The Plutonium Files (60 page)

The procedures and goals of the two experiments were very similar, but the type of radiation that the doctors planned to administer to the prisoners’ testicles was different. Heller proposed to bombard testicles with X rays. Paulsen intended eventually to irradiate the testicles of the Washington prisoners with neutrons from a generator developed by scientists from Hanford. But until the generator was ready, his plan was to use a radium source. Paulsen also hoped to explore various substances that could protect against radiation damage, noting that Berkeley scientists had achieved promising results by injecting olive oil in the testes of rats.

Scientists at AEC headquarters and their consultants were simultaneously excited and a little squeamish at the prospect of these experiments. “Because of the uniqueness of this experiment, including the experimental material available, I feel that no opportunity should be overlooked for getting the maximum possible amount of information out of it,” wrote Lauriston Taylor, one of the scientists who helped Robley Evans set the first radiation standards.
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“I think one should also bear in mind the possibility that at some time some ‘do-gooder’ organization may suddenly realize that we are doing radiation experiments on prisoners and cause such a furor as to bring about a political decision to stop the work. This, incidentally, makes it highly important in reporting the work, to pay a good deal of attention to the public relations aspects.”

The long-term consequences of radiation for the human reproductive system had been on the minds of the Manhattan Project/AEC doctors
for at least two decades. Hundreds of animal experiments with mice, rats, sheep, dogs, and donkeys had been performed. But no scientist from within the weapons establishment had ever dared to do the experiments Heller and Paulsen were about to begin. “This proposal is a direct
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attack on our problem,” wrote Charles Edington, an AEC official from headquarters. “I’m for support at the requested level as long as we are not liable.” Then, almost as an afterthought, he mused, “I wonder about possible carcinogenic effects of such treatments.”

In July of 1963 the AEC approved both contracts. The commission apparently saw the two studies as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get the data it needed and to relate and compare the results. Both Heller and Paulsen were asked to proceed cautiously and to “minimize publicity” associated with the program.
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Human experimentation, particularly with unproven drugs, was widespread in prisons throughout the United States at the time the testicular radiation experiments began. But some scientists were already growing uneasy with medical research on captive populations. An official at the National Institutes of Health in 1964 wrote that convicts could not be volunteers in the same sense as free men and women. Prisoners were subject to tacit forms of coercion and more prone to being exposed to risky experiments. “For these reasons it is especially important to discourage prisoners from volunteering for medical projects; and when they are used at all, to utilize projects of truly minimal risk, if any.”
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Meta Heller said scientists and corrections officials felt that it was only a matter of time before such studies would be banned. “They knew the clock was ticking, you bet.”
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Before the clock stopped, Heller and Paulsen in separate experiments irradiated the reproductive organs of 131 men.

Sixty-seven convicts at the Oregon State Prison had their testicles bombarded with anywhere from 8 to 600 rads of radiation between 1963 and 1971. The subjects also underwent numerous testicular biopsies and were vasectomized when their participation was concluded. In addition to the tritiated thymidine, some of the inmates may have been injected with carbon-14, a radioactive tracer.
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The prisoners generally received $5 per month while they were in the program, $10 for each biopsy and $100 for the vasectomy at the conclusion of the program. Heller received a total of $1.12 million in grant money from the AEC.
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At the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, sixty-four men were irradiated between 1963 and 1969 with anywhere from 7.5 to 400 rads. The prisoners in Paulsen’s study were paid approximately $5 a
month during the observation period, $25 in the month the testicular biopsies were performed, and $100 when they underwent a vasectomy.
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Paulsen received $505,000 from the AEC.

Heller and an assistant initially made the round-trip from Seattle to Salem every other week, working two full days and two full evenings in the penitentiary. Warden C. T. Gladden, in a 1963 letter to Oregon Attorney General Robert Thornton, complained that Heller had “taken advantage of our good will by violating many of our custodial regulations such as having close custody inmates out of their cells for participation in the program during late evening hours.”
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The warden also confessed in his letter that he had grave misgivings about the Heller program. “I cannot help but believe that the program is potentially dangerous or at least embarrassing to this institution and the state of Oregon.” The penitentiary’s Catholic chaplain, he continued, “raised strenuous objections” to the program and forbade any registered Catholic from participating. “As a matter of fact, the Catholic chaplain has been successful in establishing an agreement with Dr. Heller that he will not accept registered Catholics as patients in his programs.”

Heller had the use of a completely equipped operating room, scrub room, and hospital beds. The convicts themselves served as nurses, orderlies, and lab technicians. Heller developed a close relationship with some of the inmates and tried to help them when they were paroled from prison. He wrote letters of recommendation for the inmate technicians and even loaned money to a few of the men when they were released from the penitentiary. One of the convicts, Baxter Max Hignite, worked for several months at Heller’s Seattle laboratory when he was paroled from prison and even lived in Heller’s house for a short time.
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In the 1970s, he was one of several inmates who sued Heller.

Hignite served as Heller’s right arm in the penitentiary. An intelligent, muscular man with thick brown hair, Hignite recruited many of the convicts for the radiation experiment and assisted in the medical procedures. Harold Bibeau, who was then twenty-two years old and serving a twelve-year sentence for manslaughter, was one of the inmates recruited by Hignite. The older man warned Bibeau to stay away from the hormone program because of the “weird medical effects” but assured him the radiation program was perfectly safe.
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Initially Bibeau was rejected for the program because prison records listed him as Catholic, but Heller eventually accepted Bibeau after he assured the doctor he wasn’t “really
Catholic.”
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Bibeau said Heller often talked to him about the Nuremberg Code and medical ethics. Heller also told Bibeau the data from the experiment would be used to help NASA and the space program.

Heller interviewed the prospective candidates to make sure they were healthy and that they would be cooperative subjects—that is, show up for irradiation and biopsy appointments; provide urine, blood, and semen samples; and undergo a vasectomy at the conclusion of the experiment. (The vasectomy was administered in order to prevent genetic mutations from being passed down.) A prison psychologist interviewed the candidates to make sure they understood the consequences of the experiment. The psychologist wrote of Bibeau: “Never married, quite vague about future.
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Feels he doesn’t want children—shouldn’t have any. I agree. No contraindication to sterilization.”

The prison psychologist was also supposed to evaluate and screen out candidates who had severe emotional problems. But a convict named Canyon Easton, who had been sent to prison on a rape charge and on several occasions had attempted to castrate himself, actually was
recommended
for the program. A psychologist wrote on September 3, 1964, “I feel this man is a likely candidate for benefit from Dr. Heller’s program.
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I’ll recommend him for inclusion if he qualifies otherwise.…” Easton participated in Heller’s hormone and radiation experiments and underwent fourteen testicular biopsies. When he enrolled in the Heller program, Easton said he was filled with shame. “I felt I was beyond the pale.”
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Once he was paroled from prison, Easton went through several stormy relationships. One woman whom he was dating actually became frightened that she could contract cancer after she learned of his involvement in the radiation experiment. “On Dec. 22, 1975,” he told an Oregon legislative committee, “I castrated myself so I would not have to deal with sexual problems again.”
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Easton was reincarcerated in 1986 for castrating another man who attempted to rape his nieces. When asked about the incident, he explained: “I did castrate the man who told me ‘Get one of the twins!’ I asked, ‘Which one?’
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He said, ‘It doesn’t make any difference!’ I asked, ‘Why do you want her?’ He said, ‘I’m going to fuck her!’ I told him, I’m going to cut your nuts off! ‘He whined a bit but no more than my twelve-year-old nieces would have if he would have raped them.”

On August 17, 1963, the testicles of the first Oregon inmate were bombarded with 200 rads of radiation by a crude-looking apparatus that had been designed by Heller and his colleagues. The machine looked
like two orange crates stuck together and mounted on wheels for easy movement. Each of the “crates” consisted of an X-ray unit in a lead-lined box. Between the two boxes was a small Plexiglas cup filled with water.

The penises of the test subjects were taped to their bellies and a torn bed sheet about one-half-inch wide and a few inches long was tied above the testicles to keep them extended away from the body. Then the men lay facedown over the machine and lowered their organs into the cup. The water was maintained at 93 to 94 degrees to encourage the testicles to drop and to ensure the radiation was evenly distributed. A series of peepholes and mirrors enabled the technician to see that the testicles were properly positioned in the cup. A control panel was located in an outer room.

The AEC asked Heller to start with 600 rads. Although he did eventually irradiate fifteen men with 600 rads (one actually received a total of 708 rads in three separate doses), initially Heller was hesitant to administer such large amounts. Mavis Rowley, Heller’s longtime assistant, recalled:

The convicts said they felt nothing, except perhaps a slight tingling or warmth, as the radiation was delivered. Afterward they said they developed rashes, peeling, and blisters on their scrotums. In the months and years following the exposure, many also said that they experienced pain during sexual intercourse, had difficulty maintaining erections, and their testicles shrank in size.

The biopsies were done anywhere from minutes, to days, weeks, even months after the exposure. The men usually were taken from their cells to the prison hospital the night before the biopsy. The next morning they received a powerful mixture of painkillers and were wheeled into surgery. Baxter Hignite said in one of the depositions that were part of the inmates’ lawsuit against Heller that several prisoners usually assisted in the surgery. One convict held the testicles of the patient for the doctor
and several others stood by to hold down the arms or legs of the subject in the event he began flailing.

The testicles were bathed in Novocain and the anesthetic was also injected into the skin. Then the doctor made an incision in the scrotal sac and removed a small sliver of flesh. No matter how deadened the flesh or how powerful the medication, many of the convicts said they invariably experienced excruciating pain. “Most of the times it felt like he took a pair of pliers and pulled a chunk of meat off my testicles.
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That’s the kind of pain I would feel,” Baxter Hignite said in his deposition. Donald Mathena, who was serving a sentence for armed robbery and underwent sixteen or seventeen biopsies, said he almost vomited the first time. “Right in the middle of your stomach, you can feel them.
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It don’t feel like they’re cutting. Even though they are, it feels like they’re just tearing it.” Ivan Dale Hetland, who was doing time for manslaughter, also said he could feel the surgery “way up” inside his stomach. “Made me want to draw my legs up.
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And it made me grunt.” Heller boasted in a 1965–1966 progress report to the AEC that he had access to a “virtually ‘inexhaustible’ supply of fresh testicular biopsy material from physically normal men.”
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One AEC official, in an apparent attempt at humor, referred to the testicular samples as “pounds of flesh” then crossed off pounds and wrote “grams of flesh.”
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Some of the men who participated in the experiments and were still in the Salem penitentiary said in 1994 interviews that drug abuse and homosexual behavior often occurred during the experiment. Remembered inmate Paul “Connie” Tyrrell, “They had a homosexual up there.
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I won’t give you his name. I don’t need to. He would orally get these guys off, spit it in a jar for them.” Some of the inmates assisting in the experiment ingested the drugs that were supposed to be given to the biopsy patients. “Used to be inmates would pass out from the medication,” recalled Tyrrell. “If they liked you, you got a little extra. If they didn’t like you, you were SOL (shit out of luck).” Tyrrell participated in both the hormone and the radiation experiments. He had tumors removed from both breasts and died of heart failure in 1995 at the age of fifty-four. He was serving a life sentence for robbery and assault.