Human experimentation continued throughout the Cold War. There is evidence of several large-scale projects across the country that also failed to inform patients of the health hazards of these experiments. At the Fernald School in Massachusetts, a school for disabled and special needs children, students were exposed to radioactive iron and calcium in the late 1940s and 1950s in a federally sponsored study. Their parents were not informed of the full nature of these experiments.

When Fred Boyce and dozens of other boys joined the Science Club at Fernald State School in 1949, it was more about the perks than the science. Club members scored tickets to Boston Red Sox games, trips off the school grounds, gifts like Mickey Mouse watches and lots of free breakfasts. But Fernald wasn’t an ordinary school, and the free breakfasts from the Science Club weren’t your average bowl of cereal: the boys were being fed Quaker oatmeal laced with radioactive tracers.

A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Radioactive Oatmeal Go Down

When MIT and Quaker Oats paired up to conduct experiments on unsuspecting young boys

^{Lorraine Boissoneault (Smithsonian Magazine)}