Stafford Leak Warren
Warren did his residency at Huntington Hospital in Boston; he had an appointmentat the
University of Rochester, where he did pioneer research at the Medical School on X-rays
and cancer. His connection with Rochester is very early. During the war years, it was
noted that the Rochester lab was the only one that could do animal work(p. 495, v. 2).
Stone's group wasat the time working on fluorine, an offshoot of Dr. Harry Hedge's work
at Rochester on fluorine in teeth. Stone and Warren knew each other quite early on.
Warren seems to have been responsible for worker safety at the differentsites, especially
with respect to the handling of radioactive substances, such as uranium. The Manhattan
District's policy, according to him, was not to undertake contracts with firms which did
not have adequate worker safety--for legal purposes. (This was however waved in the
case of a Canadian firm, where the Manhattan District agreed to take unprocessed
uranium).
Warren's recollection of Hamilton (p. 580, v. 2): "I didn’t have much problem with the
Berkeley people because Dr. John Lawrence, Ernest's brother, and Dr. Joseph Hamilton
had already laid down the safety criteria for the cyclotron operation. John had gotten
interested in some navy work so he didn't participate muchin this [[use ofuranium ys
thorium*]} but we relied on Dr. Joseph Hamilton. Dr. Hamilton had easy accessto all the
new fission products from the cyclotron group right there and then doing whatwecall
quick anddirty experiments. First ofall, they determined whether it was highly toxic
material, whether it was a bone seeker that destroyed the bone marrow,how rapidly was
it excreted, and so on. He was a beautiful experimenter, he did all of his on three points
per dose level, which meantthree rats. It was very cheap and very quick. And he could
sacrifice his animals at intervals of days or weeks. He would cometo a meeting every
month and give day-to-day reports. We considered him a kind of explorer. He didn't
‘ want to do any of these long-term, big-scaled things. He was not that kind of an operator.
Hehad a mind that was very quick and imaginative and he could take these small
amounts from the cyclotron and in a very short time [finish the experiment].”
(* italics are my additional notes for comprehension)
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Archives and Records Office
Human Radiation Experiments Search and Retrieval Project
Anna Berge Research Notes
Electronic DocumentTitle: Bancroft/misc
Apmil 1, 1994
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