news article - LANL lawsuit

[Mike Baker <baker@groves.neep.wisc.edu>]

Here is a news story that you might find interesting.

Mike Baker ... baker@groves.neep.wisc.edu

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Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 0:37:12 PDT
  	  				 
	 SANTA FE, N.M. (Reuter) - The family of a man killed by  
radiation poisoning at a nuclear laboratory in New Mexico 37 
years ago is suing the lab for allegedly using his body in 
radiation tests without their permission. 
	 Doris Kelley and her daughter Katie said Wednesday they had  
filed a class-action lawsuit claiming the government's Los 
Alamos National Laboratory did not ask for their permission 
before conducting radiation tests on Cecil Kelley after his 
death in 1959. 
	 Kelley, a chemical technician at the lab for 11 years, was  
exposed to a massive amount of plutonium radiation and died 
around 30 hours later. 
	 Katie Kelley said her family only gave permission for  
doctors at a local medical center to determine the cause of 
death, and that the LANL was not authorized to take body tissues 
for tests on how much radiation her father absorbed. 
	 ``It is against the law for the government to take parts of  
a body without the family's permission,'' she said. ``To find 
out that they chopped him up for scientific experimentation was 
beyond belief for us and beyond acceptance.'' 
	 She said she first found out about the tests on her father  
from a newspaper story in October 1993. 
	 LANL spokesman Jim Danneskiold said the Kelley family's  
authorization of a hospital autopsy covered further testing 
deemed proper by the doctors who carried out the autopsy. 
	 Those doctors passed on the tissues to the LANL.  
	 ``Permission was given for autopsies,'' Danneskiold said.  
''The permission was given by Doris Kelly.'' 
	 From 1959 to 1978, selected tissues from all former  
laboratory employees who were autopsied at the medical center 
were handed on for examination by LANL experts. 
	 The LANL said the program was aimed at checking the  
effectiveness of its efforts to protect workers from 
overexposure to radioactivity. 
	 Cooper Brown, a lawyer for the Kelleys, said unauthorized  
tests were carried out on the bodies of 250 former Los Alamos 
employees and about 250 members of the Los Alamos community. 
    The Kelleys did not see Cecil's body when it was released  
after the autopsy. Brown said it was so radioactive that it had 
to be sealed in a lead-lined casket.