Eugene Saenger, Controversial Doctor, Dies at 90

Dr. Eugene L. Saenger, who set off a dispute over medical ethics by leading a cold-war research study that exposed patients in Cincinnati to intense doses of radiation, died there on Sept. 30. He was 90.

His death was announced by the University of Cincinnati, where he taught for more than three decades.

Dr. Saenger was a radiologist and an expert in nuclear medicine whose research contributed to the establishment of radiation safety standards for patients and medical personnel, the university said. In 1960, he became among the first to report on the development of tumors in children after irradiation for benign conditions.

But it was a Pentagon-sponsored radiation study that brought him unwanted national attention.

The study was intended to answer a question for battlefield commanders: In the event of a nuclear explosion, how much radiation could a soldier withstand before becoming disabled or disoriented? One goal was to develop a test that would quickly indicate a person’s radiation exposure level.

From 1960 to 1971, researchers at the University of Cincinnati exposed at least 90 cancer patients to large radiation doses, many over their whole bodies, and recorded their physical and mental responses. Most were poor or working-class people being treated at General Hospital, affiliated with the university; about 60 percent were black. Twenty-one died within a month or so, and some suffered severe nausea or mental disorientation.

Dr. Saenger later defended the research, saying one purpose had been to improve treatments and survival rates or to relieve symptoms. But critics like Dr. David Egilman, a clinical associate professor of community health at Brown University, have argued that it was known that total body radiation was not effective for the types of solid tumors the patients had.

“What happened here is one of the worst things this government has ever done to its citizens in secret,” Dr. Egilman said.

Martha Stephens, now an emeritus professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, helped bring the research to light in the early 1970s and wrote a book about it. She said documents showed that many of the patients had received radiation doses that reduced their white blood cell counts to nearly nothing.

At one time, Dr. Saenger said the deaths of eight patients had been caused by radiation, but later he said that none had been caused by it.

In 1994, when government-sponsored radiation experiments that had been conducted during the cold war attracted renewed attention, the Cincinnati study came under new scrutiny, and a graduate student working with Professor Stephens began tracking down the families of the patients.

A class-action suit was filed on behalf of the families against the researchers, the university, the federal government and the City of Cincinnati, which ran the university at the time of the experiments. In a settlement in 1999, most families were awarded $50,978 each, a dozen others $85,318.

The university released documents showing that members of faculty committees that reviewed clinical research had argued privately for years about the safety and morality of the study, but it had been allowed to continue. The papers also show that the National Institutes of Health expressed doubts in 1967, rejecting, for ethical reasons, Dr. Saenger’s proposal to expand his experiment.

Eugene Lange Saenger was born in Cincinnati on March 5, 1917. He received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1938 and a medical degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1942, then completed his residency at General Hospital.

He joined the medical faculty at the university in 1949, became a full professor in 1962 and was director of the medical college’s radioisotope laboratory from 1962 until his retirement in 1987. He was awarded the Gold Medal by the Radiological Society of North America, its highest honor.

He is survived by a son, Eugene Jr., of Cincinnati, and four grandchildren. His wife, Susan, whom he married in 1941, died in 1995, and a daughter, Katherine Soodek, died in 1993.

One critical issue in the dispute over the radiation study was whether the patients were ever fully informed about what was being done. In the first five years, the researchers said, they obtained oral consent, and later various written consent forms.

But Professor Stephens recounted that “none of them ever said: ‘You may die of this radiation. Do you wish to participate?’”

“If they had,” she said, “there would have been no experiment.”