to create like designer humans, which people are
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  Speaker 1: actually doing now, like people are designing their babies, and
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: like I get it, to the point of, hey, our
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: family has this hereditary condition. How about we reduce the
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: risk of this hereditary condition, Like if you can stop
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: your kid having a rare form of cancer, fucking do it.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Like I get it. But it's a slippery se man,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: It's a slippery slope. And when it comes to certain
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: aspects of this, And the issue is with this kind
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: of mindset is that it treats disabled people as less
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: than which Here's the thing that I don't know some
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: people are just not grasping, is that at any point
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: in your life, you can become disabled. Like you can
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: have a disability at any point in your life. You
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: can have an accident, you can have a degenerative condition.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: There are so many factors that can lead to you
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: having a disability. You could get measles and become deaf. Right,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: these are things that can happen. Vaccinate your fucking kids,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: these are things that can happen. You know what, I'm
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: going to sidebarrow a wee second because it makes me angry.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: So vaccines do not cause autism. The reason people think
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: vaccines cause autism, So The reason that people think that
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: vaccines cause autism is because of some dumb bint who
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: was proven wrong. There was a study in nineteen ninety eight.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: They suggested a connection. But here's the thing. Correlation does
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: not equal causation. The thing is when you get the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: MMR vaccine, that age that is a developmental time where
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: you start to really see your child go on leaps
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: and bounds and reach certain milestones. Right, and if children
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: are not hading those milestones, if they're not acting like
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: other children, you notice. And so when their speech is
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: underdeveloped or they're not making eye contact or whatever is
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: going on. Right, that is where this comes from, because
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: it's a round about the same age where you really
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: start noticing this change, this like big developmental leap. Right.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: And so the study, the original study was retracted because
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: it was incorrect. And this just set people off, like
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: this is the start of the internet, really, and so
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: this is where things are just going like heywire and
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: all over the place. And here is the thing, right,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: even if even if vaccines did cause autism, right, and
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: I understand people are just looking for reasoning and justification
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: and answers when there isn't any. It's just you know
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: hereditary or you know they're just born this way, deal
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: with it. But like, even if even if vaccines did
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: cause autism, right, saying that you would not give your
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: child the MMR masos mumpsubella because you didn't want them
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: to become autistic is so fucking horrible because what you're
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: saying is you would rather have a dead child than
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: an artistic one. Which if that's the case, you should
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: not be a parent. Like, if you don't understand the risks,
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: you shouldn't do it. I'm sorry, don't do it, Like,
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: don't plan a family if you're not willing to care
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: for them. Like, it doesn't matter whether they're autistic, it
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't matter whether they're gay. And you're thinking, that's a
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: leap that I've just made, But a lot of people
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: disown their kids when they come out as LGBTQIA. Right,
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: here's the thing. You're a shitty parent if you disown
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: your child for any of that or don't want to
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: be a parent because of that. Okay, any discussion, Okay,
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna stop now, I'm gonna get back to the story.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: So, through an application of eugenics, governments thought they could
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: understand emotional, intellectual, and physical human traits, and so they
• 15:21
  Speaker 2: could get rid of physical disabilities, crime, physical illness, moral delinquency,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: and feeble mindedness. I'm sorry, but crime and moral delinquency. Yeah,
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: if only there was something you could do to prevent
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: those things happening, Like I don't know, have access to healthcare,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: m clean water, appropriate housing, mass, those hierarchy.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: Of needs bitches, even though you stole that off other people,
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: but whatever for the relevance of today this, if you
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: create a safe environment, you will have less crime, just
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: like if you ensure that people have access to food
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: and healthy meals like clean water, better nutrition, what do
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: you know, people are healthier and like your diet helps
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: you mentally a wee bit like it makes things less terrible.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: So they tell me, which the worst part is, Like
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: when you eat better and exercise and you do feel
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: a wee bit better and it's like, oh man, they
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: were right, I hate it, but yeah, what do you know?
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: One more thing before we go to a week commercial
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: break is that capitalism needs poverty to survive. Capitalism does
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: not exist without poverty, right, That's that's not me like
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: shooting off at the mouth here, that's just facts. Right,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: I have. I have a background in sociology as well
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: as history, Like that's basic, right. It's like Marxism, Like
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: Marxism doesn't exist on its own, Marxism exists within capitalism.
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: And I love explaining Marxism to people because like the
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: core value of it is right, the rich people shouldn't
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: be as rich and the poor people shouldn't be as poor,
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: like the gap between the two should be smaller. That's Marxism, right,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: and that exists within capitalism. Like that's how the whole
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: thing came about. AnyWho, let's take a add commercial break situation. Okay,
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: and we're back. Now this is going to shock some
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: of you, but eugenics was typically a white movement. As
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: Ena Sah said, it was a very white movement, and
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: obviously it was ablest and racist. It was of course xenophobic.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: Are we surprised and know we are not. And he
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: was also influenced via homophobia, colonialism, and anti semitism. I
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: know you're shocked given the information I have previously provided
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: to you. Basically, anybody not a white man was considered physically, mentally,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff inferior. Right. They thought he
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: is less than if he's not a white man. The
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: private Whoman was a white man allegedly. And like when
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: we discuss eugenics, like two countries, they pip it to
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: the post right there. They are the forerunners in this
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: which is Germany and the United States of America. Now
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: we all know, we should all know, if nothing else, like,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: I should not have to be like a history one
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: o one situation to be like Nazis are bad, Like
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: there was no like place in this world where that
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: is incorrect, say, you know, because objectively Nazis were bad people, Okay,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: And Nazi Germany its goal or one of its mangles,
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: was to cleanse the German people in order to create
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: the Aryan race, Arian race. I did a whole podcast, right,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: I did a whole series specifically on Germany. Right, And
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: yet I still mispronounce Ariyan Aryan. Right. I can't help myself.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like I always do it wrong. But yes,
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the plan was to eliminate, eradicate, destroy anyone who was
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: not a white German, and they planned to breed more
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: white Aryans via like things like the Lebon's Born program.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: And one of the ways that like they ensured like
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: proper breeding as well was through force sterilization to reduce
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: the risk of people that they saw as inferior from
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: pro creating. Anyone who had like get a physical disability,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: if they had mental health issues, if they had epilepsy,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: like anything like that. They were just like, no, no, no, no,
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: let's sterilize them. Tie the trips. And then of course
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: we have the us all they who was really struggling
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: by the time the Great Depression came around. And again
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: this is going to shock you. They used immigrants as scapegoats,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: as if the entire fucking country hasn't made up of
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the descendants of immigrants. Like no, So, yeah, you have
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: this whole movement, and this is this whole thing about
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: bad blood. Now bad blood if you remember from the
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Tuskegee syphilis episode, it's used as this catch all for
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: like a bunch of things. And like there was this
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: whole thing of like, we don't want the bad blood
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: mixing with our good American blood. Oh no, y'all. And
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: so it was just another way for the eugenics movement
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: to grow. But like the Eugenics Record Office was founded
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ten, which then began to propose laws that
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: authorized the sterilization of social inadequate individuals, people who were
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: unable to work, and people who relied on benefits or
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: subsidies from the government, because according to the Eugenics Record Office,
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: they believed that people who were not employed did not
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: deserve to procreate. Okay, okay, no, that's bad, objectively bad.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: And again to clarify, this was a genuine proposal because oh,
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: if they're not procreating, then they won't have any extra
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: drains on the government or society, and like, oh, it
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: becomes policy. Yeah. Yeah. People liked this idea so much
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: that thirty separate states adopted eugenics sterilization laws, and this
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: led to the sterilization of about officially, officially sixty thousand people.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: And again, when there's an official number with stuff like this,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: that's usually a bigger number that we just don't have
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: access to because of the record keeping of the time
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: or because people were hiding their shit. Now, by the
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: time the Nazis are doing their thing, other people are thinking, hey,
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: eugenics is a bad idea. Then, of course, when you've
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: got the new yperg trials happening in the nineteen forties,
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: eugenics becomes scientifically discredited, right, so in the USA, they're like,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: eugenics is bad. Now, this is terrible science, and it
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: is bad because you know, you don't want to agree
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: with the Nazis on anything, right, You just don't. No,
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: you don't. And also, they slowly but truly became aware
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: that you can't just shag disabilities away, like you can't
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: do it. You can't just breed disabilities out of the
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: gene pool. In fact, you're more likely to breed them
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: into it. We've all seen the Habsburg Chin, Okay, we know.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: So after they realized that, you know, this isn't actually
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: a thing, some of the ideas behind eugenics continued for
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: a while because people really hold on to beliefs strongly,
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: regardless of how many times they are informed and provided
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: the factual information regarding those misinformed beliefs. That being said,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the sterilization laws would continue for quite a while. That's
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: probably because it was the nineteen seventies before people were
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: really really aware of how deep these laws went, like
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: how far they went, and in ninety I think it
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: was nineteen seventy three that the US Department of Health, Education,
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and Welfare had to finally come out and propose guidelines
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: encouraging the thirty States to repeal the sterilization laws. So yeah,
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: eugenics was all about breeding in certain traits and reading
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: out others, one of which was quote feeble mindedness, which
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: covers a whole variety of intellectual disabilities, intellectual impairments, and
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: issues with intellectual ability. Like there was a whole host
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: of things. And it's a horrible term, but yeah, it
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: was everywhere for quite a lot of the twentieth century. Actually,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: like it was seen as like the term like the
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: R word. It's just it was seen as a medical term,
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: like they had it in like patient charts and in
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: medical textbooks. But yes, this was a collective term that
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: was used all the time in many manners. And so
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: people who fell under this umbrella, they were removed from
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: society because like for a lot of them, it was like, well,
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: if you're not like doing your bet, if you're not
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: like contributing, if you're not being productive, you are just
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: like you're no use, like what we're going to do
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: with you. And some people would just be left or not,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: you know, I mean that people would be left to
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: die just a lack of empathy and understanding. But the
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: religious crowd they're like, we have to help our fellow man.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Which brings me to eighteen forty eight when Samuel Gridley
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: ho He establishes the Massachusetts School for the Feeble Minded
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: in South Boston. And this school was very like a
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: lot of schools were at the time sort of guided
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: by religion, and so they felt that they had a
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: moral and religious duty to help high functioning disabled children,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: you know, become productive members of society through practical education.
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: What's interesting, naturally, is we had schools like that like
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: for a long time over this side of the pond.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: And if it if you didn't do well in like
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: traditional schooling, you would be put to a trade school
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: where you would learn a practical trade. Like it was
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: a very normal thing. It was like, oh, you're shit
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: at math, fine, build this table, like it was a
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: very very normal thing. But this this doesn't feel quite
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: like that. So in this particular school, the classes included
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: brim making, weaving, knitting, shoe repair, rug making, dancing, and athletics.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: And I was doing well for a couple of decades,
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: after which it was under pressure because it was its
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: whole like core goal was, you know, these high functioning children,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: like we're going to sort them out, and then they
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: were expected to take in adults with disabilities who needed
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: like twenty four hour care, which they did, but they
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: needed more space to do this. In order to take
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: in more pupils, they needed more space, and so they
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: started construction on school buildings and wall them over like
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: eighteen acres of land and so well that's what they
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: started with. And then over the years, like they managed
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: to acquire like more and more acres and so eventually,
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: like out of all the lands they had hu woad
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: trucks of land, they had over one hundred and eighty acres.
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: And as the school grew, it accepted more and more students.
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: I say students. Again, this is like Willowbrook residents. It
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: accepted residents because it wasn't like start school in the morning,
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: leave in the afternoon, like this was effectively a home
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: and a busy one at that. So they had in
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty nine one hundred and forty two residents and
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: by the nineteen sixties they had two thousand, six hundred
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: and Over the years, the school had different superintendents, one
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: of which being doctor Walter E. Fernald. He was the
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: third superintendent of the school and he was there from
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight, a year we all know very well,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: to nineteen twenty four. And this guy, oh, my fucking god,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: this guy. He was a doctor who specialized in working
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: with people with intellectual disabilities. And this guy, this fucking guy,
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: he was just like super into institutionalizing people.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: Like oh, like he he felt like certain treatment was humane,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: but what he thinks is humane and what we.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: Would think gives humane are very different things. Like he
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: wrote several papers right about the burden of the feeble
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: minded on the rest of society. And like he was
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: a massive supporter of eugenics, Like he was super into eugenics.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: He believed that these people deserve to be sterilized, and
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: he really really supported involuntary sterilization, Like he helped pass
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: eugenic laws in the States, Like he was an advocate
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: for that. And with him and the Helm, the school
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: sort of moved away from like it's like moral.
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: Compass and eight sort of religious viewpoint and instead of
• 32:11
  Speaker 4: wanting to like just care and help for these people,
• 32:15
  Speaker 4: the whole thing now was scientific.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: And I say that with the question mark at the end,
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: because instead of you know, the appropriate care the adults
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: and the children who were in the school, the residents
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: became like a eugenics experiment, like he enforced a very
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: very strict segregation of intellectually disabled people to keep them
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: in institutions and far away from the rest of society,
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: which led to these becoming like these schools, these institutions
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: basic way become a dumping ground for all of these people,
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: many of them again were children. Because remember the whole
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: purpose of this place was to give people life skills,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: to give them abilities and options in life, so they
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: could make rugs or net or make brooms or whatever
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: the fuck right, And this guy just wants to tear
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: these people out of society. And then and then the
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: government got involved, and it went from being again this
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: stepping stone to somewhat, you know, decent life, to becoming
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: no more than a fucking present for these people. And
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: it gets worse, because of course it gets worse. So
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: the state, the government, it just starts in kids in,
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: putting them in there, like kids from disadvantaged homes, from
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: broken homes, like children who were from poverty, or were orphans,
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: or were in the foster care system. They were just
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: pulled out of their lives and sent to they now
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: renamed Walter E for an old school for the feeble minded. Like,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: if your state didn't know where to put you, it
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: was putting you in there. And the way they saw
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: it was if you had a lower than average IQ,
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: you were being chucked in one of these institutions. But like,
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: it doesn't take into consideration that these children who were
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: like orphaned or in the foster system, or grew up
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: in abject fucking poverty may not have access to the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: same level of education as other people. Some of them
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: might be illiterate. It doesn't make them any less smart
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: than another person. But all of these children, they were
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: seen as a burton on society. And like these kids,
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: like they were labeled morons, like that was the thing.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: And the kicker is like they knew these kids weren't
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: supposed to be in there, like the state knew. They
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: just didn't have anywhere else to put them. They're like,
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: this'll do, blads, this will do. And see these kids,
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: the ones that they brought in from all over the shop, right,
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: they served another purpose, which was funding the fucking school. Right,
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: So one of the things they did was they had
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: the children who did not have disabilities funded the place
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: through child labor, so they would like make things like
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: they were making the broom handles, they were working in
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: the fields to grow vegetables. Right, they even made stationary
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: and like pocket notebooks, like they had a full child
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: labor force in there. So there was a like so
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: there was a superintendent after Fernald, which just villain named
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: pure villain name doctor Ransom Green, right, and he said that,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: you know, as the school grew, he needed more funding
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: and again this is through like more child labor, and
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: so he said, and I shit, you not this villain.
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: He said that he needed a mix of thirty percent
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: morons to keep the school operating, to like grow vegetables,
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: work in the fields, make rooms, make pocket notebooks, traffic tickets,
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: and stationary for the police department. So like everyone knows
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: what's happening. The police are aware of what's happening in
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: the situation, but they're doing fuck all. So like what
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: was it on average per month? These kids made one
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty rooms, three hundred and fifty tibls and
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: wait for it, twenty five thousand paces of stationery given
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: to government agencies. Like it's a labor camp. Like what
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: so this brings me to Fred Boyce. In nineteen forty nine,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: he was eight years old and his foster mother died
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: and he was left to the care of the state
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: of Massachusetts. Now, instead of finding somewhere for him to go,
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: you know, and spending some money, they decided it was
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: best to throw him into the Fahrenhould School. But of
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: course they had to give him an IQ test. And
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: this young boy, this eight year old boy, he never
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: held a pencil or a crayon or anything like that.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: He had been like moved from pillar to post, from
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: foster home to foster home all his life. And they're like, oh,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: he has a less than average IQ. What the child
• 38:39
  Speaker 1: with no formal education who has never been given a
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: chance to learn properly. Less than average you say, by
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: the standardized test? Wow, yeah, because he stacked against But like,
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: also he's only like slightly below average. And this is
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: a kid who has again had no formal education, so
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: like you should be impressed by this dude. But anyway,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: he is sent into the fair no Old School, where
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: he stays for eleven years, and when he's finally released
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: at nineteen years old, like it's it's amazing that he
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: went on as far as he did, like he consistently
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: like out of them, he publicly spoke about the conditions there,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: and he was talking about how like in like one
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: room there were thirty six kids, like with the beds
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: all smushed together like oh jammed in this is giving
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: Willowbrook vibes. The children who were not physically disabled, they
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: would be working right, and they would work all the time,
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: which is bad. However, the disabled children who were like
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: physically or intellectually trigger warning, they were treated as if
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: they weren't human. They were told they were never supposed
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: to be born, that they were less than that, they
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: didn't deserve to exist. They were informed that this was
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: their life. There was no chance of them being able
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: to leave, there was no chance of them having anything
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: more than this. And while they were there in this institution,
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: they were subjected to emotional, mental, physical, and sexual abuse.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't just Fred Joe Almida. He was just
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: left in the Hallway school by his father when he
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: was eight. So Joe would talk about how they were
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: put in this schoolroom, a room that was called schoolroom,
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: but they never actually taught them anything, and the rest
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: of their time again grueling manual labor. Like they didn't
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: even teach the kids how to read. They just thought,
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: what's the point in Joe's job? Is fucking horrible again?
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: Trigger warning skipped forward fifteen seconds twenty seconds. So there
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: was an adult ward at the school in the institution,
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: and because of the treatment they're in, people would die there,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: disabled adults and children. And Joe had a job that
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: I think only existed to cause him trauma. So because
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: people passed away in the institution, their bodies would belong
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: to the fern Old School like they would own them.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: And Joe his job was to slice the brains into
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: thin slices so that they could be studied by the
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: scientists under the microscope. And CBS returned to the school
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: like decades after he left, and he returned with them,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: only to discover that those brain slices were left there, untouched, unused, unstudied.
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: And so they made a young a boy, a young
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: man suffer through this for what? For what? And it's
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: no surprise children tried to escape, They tried, fear would succeed.
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: Fred even tried at one point, but he got caught
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and he was thrown into ward twenty two, which was
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: the school's prison. I feel like I shouldn't have to
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: explain this to people, but a school should not have
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: a prison. And when you were in there, it was
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: solitary confinement. Children were put into solitary confinement with a
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: cell with nothing but a mattress in it, and they
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: were put in their naked Like how vulnerable do you
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: want these children to be? Like why do you think?
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, I know why they thought, because they're shitty
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: people who thought they were superior and believed that all
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: of these children were less than and that they could
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: abuse them any fucking way they wanted. But like he
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: was released at the age of nineteen, was it in
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, and so like Fairy years later, So
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties, he was listening to the radio where
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: he heard that experiments were happening on children at Fernauld
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: and some people thought it was a conspiracy, and I'm
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: here to tell you that it absolutely was not a conspiracy.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: So from about nineteen forty nine there was this science club,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: a special science club that children could join. Children who
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: were seen as less than, who were treated as quote morons,
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: and so a bunch of boys they joined this science club.
• 44:52
  Speaker 1: And when they joined. It turns out they were being
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: used as guinea pigs. So the boys who believed that
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: they were part of the science club were fed radioactive
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: milk by MIT researchers in conjunction with the breakfast brand
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: Quaker Oats. So like, by the late nineteen forties, there
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: were cereal brands who were just fighting to be like
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: top dog. Right, you had cream of Wheat and Quaker Oats,
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: And at this point people were like, oh, no, we
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: don't trust cereals because of the high levels of fight
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: eight and so, which basically prevents absorption of like calcium
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: and iron in the body. And so cereal brands they
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: are just working really hard to get you know, the
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: public to you know, start like buying the product consuming
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: the product, and so they are struggling. Enter miit the
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and they were like, ha, how
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: does the human body absorb minerals and vinomens? And Quaker
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: Oats is like, hey, buddy, you want to collaborate. So
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: Quaker Oats they head first like wanted to get involved
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: to fund this study, and MIT like they managed to
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: get grants from the Atomic Energy Commission and the National
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: Institute of Health and so they started planning their experiment.
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Their plan was to recruit forty children from the Fernhld
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: State School and feed them cereal with radioactive tracers to
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: trace the meals movement throughout the body. Now, I know
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: I said the word recruit, but recruit implies informed. They
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: just started experimenting on children without their consent, children including
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Fred Boyce. Fred was told that he had been chosen
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: to become part of a special science club. They were
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: going to be able to eat away from the other boys.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: They were going to get extra food, and they were
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: going to get tickets to see the Boston Red Sox.
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: And they're just like food, I'm going to assume baseball, yay,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: And so they're like, absolutely, let's do this. So they're
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: just like, hey, come do this with us. All you're
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: gonna do is eat some oats like porridge. And it's
• 48:08
  Speaker 1: a bad day when Goldilocks has better intentions than you,
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: and she broke into someone's house, ate their food, broke
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: their chair, and slept in their beds right right, So
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: you're thinking, how did this experiment in the nineteen forties
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: get consent? Well, they sent out letters to parents to
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: get consent for this experiment, you know, I mean the
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: kids in Fernald, most of them had been abandoned for
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: lack of a better word. And then you've got people
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: like Fred who's an orphan, and Fred he remembers signing
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: his own permission slip right on behalf of his parents
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: and like he didn't know what he was signing. And
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: the letters that they sent out to the families, to
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: the parents, they didn't really mention a lot of what
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: they were actually doing. They didn't mention, you know, the
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: potential dangers or you know, of radiation. Like here's a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: bit of the permission slip Miit and this institution are
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: very much interested in various aspects of nutrition, particularly how
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: the body absorbs very cereal ions and vitamins. We are
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: considering selection of a group of our brighter patients, including
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: child's name, to receive a special diet in the above
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: mentioned substances for a period of time. These studies will
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: cause no discomfort or change in the patient other than
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: a possible improvement. Okay, so that's that and doesn't really
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: tell much. So over the course of many weeks, these kids,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: all late between the age of seven in seventeen, all
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: eight like quite a large amount of Quaker oat cereal
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: coated with the radioactive chemicals so that the researchers could
• 50:14
  Speaker 1: trace it in the body. The children, again aged between
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: seven and seventeen, would then be made to go to
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: the toilets to defecate in a bucket to show the
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: iron absorption rate and whether it was greater than that
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: of the rival company, which it was, and so Quaker
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Oats were very happy with this inflammation. And so they
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: did this, and then a couple months later they did
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: another test to look at the calcium intake instead of iron.
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: Twenty six children received breakfast cereal with milk including radioactive
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: tracer and so they're like, wow, oatmeal and milk is
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: a good level of calcium. Yay. And then they start
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: another experiment just to see what happens to calcium and
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: the bloodstream. And so nine children, nine children aged between
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: seven and seventeen, were injected with syringes of radioactive calcium
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: and so this led to like a bunch of information
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: regarding osteoporosis. However, each of these children was exposed to
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: between one hundred and seventy and three hundred and thirty
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: mili realms of radiation, which is like having thirty chest
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: X rays consecutively, one after another in a row. And
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: like they didn't know this at the time, but when
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: a kid is exposed to like that kind of dose
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: of radiation, they have a one in two thousand chance
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: of contracting cancer, which is just like a little bit
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: higher than the average. But still, let's not so here's
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: the thing. The radioactive traces used in the experiment were
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: relatively safe, as radioactive stuff goes, you know. But it's
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: not that itself. That's the bad part of this, Like,
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: it's not the radioactive tracers specifically, it is the fact
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: that this was not informed correctly. It's the ethics of
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: the situation. Like these were children who they deemed to
• 53:17
  Speaker 1: be quote feeble minded in one way or the other,
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: and they thought it was appropriate to experiment on these
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: children because if your child anyway, you can't consent to shit,
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: because you're a fucking child. In two, the information passed
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: on to parents was not correct, and so an informed
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: decision could not be made, ergo not consent, and mid
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: specifically chose the children at Fernald because they were seen
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: as less than because they weren't really getting need permission. Again,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: they got some kids to send their own from slips,
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: many of whom did it out of fear because if
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: they didn't do as they were told, are they gonna
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: get punished? They don't know, and they have an option
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: to know. They're not going to starve, to know what
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: they're going to have, like a better time than what
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: they're having. And like these kids again they're seen as
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: less and how it's going to be easier to get
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: permission because their parents are like, Wow, they're gonna get
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: like extra nutrition and be looked after better. Wow, that's great.
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: Like again, not enough information, not informed consent, Like these
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: kids were incapable of refusing the request if they said no,
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: if they didn't quote volunteer, they were going to be punished.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: They were going to so and you already know what
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: they do, and they were told everything was going to
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: be better for them, so of course they jumped at
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: the bloody chance. And so once the science club was disbanded,
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: these kids went on none the wiser, not knowing that
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: they had been involved in this. And it wasn't until
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: like nineteen ninety four, so like early ninety three, President
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: Clinton ordered federal agencies to release like a huge chunk
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: of classified information which uncovered a fuck ton of shady
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: dealings and reporters. This was a great time to be
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: a reporter because everything was out there. I mean, you
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: were going to be elbow deep in information for weeks.
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: And it was here that they found the radiation experiments
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: were performed all over the cun Tree, not just at Fernauld.
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: And you will never guess who was targeted. Intellectually disabled children,
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: low income women, African American people. Basically they went looking
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: for disadvantage groups in order to experiment on them. And
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: so a journalist published about this, including what happened in Fernald.
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: And it was after this a task force was established,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: the Task Force on Human Subject Research, and it was
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: created by Philip Campbell, who was the Commissioner of the
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: Department of Mental Retardation in Massachusetts. I know it's a
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: terrible name, but it is what it is. And so
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: it was this task force that was created to investigate
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: all of the human studies that had been conducted in
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: any of the state administered facilities, so any state administered
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: facilities in Massachusetts, if there was any kind of human
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: experimentation going on or had gone on they had to
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: look it up, they had to find it, and they
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: had to expose it, and they discovered pretty sharpish that
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: the federal agencies funding the experiments never notified the public
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: of what had been going on at any point, either
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: voluntarily or because of any legal necessity, and the victims
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: themselves had no fucking clue. And it was here again
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: that Fred Boyce, now in his sixties, heard the presenter
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: talking about the science club at fernald In what had
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: happened to him and he had no clue, not at
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: the time, And now it was on the radio, it
• 58:08
  Speaker 1: was making headlines in national newspapers, and by the end
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four there were tens of thousands of
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: archival records all about the finalde experiments, and Quaker Roads
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: wasn't the only one to haveen There were four experiments
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: conducted from nineteen twenty five all the way through to
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one with them and another local state school
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: called renthom So. There were investigations of thyroid function using
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: iodine one three one, which if you don't know, I mean,
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: if you're a science person right now you're freaking out,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: is this was one of the most dangerous products of uranium.
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: This was conducted for cold war purposes rather than anything medical,
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: which makes this so much worse. In this experiment measured
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: whether normal iiding added to the diet could block the
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: uptake of radioactive iodine, and it included seventy children from
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: the ages of one, you fucking heard me, one to
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: eleven years old. And here it go, then, mamaawas said,
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: it gets worse. It does because these experiments at the time,
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: they had technically done everything they were supposed to do.
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: They got the right premissions, they asked the right people,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: They did everything properly, everything was above board. Well, the
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 1: task force said, fuck, this were a game of soldiers,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: and they all agreed that ethics, all of the ethical
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: standards had been breached in these experiments and that it
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: was a human rights violation for these children. They expected
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: an official apology to be made, which didn't quite happen
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: the way they wanted it to, and the task force
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: had to like try and figure out, like what was
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: the intention of the research, Like had they truly believed
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: that they were doing like the right thing. Did they
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: believe that they had valid consent? You know, had they
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: deliberately had they deliberately removed information from the study. Had
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: they deliberately chosen children with intellectual disabilities because they thought
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 1: they could get away with it. And the first Senate
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: hating like regarding all this happened pretty early on the
• 1:01:11
  Speaker 1: thirteenth of January nineteen ninety four. And so they bring
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: like people who were children then who were in the
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: science club, they brought them forward. And so they brought
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: like these adults now who were children at the time,
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 1: who were in this quote science club, they brought them
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: forward for like statements. And you had this one fella,
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: Austin Larrock, and they're talking about like consent and everything.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: He's like, well, if you've got my parents to sign
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: a consent form, who are my parents? Like Charles Dyer
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: as well, he was like, yeah, who are they? I'd
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: like to know who my parents are too. So dire
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: he said he was given a Mickey mouse watch by
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: the researchers for attending the breakfast meetings, like he called
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: them breakfast meetings, and they gave him a Mickey mouse watch,
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: and he was like yay, and so like they were
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: never told, like he says, they were never told why
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: they were like eating different food to everybody else and
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: why they were getting like milk, and they were all
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: told like, you've got vitamins, and there were like cool,
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: I guess.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 5: And so they bring like one of the researchers forward,
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 5: doctor Bertram Brow, the research director and professor of nuclear
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and he.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: Is just like, the researchers are totally ethical, Like they
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: did everything by the board, they were trying to benefit people,
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: and like he's very like pro researcher, right scientist. And
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 1: he's asked, like, okay, so you got parents to sign
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: these permission slips. Do you think they would have consented
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: to have you experiment on their children if you had
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: used any reference to radiation, like if you had used
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 1: radiation or radioactive anywhere in the letter, do you feel
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 1: that parents would have consented? And this is where he went,
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: ah shit, and he had to just like chew his
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: words and swallow his pride a little bit, and he
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: then had to clearly state that the reason that they
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: didn't use the terms radioactive or radiation is because they
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: knew they knew that parents would not agree, because this
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: is like the start of the Cold War, you know,
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: this is Cold War era, like you mentioned this shit,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: people are gonna freak out and this fucking dude, he
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: is like, well, it's actually better. The MIT specifically chose
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: these children, the children with intellectual disabilities, because they eat
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: more cereal than normal children. That and he was challenged
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 1: on this with this specific argument, right, this specific argument
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: that wouldn't call it students also consume an ungodly amount
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: of cereal, Like aren't they hungry people? And he was
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: like yeah, Like in the end, he couldn't give like
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: a legitimate reason as to why specifically the children at
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: Fernald were picked for this experiment, and he eventually they
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: had to like accept and agree that they shouldn't have
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 1: forced these children to be part of this experiment when
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: they could not consent. And so after the Senate hearings,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: like eventually, like a bunch of fellows who were part
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: of this science club, like about thirty men in nineteen
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: ninety seven, they came forward. Many of these men had
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: physical or intellectual disabilities, and they filed a class action
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: lawsuit for sixty million dollars on the grounds of a
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: violation of civil rights. And it basically alleged that children
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: were tricked into joining the science club in order to
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: be involved in these experiments. Some of these kids were
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: exposed to more radiation than federal limits at the time allowed,
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 1: like a lot of this case, like a lot of
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: like this suit. The lynch pin was the consent letter,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: which did not mention deliberately did not mention that radiation
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: was involved. And like miit like they refused to back
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: down for such a long time, saying that you know,
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: everybody did it what they were supposed to do under
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: the standards, like like the levels of radiation weren't really harmful,
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: like yadi, yadiada, which is not the point. Like even
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety four when this information came out, Charles
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: vest the president of MIT, apologized for the way the
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: experiments were conducted. But during this suit, which was a
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: civil suit, the vice president of Research, David Litza, was like,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: I got a dose of X every time my parents
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: took me to the shoe store. Yeah, yeah, yeah, more
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: than the people who were in these studies forty years ago.
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: And he's like griping about it, like you misled people,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: you lied biomission and then experimented on children. What anyway,
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: MIT finally settled for one point eighty five million, which
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: is less than the sixty million the men were asking for,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: so like unethical experimentation on like Americans like. At this
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: point it was protected under the National Research Act of
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four. That's not to say that everyone followed
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: those guidelines, but it's there.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 5: And so.
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: The Fairaneul School now is actually closed. It's closed officially
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: shut down. More remaining residents and in June twenty thirteen
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: they had thirteen residents living on the ground. The oldest
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 1: of home had been living there since they were nineteen,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: and they were now eighty four, which means they would
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: have been at the school the same time as Fred
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: Boyce as buyer as the men I've mentioned in this
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: story today. The final resident was discharged on November thirteenth,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Like over the years, people had integrated and
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: moved into other homes in state operated programs, And in
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: twenty fourteen the land was purchased by the City of
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Waltham and most of the buildings that included that we're
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: part of the fern Old School for Feeble Mindedness have
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: been demolished. Now as far as i'm where, there is
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: still some standing. But yeah, yeah, So the land is currently,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: to my knowledge, vacant, although there's considerations as to what
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: to do with it next. Some people want to build
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: a school there, which feels wrong, but there should be
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: something to like, not cover up the past, but do
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: something with the land, do something good with it. That is. Yeah,
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 1: it's a husk reminding us of a terrible past. But yes,
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 1: Thus ends our story about the fern Old School and
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: their experimentation on children.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 1:10:05
  Speaker 1: If you like this episode, feel free to rate and
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: review of five stars. If you didn't like this episode,
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 1: you don't have to say anything. It's fine. Follow me
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: on the socials links down below. Feel free to follow
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: me on Patreon. The Boston Show, the live show was
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: up on every tier apart from keeping the lights on.
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: The keeping the lights on tier, you get nothing, but
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: you keep the lights on. It's just a little something, right,
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: because that's what you're doing. You're just donating to keep
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: the lights on. The other shows will be being released
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: once a month over the next few months, and there
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: there's more stuff coming. There's more stuff coming. So that's happening.
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: So let's get to this recommendation. Time for listening. You
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: should listen to When and krem and it's a great podcast.
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: You should do it. It's wonderful. For reading, I have
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: heard good things about The Marlowe Murder Club, so that
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: I haven't read anything as of late, so I can't
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: really give a proper recommendation. But do that. And for
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: watching you know what my friend and here's my friend.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: I have decided Ben Brainard. He has a comedy special
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: on YouTube called What Immature Child? Go watch it. And
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: I'm not just saying it because I'm one of the producers.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: I'm saying go watch it. It is poignant, it is funny,
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: it's gonna make me buy earrings. You'll get it once
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: you watch it. But yeah, it's so good. Go watch it. Okay,
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: that is everything I think today, So I shall bide you.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: Good night, adieus Au revoir of wi Is My Friends,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: Bye bye,