Ch. 8. Robert Kehoe and the Kettering Laboratory: the fluoride deception
by Christopher Bryson from archive.org
Robert
Kehoe and the Kettering
Laboratory FROM
THE DARKNESS it can be difficult to determine the source of a shadow. Dr. Robert Arthur Kehoe of the
Kettering Laboratory cast such a
shadow over us all, one of the darkest of the modern era. For more than sixty years
Americans breathed hundreds of thousands
of tons of raw poison wafted into the atmosphere from leaded
gasoline. This toxic air
contributed to a medical toll of some 5,000 annual deaths from lead-related heart disease and an
almost incalculable toll of tragedy
in the neurological injuries and learning difficulties imposed on
children. One estimate, based on
government data, suggests that from 1927 to 1987, 68 million young children in the United States were exposed
to toxic amounts of lead from
gasoline, until the additive was finally phased out in the United States.' https://www.blogger.com/null For this in good measure we can thank
Dr. Kehoe. Dark-haired and
dark-eyed, Kehoe described himself as a "black Irishman" and
claimed to be descended from
Spaniards who had been shipwrecked on the Irish coast during Elizabethan times. The scientist possessed
boundless energy, and a keen mind,
and he could also tell "one hell of a dirty joke," colleagues
remembered. Others who
confronted him professionally,
however, remembered Kehoe as arrogant and aloof. 2 For almost fifty years Kehoe
occupied some of the commanding
heights of the nations medical establishment. He was at various
points president of the American
Academy of Occupational Medi- 102 CHAPTER EIGHT cine and president of the American
Industrial Hygiene Association; he
served as a consultant to the Public Health Service, the International
Labor Organization, and the Atomic
Energy Commission.' Kehoe also exercised a powerful influence on the publication of medical reports,
since he sat on the editorial
boards of leading scientific publications.' He preached the gospel of leaded gasolines safety from
his pulpit at the Kettering
Laboratory for the duration of his entire scientific career.' Kehoe did much the same for
fluoride, with health consequences of a
potentially similar magnitude. The Fluorine Lawyers and the " Infectious Idea of Easy Pickings" SPOOKED CORPORATIONS STAMPEDED
Kehoe's laboratory following World
War II. 6 The great factories that had throbbed and roared for the long years of national emergency had
spewed unprecedented volumes of
poisonous gas and smoke into the skies over numerous American cities
and manufacturing areas. There
were aluminum plants on the Columbia River and at Niagara Falls; uranium plants in New Jersey,
Cleveland, and Tennessee; steel
mills in Pittsburgh; gasoline refineries in Los Angeles; and phosphate plants in Florida. These
were just some of the industrial
operations that had won the war for the United States, but from which a steady rain of fluoride and other
pollutants now fell, endangering the health of workers in factories and people living nearby. Patriotic U.S. citizens tolerated
the smoke of war. When peace arrived,
they turned to the courts. Perhaps the first to file suit were the
injured peach farmers from the
Garden State, downwind from DuPonts Chamber Works. They were quickly followed by numerous additional lawsuits
alleging fluoride damage to crops,
farm animals, and citizens.'
Soon we had claims and lawsuits around aluminum smelters from coast to coast," recalled Alcoa's
leading fluoride litigator, Frank Seamans. "Once this sleeping giant was awakened, claims and
lawsuits were brought against all
types of plants involving fluoride emissions — steel plants, fertilizer plants, oil refineries, and
the like," he added.' ROBERT KEHOE AND THE KETTERING LABORATORY
103 To battle this awakened
giant, Seamans and attorneys for other
beleaguered corporations organized themselves into a self-described Fluorine Lawyers Committee, which met
regularly through the cold war
years.' The Committee would eventually include attorneys
representing several of Americas
top corporations, including Aluminum Company of Canada, U.S. Steel, Kaiser Aluminum and Steel, Reynolds Metals Company, Monsanto Chemical, the
Tennessee River Valley Authority (
TV A), Tennessee Corporation and subsidiaries, Victor Chemical, and Food Machinery and Chemical
Corporation. Those corporations,
guided by the needs of the Fluorine Lawyers, and directed by a
Medical Advisory Committee of
doctors from the corporations, funded the
fluoride research at the Kettering
Laboratory. 10 The
gathering storm clouds were surveyed after the war at a confidential conference at the Mellon Institute on
April 30,1946. Among the guests
filing through the ornately decorated aluminum doorways of the
bunkerlike structure on
Pittsburgh's Fifth Avenue were representatives from several of the companies facing fluoride lawsuits
and complaints, including Alcoa,
Pennsylvania Salt, and Harshaw Chemical." Robert Kehoe dispatched a loyal young Kettering lieutenant
to the conference. Although Edward
Largents only degree was a BA obtained in
1935 from Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, his willingness to sacrifice his own body and the bodies
of others on behalf of the Kettering
Laboratory's corporate clients, had already propelled him to the front
line of industry's defense against
fluoride litigation.' Starting in 1939, the giant Pennsylvania Salt Company and the Mead Johnson food company
paid for a special experimental
diet for the Kettering researcher. Pennsylvania Salt manufactured numerous fluoride products, including a
cryolite pesticide spray, while
Mead Johnson made a children's food, called Pablum, containing animal bone meal. (Bone meal can contain high
amounts of fluoride.) Largent
converted to a human guinea pig for the Kettering sponsors, eating, drinking, and breathing large quantities
of fluoride for several
years." Under the direction of a Kettering toxicologist, Francis Heyroth, the eager young researcher
consumed fluoride in various forms:
as cryolite, calcium fluoride, hydrogen fluoride, sodium fluoride,
and sodium fluoroborate. As ,04 CHAPTER EIGHT with similar
experiments, in which human volunteers breathed lead fumes in a Kettering Laboratory gas chamber,
the data were subsequently used to
promote industry s position that moderate levels of fluoride — or lead —
in the body were in
"equilibrium with the environment and, if kept below certain thresholds, were both natural
and safe. Such a hypothesis was immensely
practical, of course. Following Largents wartime experiments eating cryolite, for example, the
Department of Agriculture raised the
amount of cryolite pesticide residue permitted on agricultural produce,
an obvious windfall for the
Pennsylvania Salt Company.'
Now, in April 1946, Largent was one of those sitting in the audience
at the Mellon Institute as the
grand old man of prewar fluoride science,
Alcoa's director of research, Francis Frary, took the stage. Frary
explained to the Mellon audience
some of industry's worries: how fluoride
accumulated in the human skeleton and how coal had recently been identified as an "important"
new source of airborne fluoride.' Largent was well aware of the legal risks that fluoride posed to
corporations. He had been battling
farmers who had launched court cases against several big chemical companies in New Jersey and
Pennsylvania, alleging damage to
crops and herds in a postwar barrage of litigation in the Philadelphia
and Delaware Valley area. Largent
described these as almost epidemic." 6 Industry confronted a potentially devastating cold war
domino effect — that Americas
industrial workers would follow the farmers into court. Largent had been monitoring the fluoride exposure
inside the Pennsylvania Salt
Company s two big plants in Natrona and Easton, Pennsylvania. The X-rays showed "bone changes" in
workers skeletons and pointed to a
clear and present danger, he stated. "These X-ray data could easily be misused by dishonest
people to conduct a probably
successful attempt to obtain compensation, Largent told a colleague
from the Harshaw Chemical Company
in an April 1946 letter that discussed the importance of the pending Mellon conference. The infectious
idea of easy pickings may spread to
include damage claims regarding occupational injuries," he added.' The Mellon Institute audience was captivated by the
bold new medical theory of a
second speaker. According to the roentgen-ologist (X-ray expert) Paul G. Bovard, much of the
bone damage
ROBERT KEHOE AND THE KETTERING LABORATORY 105 seen on workers X-rays was probably not
caused by fluoride, and the Danish
scientist Kaj Roholm had been a needless worrywart.' x Dr. Bovards fresh perspective was terrific news, Largent
reminded the Pennsylvania Salt
Company. Several of [your] employees show bone changes which might be successfully, even if it were
dishonestly, made to appear like
fluorine intoxication. The possibility of a roentgenologist being led by
a dishonest lawyer to make such an
error is not too far-fetched; it shows with great emphasis how fortunate we are to have the help and
interest of a man with Dr.
Bovard's capabilities." 19 Bovard's fresh thinking would prove "invaluable assets to the defense
against dishonest claims for
compensation," Largent
concluded. 20 Largent passed
on more good news. Following the Mellon conference, other U.S. companies had also expressed "intense
interest" in the fluoride
problem. Alcoa's Francis Frary had told Largent that the aluminum company might support an expanded
research program at Kettering. Other
companies soon contacted Robert Kehoe directly. The DuPont medical director, Dr. G. H. Gehrmann, told
Kehoe that DuPont, too, might be
interested in joining the fluoride research at Kettering!' Such
collaboration became a reality
that summer and fall. On July 26, 1946, industry representatives met again, this time in the Philadelphia
headquarters of the Pennsylvania
Salt Company. And by the end of the year DuPont, Universal Oil Products, Reynolds Metals, and
Alcoa had all agreed to pay for
expanded fluoride studies at Kettering. Of special interest to sponsors:
the willingness of the Kettering
team to procure additional humans for
experimentation. "This program should allow for new human subjects
and should materially contribute
to this subject," noted Pennsylvania Salts S. C. Ogburn Jr., in a November 1946 letter to Edward
Largent. More Human
Experiments, and a
Suspicious Scientific Study
THE EXPANDED RESEARCH program quickly bore fruit, both in fresh human experiments and in an influential
scientific paper attacking Kaj
Roholm. In January 1947, as industry checks for the fluoride
research started to arrive in the
Kettering Laboratory
106
CHAPTER EIGHT
mailroom, Edward Largent looked around for more human subjects. He
did not have to look far. Largent
sometimes ate in the Ketter-ing lunchroom
with members of a local African American family, the Blackstones,
several of whom worked for the
University of Cincinnati as laboratory assistants and animal handlers. A group of black boys — a wonderful
family, Elmo and Peanut and
Gentry," remembered Edward Largent years later. 22 The Blackstone brothers had
helped Dr. Robert Kehoe in his lead
experiments. In 1947 a new item appeared on the Blackstones menu — extra-dietary fluoride. In May
of that year, forty-one-year-old
Elmo Blackstone began eating fluoride and carefully collecting his
urine and excreta. The industrial
experiments would continue for three and a half years, during which time he would consume a startling 12,047
mg of fluoride in the form of
sodium fluoride and sodium fluoroborate,
considerably more fluoride than even Lar-gent had ingested. In one experiment, begun in June 1948, Elmo
was given 84 mg of sodium fluoride
each week in his food for 130 weeks.' There is no surviving record
of whether Elmo Blackstone
experienced injury as a result of these
experiments, but the historians Gerald Markowitz and David Rosner describe similar Kettering human
experiments with lead as particularly
pernicious because their objective was not the discovery of a therapy
for those with lead poisoning but
was to gather evidence that could be used by industry to prove that lead in the blood was normal and not
indicative of poisoning by
industry. 25 In 1951 Edward
Largent mounted a major assault on the research of Kaj Roholm, describing health effects of
fluoride exposure in American
workers that were much less severe than those reported by the
Danish scientist. 26 His paper
laid a medical keystone for Americas cold war industrial enterprise. 27 The war had hugely increased U.S.
industrial dependence on fluoride,
a hunger that grew voraciously as the American economy began its spectacular cold war expansion, with
entire new enterprises, such as
fluorocarbon plastics, aerosols, refrigerants, uranium enrichment, rocket fuels, and
agricultural chemicals, all requiring
that employees breathe and absorb fluoride. 28 By 1975 the
government estimated that 350,000
men and women in 92 different occupations were exposed to fluoride in the workplace. 29 Yet the
consequences of that chemical
exposure BERT
KEHOE AND THE KETTERING LABORATORY 107 would be largely overlooked, in part because
of Largents 1951 paper, published
in the influential American Journal of Roentgenology. Roholm had reported that fluoride produced a host of
medical symptoms in factory
workers. Most distinctly, fluoride could visibly disfigure a worker's bones, disabling them with a
painful thickening and fusing of
spinal vertebrae, a condition Roholm called crippling skeletal
fluorosis. Largent now
contradicted the Dane, reporting that no disabilities had been caused by fluoride in the U.S. workers
he had studied. Instead, he argued
that fluoride "deposition only highlighted a preexisting condition,
making it more
"apparent" to X-rays. "One wonders if Roholm may not have overemphasized the part that fluorides
may play in causing limitation of
mobility of the spine," Largent wrote. Perhaps the crippled spinal
columns of the Danish workers were
mostly the result of "hard labor," he suggested. 30
Largents 1951 paper was influential among those for whom it was meant to be influential, so that in
1965, for example, the nations leading
fluoride expert, Harold Hodge, could state that crippling fluorosis
has never been seen in the United
States. 31 But Largents paper also appears to have been a grim scientific hoax. At the end of his paper
the Kettering researcher had
ostentatiously posed a question: why did fluoride appear to affect American and European workers
differently? "Just why disability
has not been recorded in American workers remains unanswered,
Largent wrote. The answer is simple. The facts were
hidden by a Kettering cover-up
that misled a generation of medical researchers about the consequences
of industrial fluoride exposure
and sentenced many thousands of U.S.
workers to undiagnosed fluoride injury. Just three years earlier
Kettering's Robert Kehoe had
privately told Alcoa that 120 workers at its Massena aluminum smelting plant had "bone fluorosis" and
that 33 were "severe"
cases that showed evidences of disability ranging in estimated degree up
to loo per-cent. 32 Similarly,
while Largent publicly reported no fluoride dis- ability, privately three doctors had told him that workers'
X-rays showed evidence of
fluoride-linked medical injury, according to his personal correspondence and long-concealed
records. Largents 1951 paper
was based on X-rays of workers at the
Pennsylvania Salt Company. Fluoride was burrowing inside the 1 o 8 CHAPTER EIGHT employees bodies,
deforming and crippling their bones, according to a radiologist, Dr. Thomas Smyth. Ira Templeton, one worker
from the company s plant in
Easton, Pennsylvania, showed marked increase in the density of the pelvis, upper portion of the femur,
vertebrae, ribs, clavicle, scapula
and forearm. Dr. Smyth considered these [effects] to be indicative of marked fluorine intox ication,"
Largent told management. At another
Pennsylvania Salt plant at Natrona, Pennsylvania, X-ray images of a worker, Elmer Lammay, revealed that "bone
growths on some of the vertebrae
were extensive enough to indicate that some of the bones of the spine were becoming solidly fused
together," Largent reported to
management. 33 A second Natrona worker, Ross Mills, also revealed a "clear-cut increase in the
density of the lower ribs and the lower
thoracic and lumbar spine, typical of fluorine absorption," according to radiologist Paul Bovard,
who classified Mills a "probable
case of fluorosis." 34
Although the Kettering researchers hid the incriminating X-ray
pictures from the workers, on
January 31, 1947, a mix-up occurred and Ira Templeton's results were sent directly to the Easton plant.
" All of the films show
osteosclerosis previously described and considered to be as a result of fluoride poisoning. . . . Very truly
yours, Russell Davey, M.D.," read the mailed analysis." Pennsylvania Salt's management was
furious at the misdirected letter.
Its workforce might learn of the danger from fluoride exposure, the company worried. "You can appreciate the
seriousness of this situation to
us," wrote a senior official, S. C. Ogburn Jr., to Dr. Robert Kehoe, Largent's boss at the Kettering
Laboratory. "Doubtless, this letter
has been widely discussed at our Plant and is evidence of extremely poor tact, to say the least, on the part of
Drs. Pillmore and Davey,"
Ogburn added. 36
Kehoe asked the offending radiologist, Dr. Davey, to send future
X-rays directly to the Kettering
Laboratory and thereby "absolve the management of the Easton plant of any responsibility." He added,
"We wish to avoid any
situations that would result in undue suspicions or anxiety on the part
of any of these men." And
Kehoe swiftly reassured Pennsylvania Salts management that any apprehension or concern by workers about
their health was the result of a
semantic misunderstanding. In Europe the terms "fluorine gOBERT KEHOE AND THE KETTERING
LABORATORY
109
poisoning and fluorine intoxication might suggest disability and
even worker compensation. In the
United States, however, Edward Largent and the radiologist Dr. Paul Bovard were using these terms
differently, infusing medical
language with new meaning, Kehoe insisted. Poisoning was merely an unfortunate choice of verbal
expression," he added. 37
Dr. Kehoe and Edward Largent now delivered their sponsors some good news. Dr. Bovard had reversed the
earlier diagnoses of fluoride poisoning
by Drs. Smyth and Davey. He now claimed that, "with the exception
of spinous ligament changes seen
in films of Ira Templeton, the bone
changes were so commonly seen in laborers as to have no necessary
or likely relation to fluorine
deposition. Pennsylvania Salt should therefore "differentiate between the terms, fluorine
intoxication, which carries with
it the implication of illness and disability, or impending disability,
and "fluorine deposition,
which signifies demonstrable change but without implying, necessarily, that illness or disease has occurred
or is imminent, suggested Largent.
38 The Kettering researchers
published verdict of no disability was
manifestly suspicious. All three radiologists had diagnosed some degree
of fluoride-induced spinal
thickening, ligament changes, or fluorosis in the Pennsylvania Salt workers. A careful reader of Largent's
published paper might also note an
important distinction between the way Largent had arrived at his medical conclusions and how Kaj Roholm had
investigated the same problem. The
Dane had listened closely to the health complaints of the Copenhagen employees. He had concluded that fluoride
poisoning was insidious and
hydra-headed and that several groups of
symptoms — including stomach, bone, lung, skin, and nervous problems — often presented themselves
at different times in different
people, making fluoride injury both serious and sometimes difficult
to diagnose. 39 Largent's 1951
published finding of "no disability" in the Pennsylvania Salt workers, however, was made without ever
talking to the employees
themselves. Nor had the Kettering team performed any medical examinations beyond studying bone
X-rays in a distant office. Detailed
clinical examination of the workmen in these plants could not be
carried out and therefore no other
data are available for consideration, Largent wrote." 110 CHAPTER EIGHT Sins of the Father EDWARD LA RGENTS WILLINGNESS tO
perform human experiments was
remarkable. In the haste of World War II, he had helped the
Manhattan Project fix fluoride
inhalation safety standards at 6 parts per million for U.S. war workers who breathed in
fluoride in factories." Following the war Largent even turned to his own family to obtain additional
scientific data. 42 He
couldnt get experimental subjects, explained his son Edward Largent Jr., who today is a classical
composer and professor emeritus at
the Dana School of Music at Youngstown State University in Ohio. A
lot of people were just
antifluoride for whatever reasons, he added. His son, then a high school student, was selected by
his father because he "was
available and he was willing," his father told the medical writer Joel Griffiths. "Willing human subjects
are not that easy to find," he
explained. Largent told his son that he needed more data for
whatever research he was doing,
Largent, Jr. remembered. "It was really sort of a cursory knowledge. I wouldn't have
understood a lot of what he was talking
about because I was only a sophomore in high school. The Manhattan Project's Rochester
division had already reported
earlier experiments with hydrogen fluoride gas on dogs. At concentrations of approximately 8.8
parts per million of hydrogen fluoride,
the lungs of one out of five dogs hemorrhaged. 43 Largent, Sr., had read
the study but appeared skeptical
about the results. " When I read it I wasn't impressed with what it meant in terms of potential human
exposure, he told Griffiths. There
was no review commit-tee for the Kettering inhalation experiment and no formal consent forms. "I was the
review committee," he said.
He did not anticipate health problems in the experimental subjects. "As far as we were concerned,
there were no such risks," he added. In order to perform these new experiments, Largent had
to have a gas chamber built. The
process was a challenge. HF gas is corrosive, and the acid attacked the metal cylinders and valves. " It was
found to be very difficult to
maintain a specific concentration of HF in air inside the inhalation chamber, he reported. Once the gas chamber was built,
Largent reserved the greatest amount
of fluoride for one of the Kettering laboratory s African ROBERT KEHOE AND THE
KETTERING LABORATORY 111
American laboratory assistants, forty-six-year-old male Gentry
Blackstone. For fifty days in the
early spring of 1953 Blackstone sat in the Kettering gas chamber six hours a day, breathing an
average dose of 4.2 parts per million
of hydrogen fluoride acid. But Largent did not experiment on Gentry Blackstone alone. Largent also exposed
his own wife, Kathleen, to a lower
dose of 2.7 parts per million. And although Gentry Blackstone received
the largest amount of fluoride
over the longest period of time, the single highest exposure values were given to Largent's son. On June
22, 1953, Edward Largent Jr., aged
seventeen, entered a Kettering gas chamber for the first time. Cold cosmetic cream was applied to his face.
The experiment would continue for
twenty-eight days, six hours at a time, with weekends off.
"I had to sit in this cage," the son remembered. A small fan
was placed in front of the boy to
improve the gas circulation. Outside, his father operated the controls and watched. The walls of the chamber
were made from transparent plastic
sheeting. The gas whispered in. At first, it caught the teenagers lungs and burned his nostrils, he said. His
skin reddened and flaked. He read
fiction to relieve the tedium, eyes stinging and smarting. The average dose for the six weeks that
Edward Largent Jr. sat in the
chamber was 6.7 parts per million — almost two and a half times what his mother received. For one remarkable
week in early July 1953, however,
with a break for Independence Day, the scientist gassed his son with
doses of hydrogen fluoride that
averaged 9.1 parts per million and climbed as high as 1 1 .9, almost four times the maximum allowable
concentration then set by federal
authorities and twice what the father had tolerated himself. The son's urine levels spiked at 40
parts of fluoride per million. The highest doses given to his son were accidental, the father said in
retrospect; "It was our
inability to keep it from going higher than we wanted it to." Largent's experiments rang alarm
bells for industry. At a 1953
Symposium on Fluorides at the Kettering Laboratory, he described
his inhalation studies and spelled
out the potential dangers they had revealed.." The gathered officials — including the head of the Fluorine
Lawyers Committee, Alcoa s Frank
Seamans — knew that American workers were
regularly exposed to 3 parts per million of fluoride in their factories
and workplaces. They also knew
that when fluoride urine levels rose above 8 milligrams per liter, there was real danger 1 12 CHAPTER EIGHT that fluoride was
building up in the skeleton and might soon become visible to X-rays. Largent delivered the bad
news. Fluoride levels in his
experimental subjects had spiked sharply immediately after their gas chamber exposures, even at lower
acceptable exposure levels. Urinary
concentrations averaged about io mg. per liter, he told the industry
men, "although the
atmospheric concentrations of HF were near to 3 ppm, which is generally accepted as satisfactory
for prolonged occupational exposure.
95 In public Largent continued to maintain that fluoride was safe in
low doses. 96 Privately he told
the industry representatives at the 1953
Symposium, One wonders (whether) . . . prolonged exposure to HF at such a level may not give rise to
medico-legal controversies."" Despite his private warnings to industry, Largent s
experiments on his family and on
the Blackstones are now considered a scientific foundation for today's official safety standard
for the tens of thousands of workers who
each day breathe the gas in their factories. The other source for
safety assurances? Experiments
done in 1909 on rats. 98 Even though the family
experiments seem shocking, Edward Largent Jr. refuses to judge his father for placing him in a hydrogen
fluoride gas chamber. Although the
music professor has experienced knee problems in recent years, he blames a youthful passion for soccer; he
doubts that it had anything to do
with his summer spent breathing fluoride in the basement of the Kettering Laboratory, where he
remembers only moderate discomfort.
Mostly, he told me, "It stank and it was very boring. Be careful
about criticizing," he
warned, referring to the 19505 experiments. "Those were different times. The criteria and the
sensitivities to such things were very
different." He added, "It is like trying to judge a Beethoven
symphony today. You have to look
at the circumstances, the instruments he was writing for, the audience situations." After the experiments Edward
Largent Jr., abruptly changed his career
plans. He had passed his entrance exams for medical school at Ohio
State, but suddenly plumped for
music. Science no longer seemed so appealing. "I just decided I didn't want to do that, he said. His father would be haunted in
later life by his own service as a human
laboratory animal. Painful osteofluorosis led to a knee ROBERT KEHOE AND THE
KETTERING LABORATORY 113 replacement and a reliance on medication
for relief, the former Kettering
researcher told medical writer Joel Griffiths in a taped interview in
the mid-1990s. Both knees were
hurting, Largent explained, because of the deposition of fluoride. Ironically, he seemed to have wound
up suffering from the very type of
skeletal disability his industry-funded scientific studies said did not exist. (In a second interview, however,
Largent reversed himself and
denied to Griffiths that he had ever suffered osteofluorosis.) 49 Edward Largent Sr. died in December 1998, five days
after an operation for a broken
hip, suffered after a nighttime fall: gripped by Alzheimer's dementia, Largent had forgotten to use
his walker to get to the bathroom.
At the end of his life, his son recalled, Edward Largent "was angry
and frustrated and very frightened
because he knew there was something that
wasn't right and that he couldn't fig ure out how to deal with it. The
son wondered whether his father's
bone pain in later life was because of his fluoride experiments. Edward Largent Jr.'s mother also suffered
from ill health in her final
years. Kathleen Largent had a leaking heart valve and a nerve disorder known as myasthenia
gravis. (Arthritis, increased risk of hip
fracture, Alzheimer's, and other central-nervous-system disorders have
all been linked by scientists to
fluoride exposure.) 50 In
recent years Edward Largent Jr. has spent hours reading about the Manhattan Project, wondering if his
father was involved. An elder brother
said their father had worked at Oak Ridge. And as a boy, Edward
Largent Jr. remembers his father
arriving from Tennessee at their Cincinnati home on a Friday night during the 1940s, driving a black car with
government plates. "The car
would go in the garage and I would say "Let's go for a ride,' and Dad would say No, no we
can't use that car.' And then he would
leave Sunday after-noon in the government car." 
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