Vanderbilt settlement

[DamschenGA <damschenga@mkf.ornl.gov>]

I heard a news report yesterday afternoon that Vanderbilt University had
settled a multi-million dollar claim with some women who had been involved
in iron tracer studies during the 40's without their knowledge/consent.
Apparently some of the children of the plaintiffs had died of cancer and
this was attributed to radiation exposure from the iron tracers. The report
said that the judge made the Vanderbilt attorney turn face the women and
read a prepared statement to the effect that it was the proper time and the
"right thing to do" to apologize to the women for the suffering they had
been put through as a result of the experimentation.

Does anyone have better info on this? Was this really what was said or just
journalistic license? If the news account was reasonably accurate, doesn't
this point up the importance of finding a way to clarify the difference
between "possible" and "probable" and the danger of imparting mortality
statistics to single atom events (the problem with FRG-13)?

-Gary Damschen
HP Training Manager
MK-Ferguson of Oak Ridge
damschenga@mkf.ornl.gov

Standard disclaimers apply...these are my own musings.