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The AP:
BOSTON --In the dark past of the Fernald School for the disabled (pictured), the nation's oldest publicly funded facility for those with developmental disabilities, some children were subject to Cold War experiments -- including being fed radioactive cereal -- while other patients allegedly were tagged as "morons" even as tests showed them to be normal.
Now two Massachusetts lawmakers want the state to do right by the former residents of the controversial Fernald School, which opened in 1848 and is slated to closed next year.
Rep. Thomas Sannicandro, D-Ashland, has filed a bill requiring the state to apologize for alleged civil rights violations among patients at the Waltham facility. And Rep. Thomas Stanley, D-Waltham, has filed a bill calling for a formal investigation of the misclassification of patients there.
Both bills will be heard during a hearing Tuesday before Joint Committee on Children, Families and Persons with Disabilities.
"I have little doubt that these things occurred," Stanley said. "But if anything is to be done about it, doesn't there have to be some sort of formal review? You can't just take a person's word for it or read the book and automatically say the state should give certain financial benefits for it."
He proposes a panel of three representatives, three senators, the commissioner of mental retardation and four members appointed by the governor. One of them must be a member of the Fernald League, which has been fighting the facility's scheduled closing next June.
Sannicandro, meanwhile, noted President Bill Clinton apologized in 1995 on behalf of the federal government for the tests, conducted in the 1940s and 1950s, in which students were fed breakfast cereals laced with minute amounts of radioactive iron and calcium tracers.
"Everybody there was abused, and we should be all-encompassing as a commonwealth and say we made a mistake," said the lawmaker, whose own son has Down syndrome.
While some have feared an apology could create a financial liability for the state, the representative dismissed that fear.
"President Clinton already formally apologized and I'm not sure what problems that caused," he said.
In the aftermath of that apology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Quaker Oats Co. agreed to pay $1.85 million to children involved in the cereal experiments.
What is now the Fernald Developmental Center was founded in 1848 and is the western hemisphere's oldest publicly funded institution serving people with developmental disabilities.
The school was the site of experiments by MIT and Harvard University from 1946 to 1953 in which young men were given tracer doses of radioactive isotopes.
The experiments were sponsored by Quaker Oats to study the absorption of iron-enriched cereals and calcium-enriched milk.
The school also was the scene of alleged sexual and physical abuse, as well as forced child labor.
Conditions improved dramatically in the 1970s, first through a class-action lawsuit and then the stewardship of U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro.
More recently, former Gov. Mitt Romney ordered the facility closed. In February 2006, Tauro halted patient transfers from Fernald and asked then-U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan to investigate whether the state followed rules on transfers.
Gov. Deval Patrick opted to stay with plans to close Fernald, and the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in October 2008 that shutdown plans could continue.
Patrick has said the facility needed between $14 million and $20 million in capital improvements, and the state's Department of Health and Human Services has said Fernald is the most expensive of the state's six facilities for people with mental retardation.
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the order. The school is slated to close June 30, 2010.
David Kassel, a spokesman for the Fernald League, said he could understand the representatives' efforts, but hoped they didn't confuse the public about the current conditions at Fernald. He said they are vastly improved and there is no patient "warehousing."
"We don't want this to be seen as a reason for saying Fernald should be shut, because (the representatives) are talking about a different era and a different institution," Kassel said. "You really can't compare it to what it is today."
From The AP:
