Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, December 29, 1993                   TAG: 9312290101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

`WHAT WOULD BE APPROPRIATE?' O'LEARY: RADIATION TEST SUBJECTS DESERVE TO BE

O'Leary promised to collect as many government documents as possible on such experiments and "let the Congress of the United States and the American public determine what would be appropriate compensation."

In an interview with CNN, she did not indicate how many people might be compensated or what that compensation might be.

"We're still trying to take a look at the whole thing," said department spokesman Sam Grizzle.

O'Leary has said that as many as 800 people might have been subjected to human experiments involving radiation, many of them in the 1940s and '50s. Some of the experiments were believed to be within medical guidelines and with consent, but others clearly were not, officials have said.

Attempts to reach O'Leary, who was said to be in meetings Tuesday, were unsuccessful.

O'Leary told CNN that some of those affected by the radiation tests are suing the government, but others involved in earlier tests cannot sue because the statute of limitations has expired.

"My view is that we must proceed with disclosing these facts and information regardless of the fact of whether it opens the door for a lawsuit against the government," she said. "And many have suggested, and I tend to agree personally, that those people who were wronged need to be compensated."

The New York Times reported Tuesday that the U.S. government official who directed some of the early radiation tests was urged to use chimpanzees to avoid comparisons to Nazi experiments.

The warning was made in a 1950 memo to Dr. Shields Warren, a senior official of the Atomic Energy Commission, from Dr. Joseph G. Hamilton, a top commission biologist, the Times said. Parts of the memo also were quoted Tuesday in The Boston Globe.

O'Leary has told her agency to find out how many human studies were done, find test subjects and their survivors and check the legality of the research. A hot line asking survivors to contact the Energy Department has been swamped with hundreds of calls.

One issue is whether the now-defunct commission's experiments violated the 1947 Nuremburg Code, which was established after the Nazi war crimes trials as the universal standard for human experiments.

The code requires full, informed and voluntary consent for all experiments on humans.