July 19, 2022 • 44 mins
Did the Quaker Oats company really do experiments on children? Join Matt and Ben as they dig into the checkered past of this cereal monolith.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay. This one is for the fans of cereal and
radiation too great taste that once upon a time m
I t said tastes great together. Yeah, there was some experimentation.
I don't really like it when my cereal glows and
(00:20):
you know, makes me glow. I mean that could be fun, right,
That could be a branded activation, right like trolls maybe? Yeah? Uh,
plutonium bits. I'm just thinking what are different radioactive cereals
could be named? Which you're gonna hear in today's classic episode,
(00:43):
Folks is a true story a conspiracy too feed children
cereal in the nine and fifties, but it's not, thankfully,
the kind of cereal that you would see in a
grocery store today. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies,
(01:05):
history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. You call me Ben. You probably go
(01:25):
by a name as well. That makes this stuff they
don't want you to know. I'm excited about this one today, guys,
because this is a deep cut and before we get
too into it, I want to extend and on air.
Thank you to our colleague and personal friend Josh Clark, who,
(01:47):
as he so often does, accidentally hit us to this.
Oh he posted it or mentioned it in an article
or something. Yeah, he's got a great blog that you
can check out right now if you wish about the
They call it the Coolest Stuff for best stuff we
read this week, and so it's if you've got time.
It's a it's a great place to go. Everybody here
how stuff works, as you might imagine, reads stuff constantly,
(02:12):
and as we found out about a very very strange
historical thing that we thought most folks in American abroad
wouldn't know about. And it starts with two entities that
ostensibly have nothing to do with each other. Yeah, it
feels like apples and tractors to me to just so
(02:35):
separate entities, or or like uh badgers and uh cheetos. Yeah,
hair brushes and hair brushes, or like or like asteroids
and venus fly traps and venus fly traps, exactly, two
things that don't seem like that makes sense together. So
what what what's the first one? The first one is
(02:57):
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You probably know this as
m I T. It was founded in eighteen sixty one.
This is so, this is an old institution that we're
talking about here, very prestigious. A lot of great thinkers
and makers have come out of this. Oh yeah, it's
been around for a long time. It's won all kinds
of prestigious awards, right, and uh, it's become home to
(03:20):
some of the world's imminent scientist, statesman and economists. Uh,
the guy who invented condensed soup went there. Twenty nine
alumni from M I T of one Nobel prizes. That's
pretty good. And no, you'll like this one especially. More
than one third of the nation of the U S
space flights have included M I T educated astronauts, and
(03:42):
NASA has chosen more M I T graduates to become
astronauts than graduates of any other private institution. Well, I
have a Space Camp shirt, so you're pretty much in.
And I just ordered myself a NASA trucker hat on Amazon,
so that should be arriving any day now. And I'm
about dating at a up and walking around town with
my Space Camp shirt ams hat on dude, speaking of that,
(04:05):
I found my picture of I think I sent it
to you my picture of my Space camp suit when
I was a little wee one, and I'm thinking about
putting on our Instagram. It's when it or at least
send it to me. I'm curious. So another another prestigious
fact about M I T that has nothing to do
with this show is that both hosts of Car Talk
(04:27):
attended M I T. Click and clack, click and out
of control. But anyway, you get the T L d R.
The quick and dirty of this is M I T
for centuries has been this amazing hub or seat of knowledge, innovation, wisdom,
(04:48):
and you know, the future of humanity, for scientific testing,
technology and all things above. And now for something completely different, Yeah,
completely and utterly different. So we have Thing A. Now
we're talking about Thing B, which is Quaker Oats. The
company that would become Quaker Oats actually formed in nineteen
(05:10):
o one when four oat mills, not oat meals. I
feel so bad that I actually wrote that joke in
the nels, and you even have a little ha there
to indicate that it's a joke, because some people might
not have known because it's not a good joke. So
these four mills, what make oats or mill oats? Rather um,
(05:33):
they combined merge, shall we say, into a single super mill.
That was the dawn of the oatmeal Tycoons, which is
a phrase that Ben loves for some reason. Why I
love it because it's an excellent phrase. Remember those old
video games that would be like roller coaster tycoon or uh,
I don't think they had all kinds of park tycoon.
(05:55):
I would love to play a game called oatmeal Tycoon.
I don't know what, you know what, Actually, I think
I like the idea of it more than the actual
thing would be pretty boring. For some reason. When I
think of an oatmeal flacon and I picture some sort
of fat cat smoking a cigar and a giant golden
tub full of oatmeal, I can totally see that. And
(06:15):
and maybe, uh, you know, maybe his cigar looks like
a spoon. I don't know. There a lot of questions
about this. Yeah, let's workshop this one, but um so yeah.
The original Quaker oats trademark began in eighteen seventy seven
when one of the founding Mills used a Quaker esque man.
You may know him sort of looks like a pilgrim,
(06:36):
like you may have been on the Mayflower. You know,
he's got a sort of a long white shocks of hair,
a mane, a bit of a mane, and a tall hat. Right, yeah,
he has Uh, he has that distinctive look that we
have come to associate with Quakers, whether fairly or unfairly. Uh.
The Quaker movement is still around here in the U.
(06:59):
S And abroad, and it's it's a group of very
kind people. And the whole idea of using that image
was that it just instilled trust in someone because there's
the quality is going to be perfection coming from these guys. Well,
I mean and and it is the very picture of wholesomeness.
And that's a word that's often associated with whole grains
(07:22):
and good foods, you know, healthy foods like that. They're
they're wholesome there, that's right, because because oates like this,
they're they're good for you, right Ben, Yeah, right, that's
the idea. They're nutritious. You'll hear, you'll hear some weird
stuff about the Quaker man, right. I love that we're
playing out the wholesome stuff. Nowadays, the company says that
(07:42):
he is just a it's not representing an actual person.
It's just a man who's dressed in Quaker garb, but
the earlier advertising in nineteen o nine identified him as
William Penn, the seventeenth century philosopher. But they, you know,
they later I guess rhet coons that is that the word? Yeah,
because it's evolved so much over time. We're talking about
(08:05):
eighteen seventies, eighteen fifties, even when there was first starting out.
So got side tip ladies and gentlemen if you want
to if you want to impress your serial insider friends,
if you're in the know, they call him Larry. Yeah, yeah,
that's what that's like, the nickname. Anyhow, they started with
(08:26):
Quaker oats and people loved it. This whole Quaker thing
worked very well for them, caught on like gangbusters. Yeah,
and they and they began to grow into other areas,
right like wildfire gangbusters. Right. Yeah. So, for instance, they
started with other breakfast cereals, other food and drink products,
(08:48):
even into unrelated fields. For example, in nineteen sixty nine,
they bought Fisher Price, which many of many of us
listening may recognize as a toy company that's just running
the early early age market. Right now, there's telephones that
the clinky wheels and the face on it and any
of those like classic Toy Story toys that have been
(09:12):
animated in the Toy Story movies were probably originally made
by Fisher Price. Yeah, and so they owned that. The
Oatmeal Plays owned that for a while and then they
spun it off in the nineties, but they were also
involved with making film. Didn't see that one come in,
did you? Yeah? Before researching this, I had no idea
that Quaker Oats had financed Uh, Willy Wonka and the
(09:35):
chocolate factory. What that doesn't It doesn't seem like that, right,
But they they had a reason for this. Um, they
we're gonna be able to use some of the product
names they are used in the film to actually sell
it and leverage it that would become popular through the film.
They wanted to sell gop stoppers. Yeah. And then they
(09:56):
also in two formed US Games, a company that created
as Noel would say, video games for the Atari fifty two.
D Wow. They didn't do so well though to that
quicker guy's got his fingers and all kinds of different
stuff he's got, He's got his mits and all kinds
of oats, you know. Uh. In eighty three they bought
(10:19):
Van Camps being products and uh Stokely Van Camp and
then Gatorade and currently they're owned by PepsiCo. So in
their own way, they have also become quite successful. M
I T. Seat of Learning. Quaker Oats a global company
that started with oatmeal and then quickly cornered so many
(10:40):
other markets. As you can see, this company is a
very little in common until that is they joined forces.
And to really look at this, we need to look
at the history of competition between different companies and different
products back in the day. So, uh, nineteen forties, let's say,
let's go back there after its founding. It's doing really well,
(11:04):
expanding its markets, going to new places in the United States,
going all across the Great Lands. UM. And it's trying
to dominate overall the cereal industry. What you eat for breakfast,
it should be this. Well, their chief rival was an
outfit that you may also know called cream of Wheat, Right,
you've heard of this. It's a wheat I think it's
(11:27):
simolina product that's kind of similar to oatmeal, UM, but
it's a little creamier. It's a little creamier. Um. But
they were they were getting big too around that time.
But it wasn't their only antagonist. Well, another antagonist here
was science, because at the time, a widely publicized study
(11:47):
actually found that plant based grains contained an acid called
fight tate, which could actually hinder your digestive system um
in a way that would keep minerals and vitamins like
cow semen iron from being properly digested. A right. Yes,
And there's another less obvious point here. Longtime listeners, you
(12:08):
know what's happening concurrently in the US at this time.
This hubbub occurs in the nineteen forties. It's a few
years after bacon inexplicably becomes a fundamental part of the
American breakfast? Was it inexplicably to say? That's a great point? No,
because we explicate it uh fairly handily in some earlier episodes.
(12:31):
The first episode e Yes our podcast on Edward Berne's
a k A. The Father's Spen a k a. The
Father pr A, the father of Bernet sauce a, the
nephew of Sigmund Freud. Uh. So he was We won't
get too into detail about this, but he was tasked
(12:53):
by a plate An outfit called the beech Nut Company
to popularize some leftover port product that they had and
he used some fairly clever but indirect methods to make
bacon a popular thing, because beforehand, people maybe a bowl
of boo meal, maybe a croissant and some fruit coffee.
(13:17):
I would like in it to the way, all of
a sudden, all of these taco bell products have like
Doritos in them. You know, I think it's sort of
like a marketing ploy to get rid of all the
surplus doritos. That's my theory. I don't know if that's
true or not, but you know, this is a pretty
brilliant example of like, hey, let's take up meat scraps
and turn them into meat gold. Yeah. I think about
(13:39):
what bacon is, right, It's essentially fat back, it's the
fatty stuff. And let's also think about how different bacon
in the US is to bacon in Europe or bacon
in other parts of the world. And the way he
got it done right was he got doctors to discuss
how important protein is. Right, he had a study. I
hope you can hear the air quotes. I'm making, ladies
(14:01):
and gentlemen a study exactly. So, so we've got we've
got Quaker oats and they're vying for competition the serial market.
They have an enemy in this publicized study, and people
are worried about nutrition, but they're also thinking, well, bacon's
just better. They needed a plan, prefably, not just an
(14:22):
ad campaign, but something that felt more objective, a study,
if you will, to contradict the other study floating around
in the zeitgeist. And they had a stroke of luck.
So they found out that the first entity we discussed,
m I T was going to be studying nutrition in
the human body. That's the thing. Yes, So you know,
if they hear about this, somebody in one of their
(14:44):
offices just went, eureka, we're doing this. They jumped at
the chance to fund the research that m I T
is trying to do with this, because they thought this
was going to be exactly what they needed, right, to
provide satisfactory evidence not just of cereals been fits in general,
but of Quaker oats in particular, rather than those creeps
that cream of wheat or beach nut. Yeah. I don't,
(15:07):
I don't know if I don't think they were creeps.
Just I thought it sounded good. So they needed a
group of people, right, They needed an experiment and a
control group. They needed ideally some young guinea pigs. As
Mill said, this was especially touted as nutritious for the
young and the growing. They needed kids would sign on willingly.
(15:27):
They needed kids who wouldn't ask questions, and we'll learn
more about those kids they selected right after a word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. From approximately
(15:55):
fifty seven to seventy three children from the Walter E.
For Old State School were recruited to join what was
referred to as the Fernalde Science Club, which was at
m I Team UM. Fernalde was a home for the
quote say is it really really nasty? Term feeble minded?
(16:15):
That refers to what we would now describe as being
developmentally disabled kids UM, and in many of these cases,
kids who simply have been abandoned by their parents. That's
an important factor here. The children at the fern Old School,
we're not all disabled in some way. They I don't
know the politically correct terms for this. UM. The terminology
(16:39):
that's used in the research we were done like that
was written in the nineteen forties, is much less than UM.
I would say satisfactory from a politically correct standpoint. That
is an important factor here. Not all of the children
were disabled. Many of them were just abandoned or you know,
they needed a place to stay. So children with special needs,
(17:00):
whether those needs are due to a developmental factor or
whether they're due to a social factor such as being abandoned.
So for these kids who are, let's face it, folks
having a rough time in life, Uh, this m I T.
Science Club seems like a windfall. It grants the children's
special privileges. They go on field trips, they get neat
(17:20):
toys and swag like Mickey Mouse watches, for example, and
they get special events. You get to go to baseball
games and met socks and stuff. They also got nutritious
meals all the time. Yeah, at very controlled intervals and
very high in calcium and iron. Talk about talk about
a catbird seat, right, what the catbird seat? It's a
(17:42):
good seat? Have you you've heard that phrase? Right? Of course?
I don't know this the catbird seat. I mean, I
don't know what. We don't know what it means. It's
just it means it's here in the best place. It's
a good situation. I'm going to say it's a cat indoors.
I'm assuming, oh they can grab birds maybe, or maybe
it's outdoors on a seat, digically able to catch birds. Okay, yeah,
(18:03):
well maybe I should also learn the etymology of these
colloquialisms plus about them now, all right, But but the
point is it would have been. It seems like it
would ostensibly be a great thing for these disadvantaged children. However,
not all was as it seemed. See here's the thing,
(18:23):
you guys. Uh, some of these children were unable to
read for various reasons when they were told to sign
and consent to joining the Science Club. Also, the children
who actually had parents or guardians to uh to consult
about this, well, they weren't very they weren't much better
off because what was sent to them who wasn't exactly
(18:47):
truthful in every case. Yeah, it wasn't as transparent as
one would imagine. And we have a quote to prove it.
And this is an excerpt from one of the notes
written home to the parents of a child where Westing
permission for them to join the Science Club. And these
letters evolved over time, as because we're talking about a
(19:08):
wide range of dates here, from forties to the fifties.
But this is just one little snapshot of one of
those letters. I'll give us a go a few fellas,
don't mind um quote. We are considering the selection of
a group of our brighter patients, including name of child,
to receive a special diet rich in irons and vitamins,
(19:30):
or as I like to call them, vitamins for a
period of time. These studies will cause no discomfort or
change in the patient other than a possible improvement. I
hope that you have no objection that your son or
daughter is voluntarily participating in this study. And again that
is an exert from a sample permission letter sent home
(19:52):
to the parents or guardians of these children. You have
to love the phrasing right as I hope that you
have no objection that your son is voluntarily participating means
it's already happening. That's already So what M. I. T
Did not tell anyone, including the parents, including the children,
and maybe even the functionaries at the state school, was
(20:12):
that the calcium and iron that they were feeding to
these science club participants was irradiated. Radioactive calcium and iron
functioned like tracers, so the scientists could watch the progression
of these radioactive substances through the children's body during the
digestion process. And it should be noted that I mean
today there are radioactive materials are used in this way.
(20:35):
For example, a stress test, patients are injected with radioactive dye.
They can then track the movement of it through their
bloodstream in order to see that everything's you know, in
tiptop shape, what have you. But this was not this
was not the same as that. This was much more
of a experimental approach. Yeah. And also, if you're signing
up nowadays for that kind of test, you know what's happening.
(21:00):
You're not You're not being told you're joining a fun
club for baseball games. You know what's happening. There's it's
a usually one or two times that's going to happen
in you know what, maybe a follow up, you have
to do it again. So the dosing that you're getting
is fairly low. We have a specific example of two
of these tests. Yeah. The first, the first, they would
(21:20):
say a battery of tests occurred in ninety that's when
seventeen boys eight this you know, radioactive iron in their meals.
It was an isotope that apparently can harm blood and
specifically the organ the spleen, which we don't think about
very often. Um, and and the whole thing here again
(21:41):
is dosages, right, That's what you have to worry about
with anything like this. So they were the boys were
being exposed to between five hundred and forty four two
one thousand, twenty four miller rems of radiation over the
course of seven different meals. And just to compare this
dosage with the amount of radiation the three of us
(22:02):
or anyone listening might receive throughout the course of a
year in the US. In the US in particular, that
would be around three h miller rams from all the
different natural, naturally occurring sources of radiation sunlight, bananas, things like, yeah, exactly. Uh.
And then also the team calculated calcium digestion by adding
radioactive radioactive forms calcium to the breakfast milk of nineteen
(22:26):
boys and this time each kid only at one radioactive
meal and expose their bones to thirty five milli rims
of radiation. By comparison, again, during their lifetimes, most Americans
will receive a hundred and ten miller rams of radiation
on their bones from the fallout of nuclear weapon testing.
So the next question you probably have is how did
(22:50):
people learn about that? Because the passages that we just
told you, with the details of some of these illegal,
unethical test came to light through US through quality journalism. Yes,
we learned about it from Scott Allen who was writing
for the Boston Globe, and he found out about it
because a lot of documents around that time had been
(23:13):
declassified about this testing that was occurring throughout the United States,
but mostly in Boston. M Yeah, and this this led
to some pretty pretty significant reactions in in Congress. Right. Well, Eventually,
in ninety four, what happens is that President Bill Clinton
(23:34):
forms the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments or because
we live in a world that loves awkward acronyms, acre
are uh. It was chaired by it was shared by
Dr Ruth Faden of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of
bio Ethics, and Clinton's this this happens to, like Matt said,
(23:57):
the way these documents got released it and Secretary of Energy,
whose named Hazel O'Leary, had instituted an openness policy. And
so one point six million pages of classified records from
the time of the Cold War and just after World
War Two and beyond were released. No wiki leaks, no Snowden,
(24:18):
no UM, no Pentagon papers. The government itself, the government itself,
and that is how that is how these other journalists
found out about this. But the records made it clear
that when Quaker Oats and M I. T were working
together on this kind of stuff, the Atomic Energy Commission
was also providing funding. And not just this, but they
(24:39):
have been sponsoring tests, multiple tests, and multiple situations on
effects of radiation on the human body. Yeah, as it
turned out, citizens of the United States who had checked
into various hospitals for numerous different ailments um were secretly
being injected with varying amounts of plutonium and other radioactive
(24:59):
material areals without their knowledge or we assume they're consent. Yes,
If you want to learn more specifically about this happening
at the fern Old Research Center, there is a paper
you can find on archive dot org called Human Subjects
Research Radiation Experimentation. It's part of the hearing that Ben
(25:19):
just mentioned that when Bill Clinton and the administration created
this group. This is one of the hearings where they
have all the findings and interview tons of people, even
two of the children who were experimented on at the
fern Old School, right, and their interviews with several of
them as you said there, it's strange to hear some
(25:40):
of the descriptions. One thing we do want to point
out about this study in particular is that despite congressional investigation,
despite declassification, there are still conflicting numbers on some of this.
So that's why you're hearing Nolan, Matt and I say
stuff like prety to seventy something children, and you might
(26:02):
see numbers as high as ninety and the age ranges
very widely. In one of those people that's interviewed says
he was seven at the time, but then most of
the reporting puts the children in their teens, so you know,
it's kind of crazy. Well, in other words, it feels
like a lot of this information information is just scratching
the surface of what the full extent of some of
(26:24):
these experiments might have looked like. So you know, it
implies to me that there were more than one unethical
radiation experiment going on. That's an excellent point, And speaking
of scratching the surface, you're right, we have yet to
begin looking at the other instances of Cold War radiation experiments,
(26:45):
but we will after a word from our spots, and
we're back. As we said before the break, this is
one instance of a radioactive experiment conducted on unsuspecting, unconsenting civilians.
(27:12):
And for those of you in the know about the
effects of radiation on the human body, it's not as
if these people were shocked or injected with some sort
of instant cancer. It did, however, uh. It did, however,
expose them to an abnormal amount of radiation. And it
is far from the only instance of this. We found,
(27:36):
in the course of just a little bit of digging,
various numerous situations in which unsuspecting citizens, some even unborn,
were treated as guinea pigs by Uncle Sam for the
for the purpose of learning more about the effects of radiation.
(27:56):
And did you notice what we just said, unborn? That's right.
In nineteen fifty three, the US Atomic Energy commissioned man
several studies at the University of Iowa on the health
effects of radioactive iodine in newborns and pregnant women. In
one study, researchers gave pregnant women from one hundred to
two hundred micro curies that's three point seven to seven
(28:17):
point four m b q of iodine one one, which
is radioactive, in order to study the women's aborted embryos
in an attempt to discover at what stage and to
what extent radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In another study,
researchers gave twenty five newborn babies who were under thirty
six hours old and wade from five and a half
(28:39):
to eight and a half pounds um iodine one either
orally or through an injection, so that they could measure
the amount of iodine and their thyroid glands. Yikes. And
they kind of had it easy if they survived, because
prisoners of Washington and Oregon state at least those two states,
(28:59):
had their testicles are radiated. UM soldiers were exposed to
nuclear fallout. School children had radium rods inserted into their
nose the same way that those uh what what what
what were they called the pinchers the forceps that are
used to pull the brains out of mummies or out
(29:19):
of corpses during the process of mummification. Uh That radium
rods shoved up their nose. And there were also cases
where we we've talked about this a little bit before,
where radioactive chemicals in a gaseous form were released over
US and Canadian cities. Measuring the health effects of radioactive
fallout from nuclear bomb test? Is that like the St.
(29:41):
Louis one we spoke about on Yeah, And then there's
something else. There's a thing called Operations Sunshine. That sounds
fun and nice, right, it's Operation Sunshine. What is that, noll? Yeah,
it's basically body snatching. So fifteen hundred sample cadavers, many
of them babies and young children, were taken from countries
(30:04):
from Australia to Europe, often without their parents consent or knowledge,
and were used for exposure experiments. And this very misleadingly
named Operation Sunshine is that to see the effects on
a cadaver of radiation, see the effects on human tissue
(30:25):
depending on the UH, depending on the state of decay
of the corps. I wonder how much they actually learned
from that study that. I mean, it seems pretty brutal,
but at least it's cadavers. Well, we have seen that
sciences such a double edged sword. Some of the most
valuable life saving medical information has come from horrific acts
of war. And I know, folks that it may sound
(30:45):
as though Matt Noel and I are unfairly picking on
the good old us of a. We are presenting facts
that are not theories of the things that occurred in
this nation's his three. But we are by no means
dismissing the other experiments that occurred in other countries around
(31:08):
the same time. In Russia, for instance, there was a
nuclear exercise code named Snowball in ninety four. They detonated
an r D S four nuclear bomb. This bomb is
as powerful as the two bombs used in the American
strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The stated goal of the
(31:28):
operation was military training to break through heavily fortified defensive lines.
But what they ended up doing is exposing forty five
thousand soldiers to the epicenter of a nuclear blast. Not
during the time. They didn't drop the bomb on them,
but they dropped the bomb and they said go go
in there. So when we think about how disturbing and
(31:51):
unethical it is for dozens and dozens of children to
be exposed to any kind of radiation without their knowledge,
we also have to remember this is a world in
which other countries were also experimenting to two scales that
we cannot and we we we may never know the
(32:12):
scope of at this point. And yeah, because they're dealing
with the new technology that they weren't sure about. Forty
five thousands seems like a whole lot of test subjects
for you know, a single pool or for one big
study that sounds that sounds a little overkill to me
to do that, you know, send a hundred guys in
(32:34):
then yeah, right, And there have been other experiments in
different countries. Of course, the horrific things that groups of
people can do to other groups of people when they
decide there for one reason or another sub human right.
The same the same brutal statistic experiments that occurred in
(32:55):
World War Two in both the European and Pacific theaters
continued a degree today in places across the world. And
you know, maybe those countries don't have a significant cash
of resources. So why would you stop the concentration camps
in North Korea? Is the question that the real politics
(33:16):
fans are asking themselves. And this leads us to I mean,
there we do have to put some historical context in this.
The the idea of informed consent as we understand it
now from an ethical viewpoint, didn't really exist back then,
and they didn't to Matt's point, like they didn't know
what the full effects of this radiation might be they were,
(33:40):
they were learning something that they strongly felt was for
the greater good. But uh, with the fern Old experiments
were specifically talking about children who perhaps could not consent
legally to do this kind of testing, didn't have parents
or guardians that could truly consent to it, and were
misinformed or just not informed about the you know, the
(34:03):
experiments that we're going on. It does give it an
extra creepy layer of exploit exploitativeness. Yeah, in my mind,
there's a great moment in the hearing where and I'm
not being sarcastic, I don't really I believe in sincerity,
there is a sincerely, great, profound moment in the hearing
(34:23):
where they're one of the senators or one of the
representatives is speaking to one of the officials from M
I T. And they say, well, we didn't think we
were doing harm. Uh. You know, this amount of radiation
they're being exposed to is less than the amount of
radiation I exposed myself to when I used the X
ray foot machine at the shoe store, which those were
(34:44):
fairly common. Some our listeners from that time may recognize
that and also be aware that those did greatly increase
people's chances of cancer. Uh, we just didn't know. It
was just fun to do. But he said that, Semit guy,
and he says, well, you know what's the harm essentially,
And and the representative or the congressional officials says, you know,
(35:06):
that's that's a great point. So why didn't you get
anybody from one of our fine private schools here in Massachusetts?
Why didn't you tell them what was going on and
ask them if they wanted to do it, which I
which I thought was a powerful moment. Well. Yeah, and
another question that was asked in that that a similar
(35:27):
exchange that occurred during those hearings was would you have
allowed your child to join the science club if you knew?
If you knew what was happening? Yeah, that's interesting. Even
just the idea of it as a science club is
really predatory sounding to me, you know, like it's it's
it's certainly they weren't doing fun science activities, you know,
(35:49):
they weren't experiment and who knows what happened to us
in space camp just seems like that's true. Wait, what
happens to space camp stage the vegas of NASA? But
but you know what I mean? I mean I just
feel like I feel like it has it's almost like
a creepy van that's just free candy on it, you know,
like I don't know it just that's it gets very
(36:10):
achy to me. Yeah, I see what you're saying. And
it is exploitative, especially to take children who have the
odds stacked against them uh socially and and probably would
never have ordinarily encountered an opportunity of such charity. And
it turned out to be a windowless band that said
free candy on the side. But when when we see this,
(36:32):
we we have to understand that these sorts of things
are exactly what happened when people fall into the slippery
slope of the greater good, because people's greater goods are
not always the same thing. And then you know, if
this is wartime research and you're scientists here and you're saying, well,
(36:53):
there is a one in two thousand percent chance, there's
a one out of two thousand chants that I will
directly give one of these children an inoperable tumor or
cancer uh later in their lives. But in doing so,
I am essentially sacrificed in this child to save the
lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the future.
(37:15):
I mean, is that is that true or is that
something people tell themselves in the wee hours when they
can't sleep. Yeah, I think it's both right. It could.
It could very well be true with any of these
kind of experiments that are awful for an individual or
even a large group of people. But in the end,
(37:35):
as we saw from the unit one from the concentration
camp studies, you know that research was kept and used
right right, Yes, we have. We have an our earlier
podcast on human experimentation. Uh, we we have an exploration
of how that occurred, the kind of devil's bargain that
the Allied countries made at the close of World War Two,
(37:59):
And just like that, the fern Old research that was
done on the Science Club was used to see how
nutrients go throughout the body, how they're either excreted or absorbed.
I mean, it's pretty awful. It was later used in
some osteoporosis research exactly. So we'd like to know what
you think about this, Ladies and gentlemen, do you think
(38:21):
this kind of experimentation continues today? Now? I know people
who really genuinely believe in Kim trails. I know, they
get a lot of flak on the Internet, and a
lot of people will argue back and forth. It's a
very divisive issue. But for people who are skeptical about that,
about that concept, not the science behind it, if there
(38:43):
is science, But for people who are skeptical about a
government or a state level actors sense of ethics or
responsibility for the health of its people, then we have
to consider things like this happen are are happening now,
probably you know somewhere in the world. So what does
(39:03):
it make you think? Do you do you think this
stuff is worth it? Do you think it could have
happened in a different way? Do you think that future
historians will shed light on what may be happening now
that we don't know about. We'd like to hear from
you and to prove that we are listening. It's time
for shut Atkins. Our first shout out goes to Kyle
(39:28):
p who wrote us an email. He suggests that we
make an episode about the psychology behind the mind of
a conspiracy theorist. Oh how he wants us to look
at the patterns, perspective, and mindset of a theorist um
whether it's wanting to believe there's someone in control, just
distrust in authority, mental illness, or being aware of accepted
(39:49):
conspiracies and remaining skeptical on others. H He wants us
to examine why theorists are so obsessed with seeking and
researching the truth. That's pretty good. It like an overall
examination of the mindset of conspiracy realists. What do you think, guys? Yeah,
I'm into it, so thanks for writing, Kyle. Thanks so
(40:12):
much for checking out the show, Kyle. Our second shout
out of the week comes to us via Ashby gray Uh.
Ashby says recently discovered conspiracy stuff and stuff you should
know to get through work. Loving it. Apparently all these
dudes are married. Dang hashtag single a f well, Ashby,
thanks for writing. I think I got a little set
(40:34):
up here from my crew, includes you, Josh and Chuck.
If you're listening, sure I am. I am not in
fact married. I'm the hashtag unmarried AF. Thanks for watching.
I too am unmarried AF. That's right, No, you were
unmarried AF for the records, see the record two out
of the five. That's not bad, Ashby, in all seriousness,
(40:57):
thanks so much for checking out the show and for
anyone who hasn't for some reason checked out our counterpart
stuff you should know, give them, give them an auditory gander.
They're worth the time. Finally, we have one from Connor J.
Via email, Dear Ben Matt and Noel fox Eye the
second Gunman Tiger, blood Flash and light Brown. He didn't
(41:18):
make that up either. That's in the letter. Yes in
the letter, and I'm I'm yes, I'm humbled by that
phenomenal nickname. My name is Connor. I am a twelve
year old from Minden, Louisiana and seriously considering a trip
to Atlanta. Come on along, Connor. Um started out first
on stuff you should Know, just two hundred episodes to go,
moved on to stuff you miss in history class, dabbled
(41:40):
a bit and brain stuff and stuff to blow your mind,
and after all that to rigamarole, listen to your podcasts
and like them better than the rest heavens an idea
for one, what about some more Internet mysteries? You know what, Connor,
we just had a little sit down where we hashed
out some ideas for the calendar coming up, and um,
there's there's an Internet mystery on there that I am
(42:02):
pretty excited about. I kind of had to sell these
guys on it, but I think you're going to like it.
So Connor a shout out to you. Glad you're listening,
and um yeah, look for some Internet mysteries to come.
This concludes our gosh, but wait, it's not quite the
end of the show. What if you're saying, Hey, the
(42:23):
episode's done, but I'm not. There's more stuff that I
want to learn about this. I'm sad. There's no reason
to be sad. Fellow fellow listener, Fellow delver into the
unknown and the dark edges of obscure history. Right you can.
You can check out some fantastic books that have been
(42:45):
written about this and other similar events. I like to
call us further reading because in the past people have
asked this, you know, where can I find out more
about this? Uh So we found two pretty solid books
that you might enjoy, Well, maybe enjoy is not the
right word, fascinating in the fascinating where you can at
least find more stuff. The first one is The Plutonium Files,
(43:06):
Colon America's secret medical experiments in the Cold War, and
that is by Eileen Welsome. The second one is Undo
Risk Colon Secret State Experiments on humans and that is
by Jonathan D. Moreno, who was in those hearings exactly
he was in those hearings. And if you if you
want to get all the sources that we use, or
at least the vast majority of them, if you head
(43:27):
on over to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy Stuff, check
out the episode that's gonna match up with this one,
and in the description you're going to find a huge
list of sources where you can just dig for hours
and hours. So, speaking of social media online things, if
you would like to follow us on Twitter and Facebook
to see some of our stories that don't, for one
(43:48):
reason or another make it to the air, or things
your fellow listeners want other people to know about, find
us at Facebook and Twitter where we are Conspiracy Stuff.
If you'd like to see a picture of our very
own Matt Madman Frederick as a child, all space camped up,
then visit our Instagram where we are Conspiracy Stuff, Show
and If. And that's the end of this classic episode.
(44:11):
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std w y t K. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
(44:33):
they don't want you to know is a production of
I heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio,
visit the i heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Okay. This one is for the fans of cereal and
radiation too great taste that once upon a time m
I t said tastes great together. Yeah, there was some experimentation.
I don't really like it when my cereal glows and
(00:20):
you know, makes me glow. I mean that could be fun, right,
That could be a branded activation, right like trolls maybe? Yeah? Uh,
plutonium bits. I'm just thinking what are different radioactive cereals
could be named? Which you're gonna hear in today's classic episode,
(00:43):
Folks is a true story a conspiracy too feed children
cereal in the nine and fifties, but it's not, thankfully,
the kind of cereal that you would see in a
grocery store today. From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies,
(01:05):
history is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Hello,
welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
name is Noel. You call me Ben. You probably go
(01:25):
by a name as well. That makes this stuff they
don't want you to know. I'm excited about this one today, guys,
because this is a deep cut and before we get
too into it, I want to extend and on air.
Thank you to our colleague and personal friend Josh Clark, who,
(01:47):
as he so often does, accidentally hit us to this.
Oh he posted it or mentioned it in an article
or something. Yeah, he's got a great blog that you
can check out right now if you wish about the
They call it the Coolest Stuff for best stuff we
read this week, and so it's if you've got time.
It's a it's a great place to go. Everybody here
how stuff works, as you might imagine, reads stuff constantly,
(02:12):
and as we found out about a very very strange
historical thing that we thought most folks in American abroad
wouldn't know about. And it starts with two entities that
ostensibly have nothing to do with each other. Yeah, it
feels like apples and tractors to me to just so
(02:35):
separate entities, or or like uh badgers and uh cheetos. Yeah,
hair brushes and hair brushes, or like or like asteroids
and venus fly traps and venus fly traps, exactly, two
things that don't seem like that makes sense together. So
what what what's the first one? The first one is
(02:57):
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. You probably know this as
m I T. It was founded in eighteen sixty one.
This is so, this is an old institution that we're
talking about here, very prestigious. A lot of great thinkers
and makers have come out of this. Oh yeah, it's
been around for a long time. It's won all kinds
of prestigious awards, right, and uh, it's become home to
(03:20):
some of the world's imminent scientist, statesman and economists. Uh,
the guy who invented condensed soup went there. Twenty nine
alumni from M I T of one Nobel prizes. That's
pretty good. And no, you'll like this one especially. More
than one third of the nation of the U S
space flights have included M I T educated astronauts, and
(03:42):
NASA has chosen more M I T graduates to become
astronauts than graduates of any other private institution. Well, I
have a Space Camp shirt, so you're pretty much in.
And I just ordered myself a NASA trucker hat on Amazon,
so that should be arriving any day now. And I'm
about dating at a up and walking around town with
my Space Camp shirt ams hat on dude, speaking of that,
(04:05):
I found my picture of I think I sent it
to you my picture of my Space camp suit when
I was a little wee one, and I'm thinking about
putting on our Instagram. It's when it or at least
send it to me. I'm curious. So another another prestigious
fact about M I T that has nothing to do
with this show is that both hosts of Car Talk
(04:27):
attended M I T. Click and clack, click and out
of control. But anyway, you get the T L d R.
The quick and dirty of this is M I T
for centuries has been this amazing hub or seat of knowledge, innovation, wisdom,
(04:48):
and you know, the future of humanity, for scientific testing,
technology and all things above. And now for something completely different, Yeah,
completely and utterly different. So we have Thing A. Now
we're talking about Thing B, which is Quaker Oats. The
company that would become Quaker Oats actually formed in nineteen
(05:10):
o one when four oat mills, not oat meals. I
feel so bad that I actually wrote that joke in
the nels, and you even have a little ha there
to indicate that it's a joke, because some people might
not have known because it's not a good joke. So
these four mills, what make oats or mill oats? Rather um,
(05:33):
they combined merge, shall we say, into a single super mill.
That was the dawn of the oatmeal Tycoons, which is
a phrase that Ben loves for some reason. Why I
love it because it's an excellent phrase. Remember those old
video games that would be like roller coaster tycoon or uh,
I don't think they had all kinds of park tycoon.
(05:55):
I would love to play a game called oatmeal Tycoon.
I don't know what, you know what, Actually, I think
I like the idea of it more than the actual
thing would be pretty boring. For some reason. When I
think of an oatmeal flacon and I picture some sort
of fat cat smoking a cigar and a giant golden
tub full of oatmeal, I can totally see that. And
(06:15):
and maybe, uh, you know, maybe his cigar looks like
a spoon. I don't know. There a lot of questions
about this. Yeah, let's workshop this one, but um so yeah.
The original Quaker oats trademark began in eighteen seventy seven
when one of the founding Mills used a Quaker esque man.
You may know him sort of looks like a pilgrim,
(06:36):
like you may have been on the Mayflower. You know,
he's got a sort of a long white shocks of hair,
a mane, a bit of a mane, and a tall hat. Right, yeah,
he has Uh, he has that distinctive look that we
have come to associate with Quakers, whether fairly or unfairly. Uh.
The Quaker movement is still around here in the U.
(06:59):
S And abroad, and it's it's a group of very
kind people. And the whole idea of using that image
was that it just instilled trust in someone because there's
the quality is going to be perfection coming from these guys. Well,
I mean and and it is the very picture of wholesomeness.
And that's a word that's often associated with whole grains
(07:22):
and good foods, you know, healthy foods like that. They're
they're wholesome there, that's right, because because oates like this,
they're they're good for you, right Ben, Yeah, right, that's
the idea. They're nutritious. You'll hear, you'll hear some weird
stuff about the Quaker man, right. I love that we're
playing out the wholesome stuff. Nowadays, the company says that
(07:42):
he is just a it's not representing an actual person.
It's just a man who's dressed in Quaker garb, but
the earlier advertising in nineteen o nine identified him as
William Penn, the seventeenth century philosopher. But they, you know,
they later I guess rhet coons that is that the word? Yeah,
because it's evolved so much over time. We're talking about
(08:05):
eighteen seventies, eighteen fifties, even when there was first starting out.
So got side tip ladies and gentlemen if you want
to if you want to impress your serial insider friends,
if you're in the know, they call him Larry. Yeah, yeah,
that's what that's like, the nickname. Anyhow, they started with
(08:26):
Quaker oats and people loved it. This whole Quaker thing
worked very well for them, caught on like gangbusters. Yeah,
and they and they began to grow into other areas,
right like wildfire gangbusters. Right. Yeah. So, for instance, they
started with other breakfast cereals, other food and drink products,
(08:48):
even into unrelated fields. For example, in nineteen sixty nine,
they bought Fisher Price, which many of many of us
listening may recognize as a toy company that's just running
the early early age market. Right now, there's telephones that
the clinky wheels and the face on it and any
of those like classic Toy Story toys that have been
(09:12):
animated in the Toy Story movies were probably originally made
by Fisher Price. Yeah, and so they owned that. The
Oatmeal Plays owned that for a while and then they
spun it off in the nineties, but they were also
involved with making film. Didn't see that one come in,
did you? Yeah? Before researching this, I had no idea
that Quaker Oats had financed Uh, Willy Wonka and the
(09:35):
chocolate factory. What that doesn't It doesn't seem like that, right,
But they they had a reason for this. Um, they
we're gonna be able to use some of the product
names they are used in the film to actually sell
it and leverage it that would become popular through the film.
They wanted to sell gop stoppers. Yeah. And then they
(09:56):
also in two formed US Games, a company that created
as Noel would say, video games for the Atari fifty two.
D Wow. They didn't do so well though to that
quicker guy's got his fingers and all kinds of different
stuff he's got, He's got his mits and all kinds
of oats, you know. Uh. In eighty three they bought
(10:19):
Van Camps being products and uh Stokely Van Camp and
then Gatorade and currently they're owned by PepsiCo. So in
their own way, they have also become quite successful. M
I T. Seat of Learning. Quaker Oats a global company
that started with oatmeal and then quickly cornered so many
(10:40):
other markets. As you can see, this company is a
very little in common until that is they joined forces.
And to really look at this, we need to look
at the history of competition between different companies and different
products back in the day. So, uh, nineteen forties, let's say,
let's go back there after its founding. It's doing really well,
(11:04):
expanding its markets, going to new places in the United States,
going all across the Great Lands. UM. And it's trying
to dominate overall the cereal industry. What you eat for breakfast,
it should be this. Well, their chief rival was an
outfit that you may also know called cream of Wheat, Right,
you've heard of this. It's a wheat I think it's
(11:27):
simolina product that's kind of similar to oatmeal, UM, but
it's a little creamier. It's a little creamier. Um. But
they were they were getting big too around that time.
But it wasn't their only antagonist. Well, another antagonist here
was science, because at the time, a widely publicized study
(11:47):
actually found that plant based grains contained an acid called
fight tate, which could actually hinder your digestive system um
in a way that would keep minerals and vitamins like
cow semen iron from being properly digested. A right. Yes,
And there's another less obvious point here. Longtime listeners, you
(12:08):
know what's happening concurrently in the US at this time.
This hubbub occurs in the nineteen forties. It's a few
years after bacon inexplicably becomes a fundamental part of the
American breakfast? Was it inexplicably to say? That's a great point? No,
because we explicate it uh fairly handily in some earlier episodes.
(12:31):
The first episode e Yes our podcast on Edward Berne's
a k A. The Father's Spen a k a. The
Father pr A, the father of Bernet sauce a, the
nephew of Sigmund Freud. Uh. So he was We won't
get too into detail about this, but he was tasked
(12:53):
by a plate An outfit called the beech Nut Company
to popularize some leftover port product that they had and
he used some fairly clever but indirect methods to make
bacon a popular thing, because beforehand, people maybe a bowl
of boo meal, maybe a croissant and some fruit coffee.
(13:17):
I would like in it to the way, all of
a sudden, all of these taco bell products have like
Doritos in them. You know, I think it's sort of
like a marketing ploy to get rid of all the
surplus doritos. That's my theory. I don't know if that's
true or not, but you know, this is a pretty
brilliant example of like, hey, let's take up meat scraps
and turn them into meat gold. Yeah. I think about
(13:39):
what bacon is, right, It's essentially fat back, it's the
fatty stuff. And let's also think about how different bacon
in the US is to bacon in Europe or bacon
in other parts of the world. And the way he
got it done right was he got doctors to discuss
how important protein is. Right, he had a study. I
hope you can hear the air quotes. I'm making, ladies
(14:01):
and gentlemen a study exactly. So, so we've got we've
got Quaker oats and they're vying for competition the serial market.
They have an enemy in this publicized study, and people
are worried about nutrition, but they're also thinking, well, bacon's
just better. They needed a plan, prefably, not just an
(14:22):
ad campaign, but something that felt more objective, a study,
if you will, to contradict the other study floating around
in the zeitgeist. And they had a stroke of luck.
So they found out that the first entity we discussed,
m I T was going to be studying nutrition in
the human body. That's the thing. Yes, So you know,
if they hear about this, somebody in one of their
(14:44):
offices just went, eureka, we're doing this. They jumped at
the chance to fund the research that m I T
is trying to do with this, because they thought this
was going to be exactly what they needed, right, to
provide satisfactory evidence not just of cereals been fits in general,
but of Quaker oats in particular, rather than those creeps
that cream of wheat or beach nut. Yeah. I don't,
(15:07):
I don't know if I don't think they were creeps.
Just I thought it sounded good. So they needed a
group of people, right, They needed an experiment and a
control group. They needed ideally some young guinea pigs. As
Mill said, this was especially touted as nutritious for the
young and the growing. They needed kids would sign on willingly.
(15:27):
They needed kids who wouldn't ask questions, and we'll learn
more about those kids they selected right after a word
from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy. From approximately
(15:55):
fifty seven to seventy three children from the Walter E.
For Old State School were recruited to join what was
referred to as the Fernalde Science Club, which was at
m I Team UM. Fernalde was a home for the
quote say is it really really nasty? Term feeble minded?
(16:15):
That refers to what we would now describe as being
developmentally disabled kids UM, and in many of these cases,
kids who simply have been abandoned by their parents. That's
an important factor here. The children at the fern Old School,
we're not all disabled in some way. They I don't
know the politically correct terms for this. UM. The terminology
(16:39):
that's used in the research we were done like that
was written in the nineteen forties, is much less than UM.
I would say satisfactory from a politically correct standpoint. That
is an important factor here. Not all of the children
were disabled. Many of them were just abandoned or you know,
they needed a place to stay. So children with special needs,
(17:00):
whether those needs are due to a developmental factor or
whether they're due to a social factor such as being abandoned.
So for these kids who are, let's face it, folks
having a rough time in life, Uh, this m I T.
Science Club seems like a windfall. It grants the children's
special privileges. They go on field trips, they get neat
(17:20):
toys and swag like Mickey Mouse watches, for example, and
they get special events. You get to go to baseball
games and met socks and stuff. They also got nutritious
meals all the time. Yeah, at very controlled intervals and
very high in calcium and iron. Talk about talk about
a catbird seat, right, what the catbird seat? It's a
(17:42):
good seat? Have you you've heard that phrase? Right? Of course?
I don't know this the catbird seat. I mean, I
don't know what. We don't know what it means. It's
just it means it's here in the best place. It's
a good situation. I'm going to say it's a cat indoors.
I'm assuming, oh they can grab birds maybe, or maybe
it's outdoors on a seat, digically able to catch birds. Okay, yeah,
(18:03):
well maybe I should also learn the etymology of these
colloquialisms plus about them now, all right, But but the
point is it would have been. It seems like it
would ostensibly be a great thing for these disadvantaged children. However,
not all was as it seemed. See here's the thing,
(18:23):
you guys. Uh, some of these children were unable to
read for various reasons when they were told to sign
and consent to joining the Science Club. Also, the children
who actually had parents or guardians to uh to consult
about this, well, they weren't very they weren't much better
off because what was sent to them who wasn't exactly
(18:47):
truthful in every case. Yeah, it wasn't as transparent as
one would imagine. And we have a quote to prove it.
And this is an excerpt from one of the notes
written home to the parents of a child where Westing
permission for them to join the Science Club. And these
letters evolved over time, as because we're talking about a
(19:08):
wide range of dates here, from forties to the fifties.
But this is just one little snapshot of one of
those letters. I'll give us a go a few fellas,
don't mind um quote. We are considering the selection of
a group of our brighter patients, including name of child,
to receive a special diet rich in irons and vitamins,
(19:30):
or as I like to call them, vitamins for a
period of time. These studies will cause no discomfort or
change in the patient other than a possible improvement. I
hope that you have no objection that your son or
daughter is voluntarily participating in this study. And again that
is an exert from a sample permission letter sent home
(19:52):
to the parents or guardians of these children. You have
to love the phrasing right as I hope that you
have no objection that your son is voluntarily participating means
it's already happening. That's already So what M. I. T
Did not tell anyone, including the parents, including the children,
and maybe even the functionaries at the state school, was
(20:12):
that the calcium and iron that they were feeding to
these science club participants was irradiated. Radioactive calcium and iron
functioned like tracers, so the scientists could watch the progression
of these radioactive substances through the children's body during the
digestion process. And it should be noted that I mean
today there are radioactive materials are used in this way.
(20:35):
For example, a stress test, patients are injected with radioactive dye.
They can then track the movement of it through their
bloodstream in order to see that everything's you know, in
tiptop shape, what have you. But this was not this
was not the same as that. This was much more
of a experimental approach. Yeah. And also, if you're signing
up nowadays for that kind of test, you know what's happening.
(21:00):
You're not You're not being told you're joining a fun
club for baseball games. You know what's happening. There's it's
a usually one or two times that's going to happen
in you know what, maybe a follow up, you have
to do it again. So the dosing that you're getting
is fairly low. We have a specific example of two
of these tests. Yeah. The first, the first, they would
(21:20):
say a battery of tests occurred in ninety that's when
seventeen boys eight this you know, radioactive iron in their meals.
It was an isotope that apparently can harm blood and
specifically the organ the spleen, which we don't think about
very often. Um, and and the whole thing here again
(21:41):
is dosages, right, That's what you have to worry about
with anything like this. So they were the boys were
being exposed to between five hundred and forty four two
one thousand, twenty four miller rems of radiation over the
course of seven different meals. And just to compare this
dosage with the amount of radiation the three of us
(22:02):
or anyone listening might receive throughout the course of a
year in the US. In the US in particular, that
would be around three h miller rams from all the
different natural, naturally occurring sources of radiation sunlight, bananas, things like, yeah, exactly. Uh.
And then also the team calculated calcium digestion by adding
radioactive radioactive forms calcium to the breakfast milk of nineteen
(22:26):
boys and this time each kid only at one radioactive
meal and expose their bones to thirty five milli rims
of radiation. By comparison, again, during their lifetimes, most Americans
will receive a hundred and ten miller rams of radiation
on their bones from the fallout of nuclear weapon testing.
So the next question you probably have is how did
(22:50):
people learn about that? Because the passages that we just
told you, with the details of some of these illegal,
unethical test came to light through US through quality journalism. Yes,
we learned about it from Scott Allen who was writing
for the Boston Globe, and he found out about it
because a lot of documents around that time had been
(23:13):
declassified about this testing that was occurring throughout the United States,
but mostly in Boston. M Yeah, and this this led
to some pretty pretty significant reactions in in Congress. Right. Well, Eventually,
in ninety four, what happens is that President Bill Clinton
(23:34):
forms the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments or because
we live in a world that loves awkward acronyms, acre
are uh. It was chaired by it was shared by
Dr Ruth Faden of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of
bio Ethics, and Clinton's this this happens to, like Matt said,
(23:57):
the way these documents got released it and Secretary of Energy,
whose named Hazel O'Leary, had instituted an openness policy. And
so one point six million pages of classified records from
the time of the Cold War and just after World
War Two and beyond were released. No wiki leaks, no Snowden,
(24:18):
no UM, no Pentagon papers. The government itself, the government itself,
and that is how that is how these other journalists
found out about this. But the records made it clear
that when Quaker Oats and M I. T were working
together on this kind of stuff, the Atomic Energy Commission
was also providing funding. And not just this, but they
(24:39):
have been sponsoring tests, multiple tests, and multiple situations on
effects of radiation on the human body. Yeah, as it
turned out, citizens of the United States who had checked
into various hospitals for numerous different ailments um were secretly
being injected with varying amounts of plutonium and other radioactive
(24:59):
material areals without their knowledge or we assume they're consent. Yes,
If you want to learn more specifically about this happening
at the fern Old Research Center, there is a paper
you can find on archive dot org called Human Subjects
Research Radiation Experimentation. It's part of the hearing that Ben
(25:19):
just mentioned that when Bill Clinton and the administration created
this group. This is one of the hearings where they
have all the findings and interview tons of people, even
two of the children who were experimented on at the
fern Old School, right, and their interviews with several of
them as you said there, it's strange to hear some
(25:40):
of the descriptions. One thing we do want to point
out about this study in particular is that despite congressional investigation,
despite declassification, there are still conflicting numbers on some of this.
So that's why you're hearing Nolan, Matt and I say
stuff like prety to seventy something children, and you might
(26:02):
see numbers as high as ninety and the age ranges
very widely. In one of those people that's interviewed says
he was seven at the time, but then most of
the reporting puts the children in their teens, so you know,
it's kind of crazy. Well, in other words, it feels
like a lot of this information information is just scratching
the surface of what the full extent of some of
(26:24):
these experiments might have looked like. So you know, it
implies to me that there were more than one unethical
radiation experiment going on. That's an excellent point, And speaking
of scratching the surface, you're right, we have yet to
begin looking at the other instances of Cold War radiation experiments,
(26:45):
but we will after a word from our spots, and
we're back. As we said before the break, this is
one instance of a radioactive experiment conducted on unsuspecting, unconsenting civilians.
(27:12):
And for those of you in the know about the
effects of radiation on the human body, it's not as
if these people were shocked or injected with some sort
of instant cancer. It did, however, uh. It did, however,
expose them to an abnormal amount of radiation. And it
is far from the only instance of this. We found,
(27:36):
in the course of just a little bit of digging,
various numerous situations in which unsuspecting citizens, some even unborn,
were treated as guinea pigs by Uncle Sam for the
for the purpose of learning more about the effects of radiation.
(27:56):
And did you notice what we just said, unborn? That's right.
In nineteen fifty three, the US Atomic Energy commissioned man
several studies at the University of Iowa on the health
effects of radioactive iodine in newborns and pregnant women. In
one study, researchers gave pregnant women from one hundred to
two hundred micro curies that's three point seven to seven
(28:17):
point four m b q of iodine one one, which
is radioactive, in order to study the women's aborted embryos
in an attempt to discover at what stage and to
what extent radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In another study,
researchers gave twenty five newborn babies who were under thirty
six hours old and wade from five and a half
(28:39):
to eight and a half pounds um iodine one either
orally or through an injection, so that they could measure
the amount of iodine and their thyroid glands. Yikes. And
they kind of had it easy if they survived, because
prisoners of Washington and Oregon state at least those two states,
(28:59):
had their testicles are radiated. UM soldiers were exposed to
nuclear fallout. School children had radium rods inserted into their
nose the same way that those uh what what what
what were they called the pinchers the forceps that are
used to pull the brains out of mummies or out
(29:19):
of corpses during the process of mummification. Uh That radium
rods shoved up their nose. And there were also cases
where we we've talked about this a little bit before,
where radioactive chemicals in a gaseous form were released over
US and Canadian cities. Measuring the health effects of radioactive
fallout from nuclear bomb test? Is that like the St.
(29:41):
Louis one we spoke about on Yeah, And then there's
something else. There's a thing called Operations Sunshine. That sounds
fun and nice, right, it's Operation Sunshine. What is that, noll? Yeah,
it's basically body snatching. So fifteen hundred sample cadavers, many
of them babies and young children, were taken from countries
(30:04):
from Australia to Europe, often without their parents consent or knowledge,
and were used for exposure experiments. And this very misleadingly
named Operation Sunshine is that to see the effects on
a cadaver of radiation, see the effects on human tissue
(30:25):
depending on the UH, depending on the state of decay
of the corps. I wonder how much they actually learned
from that study that. I mean, it seems pretty brutal,
but at least it's cadavers. Well, we have seen that
sciences such a double edged sword. Some of the most
valuable life saving medical information has come from horrific acts
of war. And I know, folks that it may sound
(30:45):
as though Matt Noel and I are unfairly picking on
the good old us of a. We are presenting facts
that are not theories of the things that occurred in
this nation's his three. But we are by no means
dismissing the other experiments that occurred in other countries around
(31:08):
the same time. In Russia, for instance, there was a
nuclear exercise code named Snowball in ninety four. They detonated
an r D S four nuclear bomb. This bomb is
as powerful as the two bombs used in the American
strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The stated goal of the
(31:28):
operation was military training to break through heavily fortified defensive lines.
But what they ended up doing is exposing forty five
thousand soldiers to the epicenter of a nuclear blast. Not
during the time. They didn't drop the bomb on them,
but they dropped the bomb and they said go go
in there. So when we think about how disturbing and
(31:51):
unethical it is for dozens and dozens of children to
be exposed to any kind of radiation without their knowledge,
we also have to remember this is a world in
which other countries were also experimenting to two scales that
we cannot and we we we may never know the
(32:12):
scope of at this point. And yeah, because they're dealing
with the new technology that they weren't sure about. Forty
five thousands seems like a whole lot of test subjects
for you know, a single pool or for one big
study that sounds that sounds a little overkill to me
to do that, you know, send a hundred guys in
(32:34):
then yeah, right, And there have been other experiments in
different countries. Of course, the horrific things that groups of
people can do to other groups of people when they
decide there for one reason or another sub human right.
The same the same brutal statistic experiments that occurred in
(32:55):
World War Two in both the European and Pacific theaters
continued a degree today in places across the world. And
you know, maybe those countries don't have a significant cash
of resources. So why would you stop the concentration camps
in North Korea? Is the question that the real politics
(33:16):
fans are asking themselves. And this leads us to I mean,
there we do have to put some historical context in this.
The the idea of informed consent as we understand it
now from an ethical viewpoint, didn't really exist back then,
and they didn't to Matt's point, like they didn't know
what the full effects of this radiation might be they were,
(33:40):
they were learning something that they strongly felt was for
the greater good. But uh, with the fern Old experiments
were specifically talking about children who perhaps could not consent
legally to do this kind of testing, didn't have parents
or guardians that could truly consent to it, and were
misinformed or just not informed about the you know, the
(34:03):
experiments that we're going on. It does give it an
extra creepy layer of exploit exploitativeness. Yeah, in my mind,
there's a great moment in the hearing where and I'm
not being sarcastic, I don't really I believe in sincerity,
there is a sincerely, great, profound moment in the hearing
(34:23):
where they're one of the senators or one of the
representatives is speaking to one of the officials from M
I T. And they say, well, we didn't think we
were doing harm. Uh. You know, this amount of radiation
they're being exposed to is less than the amount of
radiation I exposed myself to when I used the X
ray foot machine at the shoe store, which those were
(34:44):
fairly common. Some our listeners from that time may recognize
that and also be aware that those did greatly increase
people's chances of cancer. Uh, we just didn't know. It
was just fun to do. But he said that, Semit guy,
and he says, well, you know what's the harm essentially,
And and the representative or the congressional officials says, you know,
(35:06):
that's that's a great point. So why didn't you get
anybody from one of our fine private schools here in Massachusetts?
Why didn't you tell them what was going on and
ask them if they wanted to do it, which I
which I thought was a powerful moment. Well. Yeah, and
another question that was asked in that that a similar
(35:27):
exchange that occurred during those hearings was would you have
allowed your child to join the science club if you knew?
If you knew what was happening? Yeah, that's interesting. Even
just the idea of it as a science club is
really predatory sounding to me, you know, like it's it's
it's certainly they weren't doing fun science activities, you know,
(35:49):
they weren't experiment and who knows what happened to us
in space camp just seems like that's true. Wait, what
happens to space camp stage the vegas of NASA? But
but you know what I mean? I mean I just
feel like I feel like it has it's almost like
a creepy van that's just free candy on it, you know,
like I don't know it just that's it gets very
(36:10):
achy to me. Yeah, I see what you're saying. And
it is exploitative, especially to take children who have the
odds stacked against them uh socially and and probably would
never have ordinarily encountered an opportunity of such charity. And
it turned out to be a windowless band that said
free candy on the side. But when when we see this,
(36:32):
we we have to understand that these sorts of things
are exactly what happened when people fall into the slippery
slope of the greater good, because people's greater goods are
not always the same thing. And then you know, if
this is wartime research and you're scientists here and you're saying, well,
(36:53):
there is a one in two thousand percent chance, there's
a one out of two thousand chants that I will
directly give one of these children an inoperable tumor or
cancer uh later in their lives. But in doing so,
I am essentially sacrificed in this child to save the
lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the future.
(37:15):
I mean, is that is that true or is that
something people tell themselves in the wee hours when they
can't sleep. Yeah, I think it's both right. It could.
It could very well be true with any of these
kind of experiments that are awful for an individual or
even a large group of people. But in the end,
(37:35):
as we saw from the unit one from the concentration
camp studies, you know that research was kept and used
right right, Yes, we have. We have an our earlier
podcast on human experimentation. Uh, we we have an exploration
of how that occurred, the kind of devil's bargain that
the Allied countries made at the close of World War Two,
(37:59):
And just like that, the fern Old research that was
done on the Science Club was used to see how
nutrients go throughout the body, how they're either excreted or absorbed.
I mean, it's pretty awful. It was later used in
some osteoporosis research exactly. So we'd like to know what
you think about this, Ladies and gentlemen, do you think
(38:21):
this kind of experimentation continues today? Now? I know people
who really genuinely believe in Kim trails. I know, they
get a lot of flak on the Internet, and a
lot of people will argue back and forth. It's a
very divisive issue. But for people who are skeptical about that,
about that concept, not the science behind it, if there
(38:43):
is science, But for people who are skeptical about a
government or a state level actors sense of ethics or
responsibility for the health of its people, then we have
to consider things like this happen are are happening now,
probably you know somewhere in the world. So what does
(39:03):
it make you think? Do you do you think this
stuff is worth it? Do you think it could have
happened in a different way? Do you think that future
historians will shed light on what may be happening now
that we don't know about. We'd like to hear from
you and to prove that we are listening. It's time
for shut Atkins. Our first shout out goes to Kyle
(39:28):
p who wrote us an email. He suggests that we
make an episode about the psychology behind the mind of
a conspiracy theorist. Oh how he wants us to look
at the patterns, perspective, and mindset of a theorist um
whether it's wanting to believe there's someone in control, just
distrust in authority, mental illness, or being aware of accepted
(39:49):
conspiracies and remaining skeptical on others. H He wants us
to examine why theorists are so obsessed with seeking and
researching the truth. That's pretty good. It like an overall
examination of the mindset of conspiracy realists. What do you think, guys? Yeah,
I'm into it, so thanks for writing, Kyle. Thanks so
(40:12):
much for checking out the show, Kyle. Our second shout
out of the week comes to us via Ashby gray Uh.
Ashby says recently discovered conspiracy stuff and stuff you should
know to get through work. Loving it. Apparently all these
dudes are married. Dang hashtag single a f well, Ashby,
thanks for writing. I think I got a little set
(40:34):
up here from my crew, includes you, Josh and Chuck.
If you're listening, sure I am. I am not in
fact married. I'm the hashtag unmarried AF. Thanks for watching.
I too am unmarried AF. That's right, No, you were
unmarried AF for the records, see the record two out
of the five. That's not bad, Ashby, in all seriousness,
(40:57):
thanks so much for checking out the show and for
anyone who hasn't for some reason checked out our counterpart
stuff you should know, give them, give them an auditory gander.
They're worth the time. Finally, we have one from Connor J.
Via email, Dear Ben Matt and Noel fox Eye the
second Gunman Tiger, blood Flash and light Brown. He didn't
(41:18):
make that up either. That's in the letter. Yes in
the letter, and I'm I'm yes, I'm humbled by that
phenomenal nickname. My name is Connor. I am a twelve
year old from Minden, Louisiana and seriously considering a trip
to Atlanta. Come on along, Connor. Um started out first
on stuff you should Know, just two hundred episodes to go,
moved on to stuff you miss in history class, dabbled
(41:40):
a bit and brain stuff and stuff to blow your mind,
and after all that to rigamarole, listen to your podcasts
and like them better than the rest heavens an idea
for one, what about some more Internet mysteries? You know what, Connor,
we just had a little sit down where we hashed
out some ideas for the calendar coming up, and um,
there's there's an Internet mystery on there that I am
(42:02):
pretty excited about. I kind of had to sell these
guys on it, but I think you're going to like it.
So Connor a shout out to you. Glad you're listening,
and um yeah, look for some Internet mysteries to come.
This concludes our gosh, but wait, it's not quite the
end of the show. What if you're saying, Hey, the
(42:23):
episode's done, but I'm not. There's more stuff that I
want to learn about this. I'm sad. There's no reason
to be sad. Fellow fellow listener, Fellow delver into the
unknown and the dark edges of obscure history. Right you can.
You can check out some fantastic books that have been
(42:45):
written about this and other similar events. I like to
call us further reading because in the past people have
asked this, you know, where can I find out more
about this? Uh So we found two pretty solid books
that you might enjoy, Well, maybe enjoy is not the
right word, fascinating in the fascinating where you can at
least find more stuff. The first one is The Plutonium Files,
(43:06):
Colon America's secret medical experiments in the Cold War, and
that is by Eileen Welsome. The second one is Undo
Risk Colon Secret State Experiments on humans and that is
by Jonathan D. Moreno, who was in those hearings exactly
he was in those hearings. And if you if you
want to get all the sources that we use, or
at least the vast majority of them, if you head
(43:27):
on over to YouTube dot com slash conspiracy Stuff, check
out the episode that's gonna match up with this one,
and in the description you're going to find a huge
list of sources where you can just dig for hours
and hours. So, speaking of social media online things, if
you would like to follow us on Twitter and Facebook
to see some of our stories that don't, for one
(43:48):
reason or another make it to the air, or things
your fellow listeners want other people to know about, find
us at Facebook and Twitter where we are Conspiracy Stuff.
If you'd like to see a picture of our very
own Matt Madman Frederick as a child, all space camped up,
then visit our Instagram where we are Conspiracy Stuff, Show
and If. And that's the end of this classic episode.
(44:11):
If you have any thoughts or questions about this episode,
you can get into contact with us in a number
of different ways. One of the best is to give
us a call. Our number is one eight three three
std w y t K. If you don't want to
do that, you can send us a good old fashioned email.
We are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff
(44:33):
they don't want you to know is a production of
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