(Why Haven’t We Learned From The Walter E. Fernald State School?) by Pearl and Irwin Jacobowitz, April 12, 2012.
Millions of Massachusetts residents living alongside the Rottenberg Center in Canton, Massachusetts, either feel powerless to make a change and rid their state of this atrocity, feel that it’s a good thing, profit from it, or simply just don’t give a damn. Wendy Fournier hit it right on the nose when she asked, “What the Hell is wrong with Massachusetts?
In turn, we ask, Massachusetts! Is there anybody out there?
We ran an article several months ago that discussed the history of the Rottenberg Center and their methods of torture. Sad to say, Massachusetts has a sorted history of schools of torture (similar to other states); lets not forget The Walter E. Fernald State School, now the Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center, located in Waltham, Massachusetts.
The Fernald Center, was originally known as the Massachusetts School for Idiotic Children, was founded by reformer Samuel Gridley Howe in 1848 with a $2,500 appropriation from the Massachusetts State Legislature. Several reports of physical and sexual abuse swarmed the facility. In the 1970s, a class action suit, Ricci v. Okin, was filed to upgrade conditions at Fernald and several other state institutions for persons with mental retardation in Massachusetts.
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 or 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: In 1946, one study exposed seventeen subjects to radioactive iron. The second study, which involved a series of seventeen related sub-experiments, exposed fifty-seven subjects to radioactive calcium between 1950 and 1953. It is clear that the doses involved were low and that it is extremely unlikely that any of the children who were used as subjects were harmed as a consequence. These studies remain morally troubling, however, for several reasons. First, although parents or guardians were asked for their permission to have their children involved in the research, the available evidence suggests that the information provided was, at best, incomplete. Second, there is the question of the fairness of selecting institutionalized children at all, children whose life circumstances were by any standard already heavily burdened.
The buildings and grounds survive as a center for mentally disabled adults, operated by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation. According to a December 13, 2004 article in the Boston Globe, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announced in 2003 that the facility would be closed and the land sold by 2007. In 2003, a coalition of family advocates and state employee unions began a campaign to save Fernald. Since 2007, Deval Patrick’s administration, has declined to negotiate with those Fernald advocates, and has pressed ahead with its appeal and closure plans. (Wikepedia, February 22, 2012)
Remember America, it is your taxes that supports these institutions of terror. Don’t you even care how your money is spent or do you like throwing it out the window? This kind of torture and abuse brings to mind slavery and the holocaust, because for so many years people stood by and watched while the torture took place. In all fairness, we believe that the public should see how their money is spent: Click on this site and view the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aAj9W0ntUMI
RI Families Against Restraint and Seclusion
presented Mrs. Karen Pierce, the Board of Managers, with two baskets of
trinkets for the children, at the Edmond Town Hall . The Edmond Town Hall was surrounded by
candlelight, cards, and flowers in remembrance of the victims. Mrs. Pierce led us to the auditorium and
asked each of us to echo our name; she said that you become a part
of the building's history when you echo your name. Many programs, such as, movies are held for
the community at the town hall. 
