Radium

Hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren who were given a nasal radium treatment pioneered at John Hopkins may have an increased risk of cancer, but a federal advisory board concluded yesterday that notifying them would be of little benefit.The treatment, nasopharyngeal irradiation, was considered standard medical care in the 1940s and 1950s for middle ear obstructions, infections and deafness. According to a recent estimate by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 500,000 schoolchildren may have received the procedure as late as the 1960s.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- A presidential panel decided yesterday to attempt to assess the possible cancer risk from a radium procedure developed at a Johns Hopkins medical institution and decide if those treated decades ago need medical follow-up.The procedure, known as nasopharyngeal irradiation, was used to treat hundreds of children with hearing problems from the 1940s until the 1960s. At the time, it was presumed harmless.The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments decided to review the procedure because people who underwent the treatment as children are now questioning its possible long-term effects.

A radium treatment given to hundreds of Maryland children from the 1940s to the 1960s and presumed harmless is being restudied by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and the National Cancer Institute to determine the cancer risk that might associated with it.Pioneered at Hopkins 70 years ago, nasopharyngeal irradiation was prescribed to correct hearing, sinus and adenoid problems in children. The treatment involved inserting radium-tipped rods into the nose to shrink excess adenoid tissue that had caused the ailments.

WASHINGTON -- Thousands of military personnel, including perhaps 5,000 submariners, received radium treatments for middle ear problems in the 1940s and beyond, and should be studied for possible long-term effects of the radiation, say researchers.The radium treatments involve the largest group of veterans exposed to radiation other than those who served near atomic bomb tests, Dr. Alan Ducatman, an environmental health specialist at the West Virginia University Medical School, said yesterday.

Barbara McClintock, 90, a pioneering geneticist and a 1983 winner of the Nobel Prize for her research on Indian corn, died Wednesday in Huntington, N.Y. She discovered that genes can move from one area on the chromosomes to another, a finding that now helps molecular biologists identify, locate and study genes. The Cornell-trained scientist was named a fellow of the MacArthur Foundation, which provided her with $60,000 a year for life. She was working as recently as four months before her death, putting in seven-day weeks and sometimes 16-hour days.