Researchers at Vanderbilt University gave radioactive pills to pregnant women during the 1940s to determine the long-term effects of radiation on children.
A follow-up study during the 1960s concluded that three children born to women who took the pills likely died because of the research.The Department of Energy is looking for information on the experiments at Vanderbilt or other radiation research performed on civilians during the Cold War, the department said.
Vanderbilt officials said researchers kept documents of the study until they were destroyed in the 1970s.
"The researchers who were working on that maintained their own files," said Vanderbilt spokesman Wayne Wood. "They were not Vanderbilt property. They belonged to the researchers themselves."
Researchers gave radioactive pills to 751 pregnant women seeking free care at a prenatal clinic run by Vanderbilt University.
The pills exposed the women and their fetuses to radiation 30 times higher than normal. The doses given were not considered unsafe at the time.
A follow-up study in the 1960s concluded that three children likely died, including an 11-year-old girl who died of a tumor, an 11-year-old boy who died of cancer and a 5-year-old boy who died of lymphatic leukemia.
Vanderbilt officials said they don't know if the women were told of the possible effects of radiation or even if they knew they were being given radioactive pills.
The results of both the 1940s and 1960s studies were published in medical journals. The only data researchers had on the subject in the 1940s came from pregnant women who survived the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II.
Sen. Jim Sasser, D-Tenn., asked DOE Secretary Hazel O'Leary for an expanded report on the radiation experiments and called the Vanderbilt study "deeply disturbing."
"If they did not give consent, I would like to know why the experiments were performed without the knowledge of the subjects. I would also like to know whether DOE continued to monitor the health of these women and their children," he said.
The Energy Department promised last week to find and declassify evidence of a dozen top-secret radiation experiments conducted over Utah, New Mexico and Tennessee from 1948 to 1952.