TAB E DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION PURPOSES ONLY MEMORANDUM TO: Members of the Knoxville Small Panel FROM: Advisory Committee Staff DATE: May 19, 1995 RE: Boston Project Uranium Injection Experiments The Health Physics Division at the Atomic Energy Commission facility Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) initiated a cooperative study with Dr. William Sweet at Massachusetts General Hospital in 1953 in order to collect information on the distribution and excretion of uranium which could be used in reevaluating occupational safety standards for uranium. Eleven terminal patients were injected with uranium at Massachusetts General Hospital; evidently the data obtained from three of these subjects, however, were never published in ORNL reports on the study. (See Attachment 1)(1) Dr. Sweet's reported interest in the experiment was the possible therapeutic use of uranium in neutron capture treatment of brain tumors. This would have been a completely new approach from that of the earlier boron-neutron work at Brookhaven National Laboratory (which was based on the neutron/alpha reaction); the hope for enriched uranium was that, if it localized in the tumor in a high enough concentration, a neutron beam might destroy the tumor by the production of fission fragments.(2) The formation of the joint study was facilitated by Harold Hodge with the Atomic Energy Project at University of Rochester, who had been involved with the Manhattan District's metabolism studies at University of Rochester, and who "was familiar with the activities of both groups and encouraged the formation of a joint undertaking to obtain information bearing on the above problem [the estimation of internal radiation dose]."(3) The subjects were described as "virtually all [having] brain tumors of a most malignant type"(4) (emphasis added); furthermore, S. R. Bernard (one of the health physicists at ORNL involved with the study) referenced at least one subject without a brain tumor in a 1979 interview.(5) This raises the question of whether some terminal subjects were used primarily for the distribution part of the study. At least two of the subjects were not comatose at the time of injection. It is still unclear whether consent for the study was obtained, either from the patients who were not comatose at the time of injection, or from the families of the comatose subjects. The Boston Project produced valuable data on the distribution of uranium in the human body and doses to various organs, which the earlier Manhattan District uranium studies had not provided. The data obtained indicated that uranium, at least at the dose levels used in the Boston Project, localized in the human kidney at higher concentrations than small animal data had predicted, and that therefore maximum permissible levels for uranium in plant water and air might be too high. (See Attachment 2)(6) Regarding the implications of the experimental results for the possible use of uranium in brain cancer therapy, Newell Stannard wrote in 1988 that "[t]here was not enough concentration of the uranium in tumor tissue to encourage further forays in the therapeutic realm."(7) 1. Eckerman to Berven, January 7, 1994, Advisory Committee No. DOE- 051094-A-425, p. 1. 2. Stannard, Radioactivity and Health: A History, October 1988, Office of Scientific and Technical Information, p. 101. 3. Bernard, Struxness et al., "A Study of the Distribution and Excretion of Uranium in Man: An Interim Report," Advisory Committee No. DOE-051094-A-365, p. 3. 4. Bernard, Struxness et al., "A Study of the Distribution and Excretion of Uranium in Man: An Interim Report," Advisory Committee No. DOE-051094-A-365, p. 6. 5. Bernard, 1979 interview with J. Newell Stannard, p. 8. 6. Bernard, "Maximum Permissible Amounts of Natural Uranium in the Body, Air and Drinking Water Based on Human Experimental Data," Advisory Committee No. DOE-051094-A-404, p. 289. 7. Stannard, Radioactivity and Health: A History, October 1988, Office of Scientific and Technical Information, p. 101.