With cereal products booming after WWII, the Quaker Oats Company needed to establish its nutritional dominance over competitors in the whole grain market. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Quaker sponsored an MIT study that fed mentally disabled children oatmeal and milk laced with radioactive iron and calcium. Nine boys were injected with radioactive calcium to study absorption. The doses involved were reportedly low, making it unlikely that the children came to harm, but parents and guardians were not fully informed about the experiments. The research furthered our understanding of calcium metabolism and laid the groundwork for future research on osteoporosis.
Tag: radioactive
“The Radium Water Worked Just Fine Until his Jaw Came Off”
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who painted watch dials with radioactive paint during World War I. To aid precision to their brush strokes, they would lick the tips of their paintbrushes. The girls glowed in the dark just like the watches they painted. Mollie Maggia was the first Radium Girl to die. She was in her early twenties when her jaw fell off.
Touted as a health tonic, Radium was everywhere in the early-to-mid-20th century.
RadiThor, an energy drink made from radium dissolved in water, killed the wealthy American socialite, Eben Byers.
In 1927, Byers tripped and injured his arm. To accelerate his recovery, he began to use RadiThor.
The placebo effect worked its magic on Byers. Feeling fantastic, he drastically increased his consumption of RadiThor. But in 1931, his jaw fell off.
He died shortly thereafter in 1932. Byers’ body is buried in a lead-lined coffin to prevent radiation leakage from his corpse.
Head Over Heals 