The women radium dial painters as experimental subjects (1920–1990) or what counts as human experimentation

Abstract

The case of women radium dial painters - women who tipped their brushes while painting the dials of watches and instruments with radioactive paint - has been extensively discussed in the medical and historical literature. Their painful and abhorrent deaths have occupied the interest of physicians, lawyers, politicians, military agencies, and the public. Hardly any discussion has concerned, however, the use of those women as experimental subjects in a number of epidemiological studies that took place from 1920 to 1990. This article addresses the neglected issue of human experimentation in relation to the radium dial painters. Although women's medical examinations have been classified as simple, routine measurements of radiation burden on the body and presented as a great offer to humanity, for more than fifty years those women had been repeatedly used as experimental subjects without proper consent. I argue that through this case it becomes obvious that the issue of defining what counts as human experimentation shifts from an epistemological to a serious ethical and political question, concerning the making of scientific knowledge while issues of gender related to this process are also discussed.

Vol. 11, No. 1 (Full Issue)

“…The reason for this significant difference in the incidence rate was that the head carcinoma seems to appear much later. The time of appearance for bone sarcoma was approximately 5 years, whereas 19 years for head carcinoma if the time of appearance was plotted against the initial systemic intake (Rowland, 1994). The highest systemic intake was the age at first exposure (AFE); values ranged from 16.0 to 21.7, which confirmed that the female radium dial workers were very young.…”

“…In 1967, data from separate studies were consolidated into a newly created Center for Human Radiology (CHR) at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). Based on a followup of this consolidated data by the end of , Rowland, et al (1978) established a quasilog-linear model for the incidence rate of bone/head tumors as a function of the product between a quadratic function of exposure dose and an exponential function of exposure dose. They concluded that a model of dose-squaredexponential function provided the best fit for the bone sarcomas, and that an acceptable fit to the head carcinoma data was provided by the linear function of the dose.…”

“…This is exactly the same cohort as that used by Rowland, et al (1978), except that the cohort was enlarged due to extra effort to collect additional subjects after 1976. After the data was first consolidated in the CHR at ANL in 1967, all located subjects were followed for vital status by the staff of the CHR.…”

“…Because the initial systemic intake was used in Rowland, et al (1978), the initial systemic intake is also used herein to define the risk of the induction of bone sarcoma in a given dial painter: it is the intake of radium until the end of follow-up in 1984. The average values for each class interval were calculated as the arithmetic mean of their respective individual subject's data in that interval (see Tables 2-3 The panel data used for analysis of bone sarcomas and head carcinomas is summarized respectively in Tables 2 and 3.…”

“…The average values for each class interval were calculated as the arithmetic mean of their respective individual subject's data in that interval (see Tables 2-3 The panel data used for analysis of bone sarcomas and head carcinomas is summarized respectively in Tables 2 and 3. The interval sizes chosen were almost the same as that of Rowland, et al (1978), except that the weighted average of systemic intake for the lowest dose < 0.5 and the highest dose > 1,000. The interval of the lowest dose < 0.5 is broken into two intervals, < 0.25 and 0.25-0.49; in contrast to Rowland, et al who ignored the measured dose of subjects in the lowest level.…”