General Groves's Solution
Dr. Harold Hodge and
the University of Rochester
The Manhattan Project had seen the danger from fluoride early. Before the
war private industry had contained the legal dangers from factory
pollution by forming the Air Hygiene Foundation at the Mellon Institute.
Also fearing lawsuits, in 1943 General Groves established the Manhattan
Projects Medical Section at the University of Rochester to strengthen the
governments interests, placing Dr. Harold C. Hodge in charge of a secret
unit studying fluoride and the other chemicals being used to make the
atomic bomb.
FROM His CORNER office window in the medical school at Strong Memorial
Hospital that summer of 1943 Dr. Harold Hodge could see construction
workers placing the finishing touches on a half million-dollar building at
the University of Rochester known as the Manhattan Annex.' The heavily
guarded structure, funded by the U.S. Army, would be home to the
Manhattan Project's Medical Section. Orders had been placed for hundreds
of experimental animals: Puerto Rican monkeys, dogs, mice, rabbits, and
guinea pigs.' And an umbilical cord-like tunnel linking the military annex
with the university hospital was urgently being readied.
As the new Annex foundations were put down, so too was the keystone
laid for the postwar practice of toxicology in the United States — and for the
future career of the thirty-nine-year-old bioc hemist, Dr. Harold Hodge.
The Annex would soon house the largest
66
CHAPTER FIVE
medical laboratory in the nation, with a staff of several hundred scientists
testing the toxicity of the chemicals being used to build the atomic bomb.
Military pilots flew the exotic new compounds directly from the bomb
factories to Hodges team at Rochester. "Harold would actually meet the
pilots under [cover of] dark to get the material to test, said toxicologist
Judith MacGregor, who befriended Hodge at Rochester, where she was a
graduate student in the 1960s, and who was mesmerized by her mentors
tales. It was unbelievable.
That spring of 1943, Hodge had been placed in charge of the bomb
programs Division of Pharmacology and Toxicology and given control of
a secret biomedical research unit known as Program F to study fluoride
toxicity.' The Manhattan Project had a whole section working on uranium
and a whole section working on fluoride, explained Jack Hein, who
worked with Hodge at Rochester during the early cold war as a young
graduate student and remembers the scale of the fluoride studies. The
toxicology studies were very comprehensive. They were looking for toxic
effects on the bone, the blood, and the nervous system. . . . Without the
Manhattan Project and the atomic bomb, we wouldnt know anywhere near
as much as we do about the physiological effects of fluoride, Hein added . 4
His research suddenly blossomed into an immense program, noted Paul
Morrow, a uranium expert who also joined Hodge at Rochester in 1947 and
who worked on some of the earliest experiments.
Hodge's war work germinated into a career as the nation's leading
expert on fluoride. Over more than half a century the tall, black-haired
researcher published several books and some three hundred scientific
papers. He was chairman of the National Research Councils Committee on
Toxicology and first president of the Society of Toxicology. And a
generation of Hodges Rochester colleagues and students — men such as
Herbert Stokinger, Paul Morrow, and Helmuth Schrenk — went on to
occupy leading positions in government agencies and universities after the
war.' He was unarguably the dean of American toxicology, stated a
former colleague and Rochester alumni, Ernest Newbrun, now a professor
emeritus at the University of California at San Francisco."
To several generations of colleagues, the soft-spoken scientist with the
slicked-back hair was a gentleman scholar and tutor, advising
GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION
67
them to play it straight, and regularly, in his early seventies, trounc
ing graduate students at squash.' But Harold Hodge — grandfather,
soft-spoken friend, and dean of American toxicology — shouldered
dark secrets for much of his professional life.
That summer of 1943, as Dr. Hodge stood at his office window, he
confronted a terrible dilemma. Speed was essential in beating the
Germans to full-scale production of the atomic bomb.' The fate of tens
of thousands of American workers lay in his hands. His laboratory's
evaluation of the toxicity of chemicals needed for the bomb, such as
fluorine, beryllium, and trichloroethylene, would fix work conditions
for the women and men inside the Manhattan Projects bomb factories,
help determine how quickly the plants could achieve full
production — and whether employers would be successfully sued for
damages if those workers claimed injury from chemical exposure.'
The questions were many and the answers few, wrote Hodge. There
was no time to wait for months, or even weeks, while the accepted
laboratory tests established the toxico-logical facts. Production had to
proceed with no delays." 10
People working in the atomic energy production plants were going
to be chronically exposed, said Jack Hein. We didnt know too much
about the toxicity of fluoride, other than the early studies saying a little
too much in the water causes damage to teeth, he added."
General Leslie Groves understood the dangers of such pell-mell
production. He feared that personal injury lawsuits would be an
Achilles heel for the entire nuclear program. Leading insurers, such as
Aetna and Travelers, were providing health coverage for workers in the
new bomb factories. 12 Successful claims for fluoride injury or for
neighborhood pollution might hemorrhage compensation payments,
create a public-relations disaster, risk jeopardizing the embryonic
nuclear industry — and threaten the United States' unprecedented new
military power. 13
The army moved quickly to protect itself. Its first weapon was
secrecy. The second weapon was seizing control of basic science. In
particular the crucial toxicity studies on bomb program chemicals
performed at the University of Rochester were sculpted and shaped
to defend the Manhattan Project from lawsuits.' Those marching
orders — conscripting science and law for military service — were
drummed home in a July 30, 1945, memorandum titled Purpose
68
CHAPTER FIVE
and Limitations of the Biological and Health Physics Research Pro -gram,
written by the head of the Medical Section, Colonel Stafford Warren.
According to Warren, The Manhattan District, as a unit of the U.S. Army ...
has been given a directive to conduct certain operations which will be
useful in winning the war. As such, medico-legal aspects were accorded
a clear priority for scientists, he added, including the necessary biological
research to strengthen the Governments interests. 15
Scientists soon delivered courtroom ammunition. "Much of the data
already collected is proving valuable from a medical legal point of view,"
noted a February 1946 memo to General Groves's deputy, Brigadier
General K. C. Nichols. "It is anticipated that further research will also serve
in this manner," the memo added. 16
Colonel Warren had chosen his top fluoride expert carefully. The son of
an Illinois schoolteacher, Harold Hodge was a biochemist whose specialty
was the study of bones and teeth. He had arrived at the University of
Rochester in 1931, where he was one of an elite cadre of men selected by
the Rockefeller Foundation as dental research fellows. The Rockefeller
Foundation was then funding basic research at selected dental schools in a
bid to lift the standards of dental care in the United States. Hodge was also
a pharmacologist and toxicologist who by 1937 had forged close links with
corporate America.' By the summer of 1943 some of those corporations
and institutions were taking a lead role in developing America's first
nuclear weapon. Eastman Kodak, a Rochester company where Hodge had
investigated chemical poisoning before the war, was now a leading
industrial contractor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. 16 Rockefeller interests were
also using fluoride to refine uranium at an undisclosed site in New Jersey
and funding their own biomedical research at the University of
Rochester.""
Harold Hodge's role as gatekeeper at the wartime crossroads of law and
medical science was spelled out in a 1944 letter introducing the Rochester
scientist to the DuPont company. The letter, stamped confidential, again
lays out a fundamental scientific bias in the Manhattan Districts medical
program — a bias against workers and communities, and in favor of
corporate legal interests.
The Medical Section has been charged with the responsibility of
obtaining toxicological data which will insure the Districts being
GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION
69
in a favorable position in case litigation develops from exposure to
the materials, Colonel Stafford Warren told Dr. John Foulger of
DuPonts Haskell Laboratory in a letter dated August 12, 1944.
Harold Hodge was to insure that information about the toxicity of
certain fluoride compounds was coordinated between the
government and its contractors, Warren explained. It would be
desirable, he told Foulger, to have the work on the toxicity of
fluorocarbons being done in your laboratory parallel the
investigations being made on similar compounds elsewhere. For that
reason it would be appreciated if Dr. Harold Hodge of the University
of Rochester could visit your laboratory in the near future and an
exchange of ideas be effected." 20
Harold Hodge, Devil's Island,
and the Peach Crop Cases 21
Harold Hodge s diligence in defending the war industry can be seen
in a 1946 court challenge from farmers living near a DuPont fluoride
plant in New Jersey. Although not mentioned in any history of the
Manhattan Project, the lawsuits were regarded by the military as the
most serious legal threat to the U.S. nuclear program, requiring the
direct intervention of General Leslie Groves. A closing chapter in the
Manhattan Project, the aggressive use of secrecy, science, and public
relations by Groves and Hodge, and at least a half dozen federal
agencies battling the farmers, is an opening scene in the story of how
fluoride was handled by our government following World War II.
The gently rolling alluvial soil along the shore of the Delaware
estuary in Southern New Jersey is some of the most bountiful farm-
land in the United States. Its historic harvest of fruit and vegetables
won New Jersey the accolade of The Garden State. The orchards
downwind of the DuPont plant in Gloucester and Salem counties
were especially famous for their high-quality produce; their
peaches went directly to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York.
Campbell's Soup bought up their tomatoes. But in the summer of
1943 the farmers began to report that their orchards were blighted
and that "something is burning up the peach crops around here."
Poultry died after an all-night thunderstorm, they reported. Fields
were sometimes strewn with dead cattle, residents recalled, while
70
CHAPTER FIVE
workers who ate the produce they had picked vomited all night and into the
next day. I remember our horses looked sick and were too stiff to work,
Mildred Giordano, who was a teenager at the time, told reporter Joel
Griffiths. Some cows were so crippled that they could not stand up, and
grazed by crawling on their bellies. The injuries were confirmed in taped
interviews, shortly before he died, with the chemical consultant Philip
Sadtler of Sadtler Laboratories in Philadelphia. On behalf of the farmers'
crusading attorney, Counselor William C. Gotshalk of Camden, New
Jersey, Sadtler had measured blood fluoride levels in laborers as high as
310 parts per million. (Blood fluoride is normally well below i part per mil-
lion. These levels are potentially lethal doses) 22
Some of the farm workers were pretty weak, Sadtler noted. The New
Jersey farmers organized a Fluorine Committee. They patriotically waited
until the war was over, then sued DuPont and the Manhattan Project for
fluoride damage. Thirteen claimants asked for a total of $430,000 in
compensation.
Little wonder the farmers reported health problems. Conditions on the
other side of the DuPont fence were extraordinarily dangerous. More than a
thousand women and men were employed on Manhattan Project contracts
at the Chamber Works during the war, secretly manufacturing elemental
fluorine, uranium hexafluoride, and several exotic new fluorocarbons. 23
Chemical exposures were frequent, making the DuPont employees perhaps
the most endangered and fearful of the wartime fluoride workers. By the
end of January 1944 at least two DuPont laboratory workers had been
killed and several scientists injured. Work conditions at the secret
fluoride-producing East and Blue Areas of the Chamber Works were
especially dreadful, with "gross violations of safety," inspectors noted. 24
One unit was especially notorious, the government reported. "The plant
frequently caught on fire, and the activators often burned out so the
employees were frequently exposed to rather large amounts of fluorine
compounds," Captain Mears of the Manhattan Project noted in October
1945. "Medical hazards were attributed to fluorine in a gaseous state, silver
fluorides in a powdered state and liquid
2144 [code for fluorocarbon]. 25
Injured workers paraded into the DuPont hospital. Doctors often
reported "a fibrotic condition of both lungs" on X-rays; serious
GENERAL GROVESS SOLUTION
71
chemical burns were seen very frequently. The mounting injury
toll was blamed on fluoride. 20 In February 1945 doctors at the East and
Blue Areas reported seventy-nine sub-par or so-called chronic cases.
Sixteen of those workers had their condition detected in the last two
months."
A Manhattan Project medical investigator, Captain Richard C.
Bernstein, warned his boss, Colonel Warren, that workers now feared
assignment to the DuPont fluoride processing areas as "an exile to
Devil's Island." 28 Another report warned of brewing labor unrest. "Fear
of the physical consequences was becoming prevalent in the Areas,
wrote Manhattan Project investigator First Lieutenant Birchard M.
Brundage in February 1945. "This fear was being used by certain
agitators to cause trouble in the personnel," he added.
29
The farmers lawsuits electrified the Manhattan Project. There had
been no disclosure of the diabolical work conditions at DuPont. Now, a
public lawsuit pointed a finger directly at the Chamber Works and
fluoride. A once secret November 1945 memo measures the
government's concern: "The most serious claim to neighboring
properties of any operations of the [Manhattan Engineering] District is
the litigation known as the "peach crop cases.' These are cases claiming
damages to the fruit crop and to the peach trees themselves in and
around the operation of the Chambers Works of the DuPont Company
at Kearney, New Jersey. This damage is alleg edly caused by the
release into the atmosphere, both unintentional and necessary as a
result of the process [sic] of hydrogen fluoride. The claims against the
District approximate $430,000. Part of the loss would be due to the
private contractor and part to the operation of the contractor on behalf
of the District." 30
The military sprang into action. Dr. Hodge was dispatched to New
Jersey to marshal the medical response to the farmers' rebellion.
Although DuPont's smokestack fluoride had long been spilled into the
environment and a great volume of new fluoride compounds were
being made inside the wartime plant, he quickly reported back to
Colonel Stafford Warren at Oak Ridge that the mottled teeth seen in the
school near the DuPont plant could be attributed to natural fluoride in
the ground water. 31 Such natural fluoride in the water supply meant
that the dental markings could not be used as unequivocal proof of
industrial poisoning. The situation was
72
CHAPTER FIVE
complicated by the existence of mottled enamel as a result of fluoride in the
drinking water, Hodge told Warren.
Dr. Hodge had an idea for calming the citizen panic. His prescrip tion
gives an early meaning to the term spin doctor — and provides a clue that
the promotion by the U.S. government of a role for fluoride in tooth health
has a powerful national-security appeal. Would there be any use in making
attempts to counteract the local fear of fluoride on the part of residents of
Salem and Gloucester counties through lectures on F toxicology and
perhaps the usefulness of F in tooth health? Hodge inquired of Colonel
Warren. 32 Such lectures, of course, were indeed given, not only to New
Jersey citizens, but to the rest of the nation throughout the cold war.
A good cop-bad cop assault was launched against the farmers. Almost
immediately their spokesperson, Willard B. Kille, a market gardener,
received an extraordinary invitation: to dine with none other than General
Leslie R. Groves, then known as the man who built the atomic bomb, at
his office at the War Department on March 26, 1946. 33 Although Kille had
been diagnosed with fluoride poisoning by his doctor, he departed the
luncheon convinced of the governments good faith. The next day he wrote
to thank the general, wishing the other farmers could have been present, he
said, so they too could come away with the feeling that their interests in
this particular matter were being safeguarded by men of the very highest
type whose integrity they could not question."
Behind closed doors however, General Groves had mobilized the full
resources of the federal government and the Manhattan Project to defeat
Kille s farmers and their Fluorine Committee. The documentary trail
detailing the government's battle against the farmers begins with a March 1,
1946, memo to top Manhattan Project doctor Colonel Stafford Warren,
outlining the medical problem in New Jersey. There seem to be four
distinct (though related) problems, Colonel Warren was told.
1. A question of injury of the peach crop in 1944.
2. A report of extraordinary fluoride content of veg-
etables grown in this area.
3. A report of abnormally high fluoride content in the
blood of human individuals residing in this area.
GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION
73
4. A report raising the question of serious poisoning of
horses and cattle in this area.
Under the personal direction of General Groves, secret meetings
were convened in Washington, with compulsory attendance by scores
of scientists and officials from the U.S. War Department, the
Manhattan Project, the Food and Drug Administration, the Agriculture
and Justice departments, the U.S. Armys Chemical Warfare Service
and Edgewood Arsenal, the Bureau of Standards, and DuPont
lawyers.'' These agencies are making scientific investigations to
obtain evidence which may be used to protect the interest of the
Government at the trial of the suits brought by owners of peach
orchards in . . . New Jersey," stated Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B.
Rhodes of the Manhattan Project in a memo dated August 27, 1945,
and cc'd to General Groves.' The memo stated:
SUBJECT: Investigation of Crop Damage at Lower Penns
Neck, New Jersey T o : The Commanding General,
Army Service Forces,
Pentagon Building, Washington D.C. At the request
of the Secretary of War the Department of Agriculture
has agreed to cooperate in investigating complaints of
crop damage attributed ... to fumes from a plant operated
in connection with the Manhattan Project.
Signed L. R. Groves, Major General U.S.A. 36
"The Department of Justice is cooperating in the defense of these
suits," General Groves subsequently wrote in a February 28, 1946,
memo to the Chairman of the U.S. Senate Special Committee on
Atomic Energy. 37
General Groves, of course, was one of the most powerful men in
postwar Washington, and the full resources of the military-industrial
state were now turned upon the New Jersey farmers. The farmers'
expert witness, scientist Philip Sadder, was singled out by the
military. A handwritten note in General Groves's files in the National
Archives demands to know: Col. Rhodes, Who is Sadtler ? 38
74
CHAPTER FIVE
Groves learned that the Sadtler family name was one of the most
distinguished and respected in American chemistry. The firm of Samuel P.
Sadtler and Son was established in 1891 and routinely consulted for top
industrial corporations, including Coca-Cola and John D. Rockefeller.' '
Philip Sadtler s grandfather, Samuel P. Sadtler, had been a founding
member of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, while his father,
Samuel S. Sadtler, was one of the first editors of the venerable science
publication Chemical Abstracts. (Today Philip Sadtler s Standard Spectra
are a diagnostic tool used in laboratories around the world.)
But back then, in New Jersey, counterespionage agents followed him
and accused him of "dealing with the enemy," stated Sadtler. 40 He recalled
one confrontation with two U.S. Army captains that ended in a South
Jersey orchard when Gotshalk, the farmers lawyer, asked the military
officials, Since when are the farmers of the United States the enemy?
Why was there such a national-security emergency over a few lawsuits
by New Jersey farmers? In 1946 the United States had begun full-scale
production of atomic bombs. No other nation had yet tested a nuclear
weapon, and the A-bomb was seen as crucial for U.S. leadership of the
postwar world. The New Jersey fluoride law -suits were a serious
roadblock to that strategy. In the case of fluoride, If the farmers won, it
would open the door to further suits, which might impede the bomb
programs ability to use fluoride, remarked Jacqueline Kittrell, a
Tennessee public-interest lawyer specializing in nuclear cases, who
examined the declassified fluoride documents. (Kittrell has
represented plaintiffs in several human radiation experiment cases.) She
added, The reports of human injury were especially threatening, because
of the potential for enormous settlements — not to mention
the PR problem. " 41
Indeed, DuPont was particularly concerned about the possible
psychologic reaction to the New Jersey pollution incident, according to a
secret 1946 Manhattan Project memo. Facing a threat from the Food and
Drug Administration (FDA) to embargo the regions produce because of
"high fluoride content," DuPont dispatched its lawyers to the FDA offices
in Washington, where an agitated meet ing ensued. According to a memo
sent the following day to General Groves, DuPont s lawyer argued that in
view of the pending suits
GENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION
75
any action by the Food and Drag Administration . . . would have a
serious effect on the DuPont Company and would create a bad public
relations situation."
After the meeting adjourned, Manhattan Project Captain John Davies
approached the FDA s Food Division chief and impressed upon Dr. White
the substantial interest which the Government had in claims which might
arise as a result of action which might be taken by the Food and Drug
Administration. 42 There was no embargo. Instead, new tests for fluoride in
the New Jersey area would be conducted — not by the Department of
Agriculture but by the Chemical Warfare Service — because work done by
the Chemical Warfare Service would carry the greatest weight as evidence
if .. . lawsuits are started by the complainants. The memo was signed by
General Groves. 43
The farmers kept fighting. On February 2, 1946, Willard Kille wrote to
the influential Senator Brian McMahon, Chairman of the Special
Committee on Atomic Energy, on behalf of the Fluorine Committee,
telling him about the peach trees and poisoning. General Groves quickly
interceded, informing the Senator, I do not believe it would be of any
value to your committee to have Mr. Kille appear before it. Groves assured
Senator McMahon that I am keeping in close personal touch with the
matter from day to day in order that I may be personally certain that while
the government's interests are protected no advantage is taken of any
injured farmer. 44
The New Jersey farmers were ultimately pacified with token financial
settlements, according to interviews with descendants still living the area. 45
Joseph Clemente says that his father told him the family had been "paid
off" by DuPont after the cattle died suddenly during the war. The Clemente
farm lay just across the road from the Chamber Works. His grandfather had
been a wartime manager inside the Chamber Works and his family owned a
construction firm that had helped to build the plant; accordingly, his father
accepted DuPont s cash settlement. It wouldnt have been very good if my
family had caused a lot of stink about the episode, Clemente said.
All we knew is that DuPont released some chemical that burned up
all the peach trees around here, a second resident, Angelo
76
CHAPTER FIVE
Giordano, whose father James was one of the original plaintiffs, told the
medical writer Joel Griffiths, who visited the orchard country in 1997.
The trees were no good after that, so we had to give up on
the peaches.
Their horses and cows also acted sick and walked stiffly, recalled his
sister Mildred. "Could any of that have been the fluoride?" she asked.
According to veterinary toxicologists, various symptoms she went on to
detail are cardinal signs of fluoride toxicity. The Giordano family has been
plagued by bone and joint problems, too, Mildred added. Recalling the
settlement received by the Giordano family, Angelo told Griffiths that "my
father said he got about $200.
The New Jersey farmers were blocked in their legal challenge by the
government's refusal to reveal the key piece of information that would
have settled the case — the amount of fluoride DuPont had vented into the
atmosphere during the war. "Disclosure ... would be injurious to the
military security of the United States, wrote Manhattan Project Major C.
A. Taney Jr."
Gotshalk, the farmers' attorney, was outraged at the stonewalling. He
called it a callous disregard for the rights of people and accused the
Manhattan Project of using the sovereign power of the government to
escape the consequences of what undoubtedly
was done." 47
Gotshalk was right. A once-secret memorandum sent to General
Groves in Washington — which Gotshalk and the farmers never
saw — reveals that the wartime DuPont plant was belching out mass
quantities of hydrogen fluoride: at least 30,000 pounds, and perhaps as
much as 165,000 pounds, was expelled over the adjacent farmland each
month. 48
The scale of the pollution was explained to General Groves. DuPont
was then producing 1,500,000 pounds of HF each month for its
commercial Freon-producing [Kinetics] plant, according to his deputy
Major C. A. Taney. "Assuming that the losses were only 1 percent at
Kinetics, the amount vented to the atmosphere would be about equal to the
average loss from the Government facilities at the Chamber Works during
the worst months of 1944," Major Taney wrote. But the pollution might be
much worse, he added, in which case the lion's share of the blame would
be attributable to DuPont's commercial operations. "If the losses at
Kinetics ran as
rGENERAL GROVES S SOLUTION
77
high as 10 percent, which is possible, the fumes produced at the
Chamber Works would obviously be caused to the greatest extent by
DuPonts own operations and not by the Government facilities, the memo
stated.
The memo to Groves is probably the smoking gun tying DuPont to the
reported injuries. The emissions data would certainly have been crucial
courtroom ammunition for the plaintiffs, according to the scientist
Kathleen M. Thiessen, an expert on risk analysis and on the health effects
of hydrogen fluoride" She notes that the amount of fluoride spilled over the
orchards and farms in 1944 from the Chamber Works — at least 30,000
pounds monthly — is consistent with the injuries reported within a
ten-kilometer radius around the DuPont plant. The air concentrations
could easily have been high enough to cause vegetation damage, and if they
are high enough to cause vegetation damage they are high enough to cause
damage to livestock eating that pasture," the scientist estimated.
Could the fluoride have hurt the local citizens too?
It is going to depend on where they lived and how much of that local
produce [they ate], Thiessen explained. The reports of high blood fluoride
levels in local citizens, and of badly contaminated local produce, were
again consistent with human fluoride injury, she added.
Denied the government data, the farmers settled their lawsuit, and
their case has long since been forgotten. But the Garden State peach
growers unknowingly left their imprint on history. Their complaints of
sickness reverberated through the corridors of power in Washington and
triggered Harold Hodge's intensive secret bomb-program research on the
health effects of fluoride.
"Because of complaints that animals and humans have been injured
by hydrogen fluoride fumes in [the New Jersey] area," reads a 1945 memo
to General Groves from a deputy, Lieutenant Colonel Cooper B. Rhodes,
although there are no pending suits involving such claims, the University
of Rochester is conducting experiments to determine the toxic effect of
fluoride." 50
6
How the Manhattan
Project Sold Us Fluoride
Newburgh, Harshaw, and Jim Conant's Ruse
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