When Fred Boyce joined the Science Club at Fernald State School in Massachusetts in 1949, he wasn’t thinking much about science. There were all kinds of other perks. The boys could go to RedSox games and receive gifts including Mickey Mouse watches. The boys relished the attention and gifts.
There were breakfasts too, but they were no ordinary breakfasts. The breakfasts served to members of the Science Club were part of nutrition experiments. Their oatmeal and milk had been mixed with radioactive tracers, so researchers could study how their bodies absorbed iron and calcium. In another experiment, boys were injected with radioactive calcium.
The experiments came at the beginning of the atomic age, when radioactive materials had taken on a new place in American science. Fernald was not an isolated case. Human radiation experiments were being conducted across the country, sometimes on people who did not know they had been exposed. Between 1945 and 1962, more than 210,000 civilians and members of the military were exposed to radiation. The Fernald research was among dozens of radiation experiments approved by the Atomic Energy Commission.
There was a commercial interest behind the research as well. Quaker Oats helped fund the experiments. Researchers wanted to understand how nutrients in cereal affected the body’s absorption of minerals. Quaker Oats was competing with Cream of Wheat.
None of this was what the boys understood the Science Club to be. To them, it was a place to have breakfast. There was special attention, and trips. That attention mattered at Fernald. The boys thought it meant they were special.
The institution had opened under a name that revealed plainly how children like Boyce were treated: the Massachusetts School for the Feeble-Minded. Some of the children sent there had intellectual disabilities. Others had simply been abandoned or had nowhere else to go. Once inside, those distinctions offered little protection. Their childhoods unfolded inside an institution where neglect and cruelty became part of the day.
The boys were dependent on the adults around them for virtually everything. That made the small pleasures offered through the Science Club particularly meaningful.
Boyce himself had been abandoned by his family. When scientists began coming to Fernald, he hoped they might notice what was happening there. They were outsiders, people who could leave Fernald at the end of the day. Maybe they would see how the boys were being treated.
There was something especially cruel about the gentleness surrounding the Science Club. Nobody had to drag the boys to breakfast. There were rewards waiting for them. There were outings and presents, things that appealed to children.
Boyce believed the attention meant he was special. He would spend decades not knowing what that attention had actually meant.
The betrayal was larger than a contaminated bowl of oatmeal. Boyce had seen the scientists and thought they might finally notice what was being done to him. The scientists had looked at Boyce and the other boys and seen something else entirely: test subjects from which they could learn.
Sources:
Boissoneault, Lorraine. “A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down.” Smithsonian Magazine, 8 Mar. 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/spoonful-sugar-helps-radioactive-oatmeal-go-down-180962424/ .
Lederer, Susan E. “Subjected to Science.” Penn State University, 1 Mar. 1996,https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/subjected-science .
Owen, Kelly. “Children Were Radiation Subjects, Data Shows: Experiments: The Federal Government and Its ContractorsAlso Used Prisoners and Psychiatric Patients in Testing from 1945 to the Mid-1970s.” Los Angeles Times, 10 Feb. 1995,https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-02-10-mn-30398-story.html .