The Walter E. Fernald State School, later the Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center, was the Western hemisphere's oldest publicly funded institution serving people with developmental disabilities. Originally a Victorian sanatorium, it became a "poster child" for the American eugenics movement during the 1920s. It later was the scene of medical experiments in the 20th century. Investigations into this research led to new regulations regarding human research in children.
The school occupies a property off Trapelo Road in Waltham, Massachusetts.
History
Early history
The Fernald Center, originally called the Experimental School for Teaching and Training Idiotic Children, was founded in Boston by reformer Samuel Gridley Howe in 1848 with a $2,500 appropriation from the Massachusetts State Legislature. The school gradually moved to a new permanent location in Waltham between 1888 and 1891. It would eventually comprise 72 buildings total, located on . At its peak, some 2,500 people were confined there, most of them "feeble-minded" boys.
Under its third superintendent, Walter E. Fernald (1859–1924), an advocate of eugenics, the school was viewed as a model educational facility in the field of mental retardation. It was renamed in his honor in 1925, following his death the previous year. The institution was involved in several different procedures that used the residents as test subjects, some of which included sterilization and radiation experimentation.
The institution did serve a large population of children with cognitive disabilities (referred to as "mentally retarded children"), but The Boston Globe estimates that upwards of half of the inmates tested with IQs in the normal range. In the 20th century, living conditions were spartan or worse; approximately 36 children slept in each dormitory room. There were also reports of physical and sexual abuse.
Nuclear medicine research in children
The Fernald School was the site of the 1946–53 joint experiments by Harvard University and MIT that exposed young male children to tracer doses of radioactive isotopes. Documents obtained in 1994 by the United States Department of Energy revealed the following details: The experiment was conducted in part by a research fellow sponsored by the Quaker Oats Company. MIT Professor of Nutrition Robert S. Harris led the experiment, which studied the absorption of calcium and iron. The boys were encouraged to join a "Science Club", which offered larger portions of food, parties, and trips to Boston Red Sox baseball games. The 57 club members ate iron-enriched cereals and calcium-enriched milk for breakfast. In order to track absorption, several radioactive calcium tracers were given orally or intravenously. Radiation levels in stool and blood samples would serve as dependent variables. In another study, 17 subjects received iron supplement shots containing radioisotopes of iron. Neither the children nor their parents ever gave adequate informed consent for participation in a scientific study.
The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, reporting to the United States Department of Energy in 1994, reported on these experiments:
It has been claimed that the highest dose of radiation that any subject was exposed to was 330 millirem, the equivalent of less than one year's background radiation in Denver. A 1995 class-action suit resulted in a 1998 District court decision awarding the victims a $1.85 million settlement from MIT and Quaker.
The school also participated in studies of thyroid function in patients with Down Syndrome and their parents. This study showed that their iodine metabolism was similar to normal controls.
Reform lawsuit
This situation changed in the 1970s, when a class action suit, Ricci v. Okin, was filed to upgrade conditions at Fernald and several other state institutions for persons with intellectual disability in Massachusetts. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Louis Tauro, who assumed oversight of the case in 1972, formally disengaged from the case in 1993, declaring that improvements in the care and conditions at the facilities had made them "second to none anywhere in the world". A result for Fernald residents of the class action suit which took effect in 1993 was the provision of "a guaranteed level of care, regardless of cost, to compensate for decades of neglect and abuse".