Ch. 7. A Subterranean Channel of Secret-Keeping: the fluoride deception by Christopher Bryson from archive.org

A Subterranean Channel of 
Secret-Keeping 



AFTER THE WAR Harold Hodge became the leading figure promoting 
water fluoridation in the United States and around the world, while the 
University of Rochester served as a kind of queen bee for cold war-era 
dentistry, hatching a generation of dental-school researchers who were 
unanimous in support of a central role for fluoride in their profession. 

If you look at the credentials of the people who have been impor tant in 
academic dentistry, you will find that Hodge s interests here at Rochester 
were responsible for many of those people getting their expertise, noted 
the toxicologist Paul Morrow, who worked alongside Hodge for almost 
twenty years. The fluoridation of public water supplies was the crowning 
glory of Harold Hodges career. He pioneered [fluoridation] very 
adamantly," Morrow pointed out. "That was one of the most difficult 
things he did. There was an extraordinary resistance to the use of rat 
poison in public water supplies. 

Today, however, revelations that Hodge concealed wartime infor 
mation about fluoride's central nervous system effects in atomic workers, 
secretly studied the health of the subjects of the water fluoridation 
experiment at Newburgh, New York, on behalf of the Manhattan Project, 
and gave information on fluoride safety to the U.S. Congress that later 
proved inaccurate (see chapter ii), all call into question Hodge s agenda as 
the grand architect of Americas great postwar fluoride experiment. 

Even during his lifetime, researchers had begun to examine his career 
more closely. In 1979 a journalist, John Marks, reported that 



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Hodge had helped the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in its search 
for a mind-control drug. In his book, The Search for the Manchurian 
Candidate, Marks described how the CIA had given the hallucinogenic 
drug LSD to unsuspecting Americans. He wrote that Hodge and his 
Rochester research team had been pathfinders in that research program, 
figuring out a way to radioactively tag LSD.' 

I knew he had something to do with the CIA, but that is all, recalls the 
scientist and historian J. Newell Stannard, who worked alongside Hodge at 
Rochester in '947 

Marks may have only scratched the surface of Dr. Hodge s work for the 
CIA. The journalist filed Freedom of Information Act requests and 
received scores of heavily redacted files. Although the names of people and 
institutions have mostly been blacked out, Marks identified several of the 
files as referring to CIA contract work at the University of Rochester. The 
letters, reports, and accounting statements make chilling reading. They are 
the bureaucratic account of a laboratory and its scientists eagerly hunting 
for chemicals to selectively affect the central nervous system and to 
produce symptoms even more bizarre than LSD. 

The CIA studied fluoride as a potential mind-controlling substance. A 
March 16, 1966, memo from the TSD (most likely Technical Services 
Division) titled Behavioral Control Materials and Advanced Research 
reports on the disabling effects of dinitro-fluoride derivatives of acetic 
acid that are currently undergoing clinical tests.'" 

For many, Harold Hodge s image of respectability collapsed completely 
in the late 1990s. The reporter Eileen Welsome found a once-classified 
memo that implicated Hodge in perhaps the most diabolical human 
experiments ever conducted in the United States. On September 5, 1945, he 
attended a University of Rochester planning meeting with several other 
scientists. Their purpose: to discuss the research "protocol" for injecting 
plutonium into unsuspecting and uninformed patients at the University of 
Rochester's Strong Memorial Hospital.' A second AEC document, 
reporting on the experiments, thanks Harold Hodge ... [who] participated 
in the early planning of the work and frequently made general and specific 
suggestions which contributed much to the success of the program. ' In the 
1990s the federal government settled a lawsuit with 



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family members of those plutonium experiment victims, paying 
approximately $400,000 to each family.' 

Hodge oversaw additional injections in Rochester hospital patients 
during the late 19405, to find out how much uranium would produce 
"injury.' In the fall and winter of that year seven people would be injected 
with uranium in the Metabolic Unit at Rochester s Strong Memorial 
Hospital. A tunnel connecting the Army Annex to the Hospital permitted 
the uranium and plutonium to be transported to the ward in secrecy. 

On October I, 1946, "a young white, unmarried female, aged 24 was 
"injected with 584 micrograms of uranium." She was "essentially normal 
except for chronic undernutrition which probably resulted from emotional 
maladjustments, the report stated. In early 1947 a sixty-one-year-old white 
male alcoholic was admitted to the hospital with a suspected gastric lesion. 
Although the patient did not appear ill, the scientists noted, as he had no 
home, he willingly agreed to enter the Metabolic Unit. Like the other 
patients, the man did not know he was the subject of an experiment. Nor 
was there any attempt to argue that the uranium would have any therapeutic 
effect on his condition. Injections were explicitly given to find the dose 
of ... uranium which will produce minimal injury to the human kidney, a 
summary noted. The Rochester scientists believed that a human subject 
should tolerate 70 micrograms of uranium per kilogram of body weight. 
Accordingly, on January to, the same cooperative ... short, gray-haired 
man was injected with 71 micrograms of uranium per kilogram.' 

In the 1950s Dr. Hodge was a key figure in the Boston Project. In this 
series of experiments, Hodge arranged for Dr. William Sweet of the 
Massachusetts General Hospital to inject the highest possible dose" of 
various uranium compounds into patients hospitalized with brain cancer. 
The researchers wanted to learn the quantity of uranium to which atomic 
workers could safely be exposed.' 

In 1995 a former senior government physicist, Karl Z. Morgan, 
described Hodge during these cold war years as a particular enthu siast of 
human experiments. Morgan had visited Hodges laboratory and years later 
told government investigators that Dr. Hodge had been one of the 
Rochester scientists itching, you might say, to get closer to Homo 
Sapiens. 9 



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The Trapezius Squeeze 

TWO FORMER ROCHESTER students, Judith and James Mac-Gregor, 
were able to get a close look at the unique influence Hodge exerted over the 
U.S. medical establishment. The pair had followed Hodge to San Francisco 
in 1969, when the sixty-five-year-old became professor emeritus at the 
University of San Francisco Medical School. His office door was 
frequently open, and they listened in awe as the old man clutched the 
telephone, reaching across the country, making decisions on faculty 
appointments at medical schools, on the composition of scientific boards 
and panels, and on the various national committees that set standards for 
chemical exposure in the 
workplace. 10 

"He would be talking to leaders all over the country. Herb Stok-inger 
[the former head of occupational medicine at PHS], people that chaired 
public health committees for the government would be asking for 
comments or recommendations on appointments on senior committees, 
and things like that, stated Judith MacGregor. He was just incredible at 
getting things done, she added. 

A great persuader, noted J. Newell Stannard, who worked with Hodge 
in the 1940s at the University of Rochester. He had people that would be 
grateful to do most anything if Harold asked them to do it. 

While Hodge wielded the cold steel of political power in the medical 
world, he generally did so by staving behind the scenes. According to 
colleagues, his influence was subtle and covert. "He was supremely apt at 
getting difficult decisions made in the way that he thought they should be 
without ever raising his voice or appearing to be confrontational," 
remarked James MacGregor, now a senior official at the U.S. Food and 
Drug Administration. "He was perhaps the world's master at that," he 
added. 

He could leave the fewest ripples on the water, said Judith 
Mac-Gregor. More than a decade after his death, she can still feel the old 
man s fingers slipping around her shoulder and neck, her resolve buckling. 
She called this Hodges trapezius squeeze — his signature greeting, which 
involved taking hold of the shoulder muscle called the trapezius and 
slowly tightening his fingers, all the while looking into your eyes. 
MacGregor called Hodge Grandpapa behind his back — but she was 
powerless at the old mans touch. He would 



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kind of squeeze your muscle a little, she remembered. It was like a 
handshake. You knew that when he gave you the trapezius squeeze he 
was going to ask for something. And you knew that you were going to do 
it. You couldnt refuse the guy. 

Dr. Harold Hodge, it now seems, performed a trapezius squeeze on us 
all. 

"A Whole Song and Dance" 

PROBING HODGES SECRET fluoride work at the University of 
Rochester is difficult. Hodge died in 1990. His archive remains closed. 
And even the multimillion dollar resources of a U.S. Presidential 
Committee in the 1990S could not breach Rochester s cold war defenses, 
according to the attorney Dan Guttman, a top investigator in that effort. 

Guttman has a quick sense of humor and a sharp mind. He needed both 
in 1994 for his new job as executive director of President Bill Clintons 
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE, also 
known as the Clinton Radiation Commission). The attorney had gone to 
law school with Hillary Clinton. He was tapped by the president to 
investigate the hundreds of radiation experiments that scientists had 
performed on unsuspecting U.S. citizens during the cold war — including 
some on pregnant women, retarded children, and prisoners." 

Perhaps the most notorious were the experiments described above with 
plutonium and uranium that Hodge had helped to plan at the University of 
Rochester. Guttman therefore wanted access to the University's cold 
war-era files. He had attended the school as an undergraduate in the 1960s 
but was "stunned" to learn that his alma mater had been "the Grand 
Central Station of bio-medical research" for the Manhattan Project.' The 
former student approached Rochester's President Thomas A. Jackson at an 
alumni gathering. On President Clintons behalf he asked for Jackson s c 
ooperation in obtaining documents from the university archives. Jackson 
seemed completely uninterested, Guttman recalled. I was very disturbed 
by the University s reaction which was, for practical Purposes, obstructing 
fact finding." 

It was not just the University of Rochester who stiffed the U.S. 
Presidents Human Radiation Commission. Guttman found himself 



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sitting at a table with Pentagon bureaucrats and lawyers, demanding secret 
military documents about medical experiments performed on U.S. citizens. 
At first the Defense Department seemed helpful, Guttman explained; but 
when the Commission stumbled upon the existence of an inner-sanctum 
military organization — which appeared to have been in charge of cold 
war-era human experiments by both military and civilian agencies — the 
Pentagon suddenly froze. Guttman remembers a specific meeting with top 
military officials. He asked for all existing records of the Joint Panel on the 
Medical Aspects of Atomic Warfare, as the secret group had been known. 
The Joint Panel had included representatives of the CIA, the military, the 
PHS, the NIH, and the AEC. 

The reaction of the Defense people was, We are not supposed to give 
you that," Guttman recalled. We said Excuse us? This was the whole 
point [of the Clinton Radiation Commission]! Guttman asked for the 
documents nicely. He asked in writing. He asked for six months. He was 
stiffed. It was stunning, he said. All the documents were allegedly 
destroyed, shredded, he says he was finally told. We went through a 
whole song and dance. 

Guttman hoped that the Joint Panel documents would shed light on 
so-called cut-out or work for others arrangements, in which the true 
sponsor of a medical research project is concealed. For example, Guttman 
explained, is the CIA having its work done by some innocuous entity that 
is then funded by some other agency? We were hoping that some of the 
work for others might have become more apparent through the documents 
of this interagency group. ( Dr. Harold Hodges work for the CIA at 
Rochester had been done using precisely such a cut-out arrangement, 
according to the journalist John Marks. The Geschickter Fund for Medical 
Research — a Washington, DC, foundation sympathetic to the CIA — had 
nominally provided Hodge funds, although money secretly came from the 
government intelligence agency.) 

The shredding of public documents about human experiments and 
military involvement with civilian health agencies during the cold war left 
Guttman scratching his head. You ask as a citizen, what was that about? 
he said. But the Clinton Radiation Commission was able to make a historic 
discovery. Guttman s team learned that documents had been classified 
during the cold war, not just to 



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protect secrets from the Russians, but also to hide medical information 
from U.S. families. When the Radiation Commission got started, 
Guttman explained, people thought that [the government] kept too 
many secrets but that was for national security reasons. What we 
discovered was that there was a subterranean channel of 
secret-keeping, where those on the inside knew that this was not 
national security, and could not be kept secret for national security 
reasons, and they had a whole other category, embarrassment to the 
government, resulting damage to the programs, or liability to the 
government and its contractors. 

Censorship of the health claims of injured atomic workers, and of 
medical reports produced by bomb program scientists, was performed 
by the Insurance Branch and by the Public Relations section of the 
AEC and the Manhattan Project." Guttman s team found explicit 
instructions to medical censors, written by the AEC s medical advisor 
at Oak Ridge. They are worth citing at length: 

There are a large number of papers which do not violate 
security, but do cause considerable concern to the 
Atomic Energy Commission Insurance Branch and may 
well compromise the public prestige and best interests of 
the Commission. Papers referring to levels of soil and 
water contamination surrounding Atomic Energy 
Commission installations, idle speculation on the future 
genetic effects of radiation and papers dealing with 
potential process hazards to employees are definitely 
prejudicial to the best interests of the government. Every 
such release is reflected in an increase in insurance 
claims, increased difficulty in labor relations and 
adverse public sentiment. Following consultation with 
the Atomic Energy Commission Insurance Branch, the 
following declassification criteria appears desirable. If 
specific locations or activities of the Atomic Energy 
Commission and/or its contractors are closely associated 
with statements and information which would invite or 
tend to encourage claims against the Atomic Energy 
Commission or its contractor such portions of articles to 
be published should be reworded or deleted. 



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The effective establishment of this policy necessitates review 
by the Atomic Energy Commission Insurance Branch, as well 
as by the Medical Division, prior to declassification." 

Guttman was baffled by what he discovered. Harold Hodge and his 
Rochester team had been given the job of monitoring workers' health 
across the entire bomb-program complex — collecting and measuring 
fluoride, uranium, and other toxic chemicals in the workers' urine — and 
acting as a repository for their complete medical records." It had been a 
massive undertaking. Tens of thousands of men and women were 
employed in the factories making the atomic bomb. Rochester and DuPont 
each acquired a new IBM punch-card tabulating machine, a forerunner of 
the computer, to tabulate and analyze the data. Dan Guttman discovered 
"boxes" of this raw information. But something was missing. The big 
unanswered question" about the Rochester data, Guttman explained, was 
the absence of any epidemiological analysis of worker health. 

What was happening with all that worker safety data that was going to 
Rochester, and what were they doing with it?" wondered Guttman. "I was 
really hoping we would find more than just lots of charts, [that] we would 
find somebody analyzing this stuff. Rochester was an arm of the 
government, so there should have been some summary, something [like a 
letter to the AEC stating]: Dear Head of the Division of Biology and 
Medicine, this is what we are finding.' Where is all that stuff?" Guttman 
asked. "Rochester was extremely uncooperative." 

Guttman's committee was asked to uncover information about 
human-radiation experiments. It had not asked questions about fluoride, 
however. Was it possible the team had missed other human experiments 
performed by the Manhattan Project and the AEC? 

"Sure," Guttman told me. "On fluorine I would not be surprised if there 
were missing experiments. I would be surprised if there were missing 
radiation experiments, but fluorine, I wouldn't be surprised." 

The University of Rochester did perform human experiments using 
fluoride. We may never know exactly how many experiments, 



A SUBTERRANEAN CHANNEL OF SECRET- KEEPING 99 



nor the souls experimented upon. Nevertheless, a paper trail of 
now-yellowing documents once again leads back to the "Manhattan 
Annex" and the passageway to the Strong Memorial Hospital. Rochester 
scientists gave fluoride to "patients having kidney diseases'" to determine 
how much fluoride their damaged kidneys could excrete.' And in a single, 
cryptic fragment of a declassified Rochester document, a chemical 
compound, "boron trifluoride," is listed as being "inhaled" for thirty days. 
Scientists took measurements, including dental studies and weight 
response. One measure ment — item "H" — reads simply: "Human excretion 
ofF.'" 

Postscript: The New World 

AMONIH AFTER the Hiroshima bombing, in September 1945 the Danish 
health expert Kaj Roholm made his first trip to the United States. He 
wanted to meet America's fluoride researchers and to study wartime 
advances in American medicine.' Top doctors regarded him highly. The 
Rockefeller Foundation offered financial support and arranged 
introductions. Roholm traveled widely along the East Coast, visiting 
hospitals and the medical schools at Yale, Harvard, and John's Hopkins. 
After the horror and deprivation of wartime Europe, the Dane found the 
country "inspiring and hospitable, though he did note that the absence of 
public -health care made him think that it would be a catastrophe to get sick 
in the United States." 20 

At the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Roholm met 
with the senior dental officials Frank J. McClure and H. Trendley Dean. 
There they discussed the fluoride problem." Before the war the American 
Medical Association and the U.S. Department of Agriculture had warned 
of the health risk from small amounts of fluorides, and the American 
Dental Association had editorialized against the idea of water 
fluoridation. 21 But in his meetings Roholm discovered that the years of 
conflict had wrought a profound change in Washington's views. "In the 
United States it is common to associate fluoride as a less toxic element than 
previously known," he reported. 2 '- 

In 1944 for example, the Department of Agriculture had increased its 
maximum accepted contaminant level for fluoride pesticides from 1.43 
milligrams of fluoride per kilogram, to 7 mgs F per kgm. 



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And in the water-fluoridation experiments involving thousands of U.S. 
citizens, fluoride was being added to public- water supplies in Newburgh, 
New York, and Grand Rapids, Michigan." 

Roholm saw the danger. He examined X-rays the PHS had taken from a 
region of the United States where there were high levels of natural fluoride 
in the water. The black-and-white images looked familiar. As he had 
observed in the men and women poisoned by fluoride in the Copenhagen 
cryolite factory, Roholm detected numerous cases of typical 
osteosclerosis in the X-rays. The promise of better teeth appeared to be 
worth a great deal to U.S. officials, the Dane mused with dry 
understatement. 

While the therapeutic concentration for this outcome [better teeth] is 
close to the toxic limit," Roholm stated, "this, however, has not prevented 
the Americans from performing several studies. 

The mood was that of great optimism in Bethesda, he wrote. It will be 
very interesting to see the results within the next five to ten years. ' 

Roholm returned to Denmark. Although he did not know it, his days 
were numbered. He was appointed professor of public hygiene at the 
University of Copenhagen on January I, 1948. In February he gave his 
inauguration lecture to students on the history of Danish public-health 
measures. Although his pithy style made the material come alive, 
observers noted that the professor looked pale.' Roholms first lecture as a 
professor would be his last; stomach cancer had begun its deadly march. 
One month later Roholm entered the hospital. 

The disease tore through his strong body like a wildfire. Each day his 
best friend, Georg Brun, visited him in the Copenhagen hospital. 
Throughout that grim March of 1948, as the scientist lay close to death at 
the age of forty-six, he seemed unable to accept that his life was almost 
over. Both men avoided the truth. I tried to say to him that he would be all 
right," Brun said. "He wouldn't accept anything else. Roholm died of 
cancer of the large intestine on March 29, 1948. He left a wife and two 
young children. 

Kaj Eli Roholm's death was a tragedy for his family and friends and for 
the twentieth century — for all who rely on scientists to tell them the truth 
about the chemicals they handle in the workplace and the risk from 
industrial pollution. 



8 



Robert Kehoe and the 
Kettering Laboratory