Radioactive Oatmeal Lawsuit Cost $1.85M

In 1998, the Quaker Oats Company and MIT agreed to pay $1.85 million to settle a federal lawsuit over experiments that fed radioactive oatmeal to boys at the Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts, during the 1940s and 1950s. Researchers gave oatmeal containing radioactive iron and calcium to more than 100 students, some of whom had intellectual disabilities, to study how the digestive system absorbed those minerals. Fifteen former students filed the class-action lawsuit in 1995, arguing that the experiments violated their civil rights because parental consent forms never disclosed the radioactive ingredients. MIT designed the study, while Quaker provided funding and oatmeal, although MIT maintained that the radiation caused no health problems.

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