Radioactive Oatmeal Lawsuit Is Settled

Quaker Oats Co. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have agreed to pay $1.85 million to settle a lawsuit over an experiment in which radioactive oatmeal was fed to more than a 100 students in the 1940s and ‘50s. Boys at the Fernald School in Waltham were given the cereal containing radioactive iron and calcium as part of an experiment to prove that nutrients in Quaker oatmeal travel throughout the body. Quaker wanted to match the advertising claims of its competitor, Cream of Wheat, said plaintiffs’ lawyer Alexander Bok. The boys--many of whom were wards of the state and inaccurately classified as mentally retarded--suffered no ill effects, Bok said.