Documents Sent to Task Force

Harvard last week sent its first shipment of documents to a state task force investigating tests with radiation conducted on retarded children at the Fernald State School in the 1940s and 1950s.

Vice President for Government, Community and Public Affairs Jane H. Corlette said yesterday that "a couple of batches" of files, mostly composed of patients' medical records, have been turned over to the task force.

Harvard's Countway Medical Library contains the collected papers of a former faculty member, Dr. Clemens E. Benda, who worked at Fernald and performed experiments with radiation on students there. Many of the papers likely came from those files.

Corlette said she did not know on what day the files left Cambridge, who sent them or who on the state's task force received the papers.

"A couple of things found do bear upon the experiments, and we have transported those documents as we said we would," Corlette said.

"We are doing what we've promised," she said.

Gerald Ryan, the spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation and communication liaison for the task force, said the state's 10-member panel has "received a number of documents" from several sources, including Harvard, MIT and the state.

Harvard's files will be used by the task force as it prepares a report on experiments on retarded students at Fernald and other state schools, Ryan said.

"Harvard has been cooperating very closely," Ryan said.

The task force has a deadline of March 31 to submit its report to Department of Mental Retardation Commissioner Philip Campbell.

Several Harvard Medical School faculty members had close links to Fernald in the Cold War era. And Benda led a nutrition experiment at the school in which the retarded students were fed radioactive milk with their breakfast cereal.

Harvard spokesperson Joe Wrinn said he thought members of Harvard's "working groups," which were set up in January to comb Harvard's records,sent the files.

Neither Wrinn nor Corlette could specify thenumber of files shipped or how they weretransported.

"We're uncovering a lot of information andwe're trying to stay on target," Ryan said of thetask force's March deadline. "But we'll knowbetter as that date approaches.

Neither Wrinn nor Corlette could specify thenumber of files shipped or how they weretransported.

"We're uncovering a lot of information andwe're trying to stay on target," Ryan said of thetask force's March deadline. "But we'll knowbetter as that date approaches.