Ahh, a nice, warm bowl of oatmeal: could there be a more hearty or wholesome breakfast? Loaded with fibre, nutrients, and – if you’re feeling decadent – a dash of brown sugar – it’s the perfect way to start your day. Or so the big cereal companies and their cheery adverts would have you believe. But for a group of Massachusetts orphans in the 1940s and 50s, this breakfast of champions came with an extra, unexpected ingredient: a whopping dose of radiation. Unwitting guinea pigs in a secret study funded by Quaker Oats and MIT, these children were some of the thousands of victims of the most unethical decades of American medical research. This is the disturbing story of the Fernald State School Oatmeal Experiments.

Our story begins at the Walter E. Fernald State School, located in Waltham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1888 as the Experimental School for Teaching and Training Idiotic Children, Fernald was the product of the American Eugenics Movement, which sought to improve the nation’s genetic stock – and society as a whole – by preventing those individuals seen as “defective” from breeding. Institutions like Fernald, of which there were nearly 100 across the United States, were designed to house, isolate – and, in certain cases, forcibly sterilize – children deemed to be “feeble-minded”.

Tragically, nearly half of those committed to Fernald were not mentally disabled at all, achieving average scores on IQ tests. They were simply poor, uneducated children who had been orphaned or dumped at the school by parents who could not afford to take care of them. And “dumped” is the appropriate term; according to former resident Fred Boyce, who was admitted in 1949 at age 8 when his foster mother died:

“We thought for a long time that we belonged there, that we were not part of the species. We thought we were some kind of, you know, people that wasn’t supposed to be born…They [the state Government] didn’t have to look for homes for you, so they could just dump you off in these human warehouses and just let you rot, you know. That’s what they did. They let us rot.”

Conditions were cramped and spartan; at its peak, the institution housed some 2,500 people, the children often being packed in 30 to a room. And to cut operating costs, the residents performed most of the manual labour around the school. As Michael d’Antonio, author of the book The State Boys’ Rebellion writes:

“The kids at Fernald raised the vegetables that they ate. They sewed the soles on the shoes that they wore. They manufactured the brooms that they used to sweep the floor.”

Despite its name, very little education took place at Fernald State School – and what was provided was woefully inadequate:

“It was a school in name only. A child would experience the first year of school 5 or 6 times in a row. He would read the same ‘Dick and Jane’ reader, and never make any progress because the school wasn’t equipped to actually educate children. It was there as a sort of holding pen.”

And then there was the abuse. Corporal punishment was a way of life at Fernald, freely meted out for the most minor of offences – or often none at all. According to former resident Joe Almeida, who was abandoned at the school by his parents at age 8, the staff held a regular event called “Red Cherry Day”, in which the children would sit in a circle and be called up alphabetically:

“And lucky me, my name is what? Almeida. You’d get up in front of all these kids, and you would pull down your pants. You’d pull down your underpants and they’d make you turn around and they’d whack your ass with this branch until it was red like a cherry…These people were sick that worked here.”

And, as you would expect from such a power dynamic, sexual abuse was also rampant. Unsurprisingly, many children chose to rebel – often by running away. Those who were caught were sent to the school’s infamous Ward 22, where they were stripped naked and locked in solitary confinement for weeks on end.

Then, in 1946, the school announced that it was creating a Science Club, whose members would be privy to all sorts of perks including extra oatmeal and milk for breakfast, gifts like Mickey Mouse watches, and tickets to Boston Red Sox games. Given their bleak nature of their everyday existence, residents signed up in droves. Those who still had parents received the following consent form from the school administration:

Dear Parent:

In previous years we have done some examinations in connection with the nutritional department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with the purposes of helping to improve the nutrition of our children and to help them in general more efficiently than before.

For the checking up of the children, we occasionally need to take some blood samples, which are then analyzed. The blood samples are taken after one test meal which consists of a special breakfast meal containing a certain amount of calcium. We have asked for volunteers to give a sample of blood once a month for three months, and your son has agreed to volunteer because the boys who belong to the Science Club have many additional privileges. They get a quart of milk daily during that time, and are taken to a baseball game, to the beach and to some outside dinners and they enjoy it greatly.

I hope that you have no objection that your son is voluntarily participating in this study. The first study will start on Monday, June 8th, and if you have not expressed any objections we will assume that your son may participate.

Sincerely yours,

Clemens E. Benda, M.D.

Clinical Director

What the letter failed to mention was that these “special breakfast meals” were laced with radioactive tracers- for the “science club” was in fact a cover for an MIT nutritional study conducted on behalf of the Quaker Oats Company. At the time, the company was eager to validate the nutritional value of its products. Recent studies suggested that the high levels of phytate found in oats inhibited the absorption of Iron – a problem which Quaker’s main hot-cereal rival, Cream of Wheat, did not have. Furthermore, both companies were facing increasing competition from sugary dry breakfast cereals, whose popularity was booming thanks to modern advertising techniques.

Lasting from 1946 to 1956, the experiments at Fernald were largely conducted by MIT nutrition professor Robert Harris and PhD student Felix Bronner, whose research was funded through a “Quaker Oats Fellowship.” Over the course of the study, more than 100 residents of the school were fed oatmeal and milk laced with radioactive Iron-59 and Calcium-47, and received intravenous Calcium injections. These tracers allowed the movement of these elements throughout the body to be tracked using radiation detectors. To Quaker Oats’ delight, the study revealed that oatmeal was no worse at promoting iron absorption than Cream of Wheat. Harris and Bronner also discovered that calcium – both ingested and injected – is deposited straight into the bones. So the next time you see an advertisement claiming that milk helps build strong bones, know that this claim derives from non-consensual human experimentation.

Indeed, while today the Fernald study would never pass a research ethics board review, it was hardly the only case of unethical human experimentation in the United States at the time – or even the worst. As we’ve covered in our previous videos That Time US Scientists Injected Plutonium Into People Without Their Knowledge and That Time the United States Tested Biological Warfare on its Own Citizens, the early Cold War period was something of a golden age for this kind of research, the unethical nature of which was typically justified in the name of national security. Nor was the Fernald study the only one conducted on a vulnerable, institutionalized population. For example, from the 1950s to the 1970s, hundreds of inmates at Philadelphia’s Holmesburg Prison were used as human guinea pigs to test the effects of various toxins, creams, detergents, and other products on their skin; while between 1946 and 1948, the United States Public Health Service infected 700 prostitutes, prison inmates, and psychiatric patients in Guatemala with syphilis, gonorrhoea, and chancroid in order to study the progress of these diseases. And, of course, there were the CIA’s infamous MKUltra experiments, in which thousands of unwitting subjects – including prisoners and psychiatric patients – were subjected to electroshock therapy, hallucinogenic drugs, and other forms of psychological torture in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to develop effective mind control, interrogation, and brainwashing techniques. According to John Lantos, an expert in medical ethics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine and expert in medical ethics, such experiments were indicative of America’s post-war mindset:

“Technology was good, we were the leaders, we were the good guys, so anything we did could not be bad.”

The tragic irony is that less than a decade before, the discovery of Nazi human experiments had led to the drafting of the Nuremberg Code, which stated that:

“The voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential. This means that the person involved should have legal capacity to give consent; should be situated as to be able to exercise free power of choice, without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, over-reaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion, and should have sufficient knowledge and comprehension of the elements of the subject matter involved as to enable him to make an understanding and enlightened decision. This latter element requires that before the acceptance of an affirmative decision by the experimental subject there should be made known to him the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and hazards reasonably to be expected; and the effects upon his health or person which may possibly come from his participation in the experiment.”

Despite this, after the war most American scientific institutions adopted ethical guidelines which required consent – but not informed consent. That is, subject simply had to agree to participate in an experiment; they didn’t have to be told the real purpose of said experiment or the potential risks or even exactly what was being done at all, such as we covered in our recent video Injecting People with Cancer Without Their Consent. It was not until 1953 that the National Institutes of Health created the first federal research ethics guidelines explicitly requiring informed consent; and not until 1974 that the Federal Government passed the National Research Act, establishing a national procedure for ethical review in medical research.

But for many members of the Fernald Science Club, things were about to get significantly worse. By the 1960s, Eugenics had become a dirty word, and a de-institutionalization movement had begun to sweep the psychiatric field. Consequently, Fernald and other institutions began releasing all but their most severely disabled residents. However, no effort was made to re-integrate these residents into society, and with barely any education or useful skills, many struggled to to get by. Fred Boyce and Joe Almeida both left Fernald in 1960 at the age of 19, with Boyce joining the carnival circuit and touring around the country. In his 40s, Almeida felt himself drawn back to Fernald State School – now the Walter E. Fernald Development Center, where he worked as a driver for 20 years. As he later explained:

“I always felt like they owed me. I always felt that they owed me, because they took the most important thing of my life away. They took away my childhood and my education. The two things that you need in life to make it, they took from me.”

All the while, however, Boyce, Almeida, and the other Science Club members remained unaware that they had been used as human guinea pigs. It was not until 1993, when Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary declassified a number of Atomic Energy Commission documents from the 1940s and 50s, that the truth about the experiments finally came out. On December 26 of that year the story was broken by the Boston Globe; soon other publications began urging victims to come forward.

Upon learning of the experiments, Fred Boyce gathered together 30 of his fellow Fernald classmates and launched a class-action lawsuit against MIT, Quaker Oats, and the United States Government. Meanwhile, Senator Edward Kennedy chaired a hearing before the Senate’s Committee on Labor and Human Resources to investigate the Fernald experiments. Questioning Constantine Maletskos, one of the study’s organizers, Kennedy asked why the study had been conducted on institutionalized orphans instead of MIT students:

“Aren’t you appalled at the fact that the most vulnerable people in our society, which are young people, 7, 8 years old, that are in an institution, aren’t you appalled that they were the ones selected?”

Maletskos claimed that he and his colleagues were following the ethical guidelines of the time, and that the choice of subjects was scientifically necessary:

“Because in all of these experiments, you have to have control of the subjects. You just can’t let them walk around; you have to collect 100 percent of the excretions, you have to see that they’re eating properly, and all this kind of thing. Unless you do it that way, you’re not going to have a good experiment.”

And as for the “Science Club” aspect of the study, Maletskos denied that it was any kind of ruse:

‘It was an afterthought, as I gather—that somebody was talking about: “It would be nice [to do something for them because] these kids have been involved, we’ve had to jab them, and they had to eat a meal—every little drop of it, because you wanted to be sure they got 100 percent of the radioactivity— wouldn’t it be nice to do something for them?”’ 

Also called to testify was J. David Litster, Dean of Research at MIT, who was questioned about the health effects of the radioactive tracers the study’s subjects were made to ingest. Litster revealed that the tracers had exposed the children to between 170-330 milligrams of radiation – equivalent to receiving 30 consecutive chest x-rays. This kind of dose, he explained, would have given the children a 1 in 2,000 chance of developing cancer – barely higher than the national average. Indeed, a 1994 Massachusetts state panel confirmed that none of the students had developed any health conditions that could be directly traced to the radioactive isotopes used in the Fernald study.

But for Fred Boyce, Joe Almeida, and the other Fernald students, their lawsuit was less about radioactivity than the unethical nature of the study. And while MIT claimed that the study followed the ethical guidelines of the time, and Quaker Oats denied it played little direct role in the research – contributing some cereal and a small research grant – in 1998 both decided to settle out of court, paying the plaintiffs $60,000 in compensation. It was a small victory, but one which helped bring some justice and closure to one of the darkest periods in American science.

Bonus Facts:

Speaking of sadistic individuals and institutions and breakfast foods, the first modern, designated breakfast cereal (forms of porridge aside) was invented in 1863 by a vegetarian Christian abolitionist doctor named James Caleb Jackson. Created for his sanatorium patients as a healthy start to the day, it was comprised of crumbled, twice baked graham flour (which is essentially a type of non-bleached, “all-natural” finely ground whole wheat flour) and bran (hard outer layer of the grain), he called “granula”. The end product resembled a much harder version of modern Grape-Nuts, but with significantly larger nuggets. Jackson’s granula was reportedly so hard that it needed to be soaked in liquid for at least 20-30 minutes before it could be comfortably bitten into it.

In the 1870s, Dr. John Kellogg ran his own sanatorium in Battle Creek, Michigan and was known for his very strange, sometimes sadistically abusive methods, including electrically shocking children’s genitals, applying forms of acid to them, removal of the clitoris in females, and circumcising males- all to attempt to prevent masturbation and sexual urges. (Interestingly, the latter male circumcision treatment as something commonly performed in America actually hails from this era; the modern non-Jewish / non-Islamic practice of foreskin removal was not really a thing in the Western world until it began to be seen as a way to prevent masturbation.). In any event, Dr. Kellogg visited Jackson’s retreat and was most impressed with his granula. So impressed, in fact, that he ripped off the idea, creating his own version of it made of wheat, corn, and ground oats. He uninventively called it “granula”… As a result, Jackson sued and Kellogg was forced to rename his cereal “granola.”

A few years later, a failed Battle Creek suspender salesman named Charles W. Post partially knocked off Kellogg’s product and started selling an exceptionally similar “granola” product he called Grape-Nuts, claiming it could make one’s “red blood redder.”

As with Jackson, Kellogg and Post both pushed this food item as an ideal, healthy food to start the day with, setting the trend that has continued through today for this line of product.

Between Kellogg and Post, at the turn of the 20th century, Battle Creek became a battle ground for two companies that would come to define the world of breakfast cereal. For instance, legend has it that due to a mishap making a batch of the original version of Graham crackers (originally created by Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham as a way to curb sexual urges, and particularly the urge to masturbate), John Kellogg and his brother Will invented a product they unimaginatively dubbed “Corn Flakes”. Post was a little more flamboyant, naming his version of the same thing “Elijah’s Manna”- meant as a striking allusion to the biblical story about the food that saved the wandering, starving Israelites. With the famed prophet sitting on a rock and hand feeding a raven on the front of the box, Elijah became the first cereal mascot. However, fairly quickly, religious groups protested and Post changed the name to “Post Toasties.”

Ultimately the Kellogg brothers split over Will Kellogg’s decision to recommend adding sugar to Corn Flakes to help it sell better, something Dr. John Kellogg found borderline blasphemous as such a thing, in his opinion, encouraged sexual excitement. The two parted ways with Will founding the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company, which went on to become the now billion dollar Kellogg corporation (which besides their tasty flakes was soon to also introduce another breakfast staple- Rice Krispies). His brother John Kellogg stuck to his original principles and continued to dedicate his life to ridding the world of such evils as masturbation…

Now, given the ladies of the house at this time tended to be the ones who decided what the family would eat, during the first few decades of the 20th century, cereal advertising was primarily aimed at housewives. Kellogg’s told women to wink at their grocer and see what they got (answer: a box of Corn Flakes). Quaker Oats likewise sponsored radio dramas and mid-day radio shows aimed at housewives. Post told moms that bringing up kids on their cereals would help them later in life.

In the late 1930s, as breakfast cereal became more established and commonly purchased anyway, cereal companies started thinking it might be best to skip the middlewoman, instead marketing directly to children, who presumably would pester their mothers for which cereal they wanted. For instance, in 1936, a “Dennis the Menace”-like character named Skippy was used to specifically market Wheaties to children.

The problem here is that children tend to not like straight bran or wheat… but they do love sugar. In 1939, the first pre-sugared cereal was produced, called Ranger Joe Wheat Honnies. Ironically, the product was actually an effort by the creator to minimize how much additional sugar kids commonly put on their cereal by including a relatively small, regulated amount already. But instead of curbing the practice of over-sugaring cereal, it eventually resulted in the opposite, starting with Post copying Ranger Joe Wheat Honnies with their own version called Sugar Crisp in 1949; thanks to a major breakfast cereal producer now making such a pre-sugared product, the rest of the industry followed suit.

By the 1960s, cereal companies were devoting approximately 90% of their advertising budgets to directly appealing to individuals of the youthful persuasion. This is why it was so common today to have “prizes” in the cereal box, tie-ins with movies, video games, and TV shows, and products called Sprinkles Spangle and Ice Cream Cone Cereal. On that note, this is also why adding more and more sugar to breakfast cereal became a thing.

As for widespread claims by the manufacturers that these cereals are “part of a complete breakfast,” technically the cereal companies are not lying here. Unsurprisingly given that the three primary nutrient groups, known as macronutrients, that humans need to survive are carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, according to the American Chemical Society, a healthy breakfast should consist of mostly carbohydrates and proteins. Shocker, I know.

And, indeed, cereal, even if it’s simply a bowl of pure sugar, constitutes carbs. So these products can indeed technically be considered an essential part of a complete breakfast, just perhaps not an advisable one given the vast majority are essentially candy cleverly marketed to appear nutritious, often complete with a giant label on the side showing all the vitamins added to the product… along with tiny recommended serving sizes that nobody even comes close to following to mask the absolute massive number of calories and sugar most real-world servings of the products contain. But to be fair, combined with certain other breakfast items, in extreme moderation this staple of the breakfast world could potentially be useful if one leads a very physically active life, instead of just rolling out of bed only to very soon after sit at a desk all day and then come home and sit on the couch until bedtime.

On that note, perhaps those sedentary, wealthy aristocrats of old were on to something in choosing to skip the morning meal. And for those who led a heavily manual labored life, it is perhaps no surprise that some form of grain-based morning meal seems to have been the choice people made throughout most of recorded history- easy to quickly eat and comprised of a mix of simple and complex carbs to provide both quick and relatively longer lasting stores of energy, all while avoiding too much protein and fat which, while otherwise essential for life and important for things like maintaining muscle mass, might not sit well when eating mostly that in the morning and then jumping right into hard labor.