Radioactive Oatmeal: The Shocking Story of How MIT, Quaker Oats, and the Government Exploited Children

In 1945, as the world was recovering from the devastation of World War II, a group of scientists at MIT conducted an experiment that would later be revealed as one of the most unethical studies in modern history. At the Fernald State School in Massachusetts, young boys—many of them vulnerable and voiceless—were fed radioactive oatmeal. The goal? To stud…