Letters Received to H.H. Barker, March 31, 1928

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA SCHOOL OF CHEMISTRY MINNEAPOLIS RECEIVE APR 8 1978 OFFICE OF THE DEAN March 31, 1928 E is Mr. H. H. Barker, Vice President, RADION U. S. Radium Corporation, HATERIAL 505 Pearl Street, New York. Dear Mr. Barker: Absence from Minneapolis has delayed my reply to your letter of March 19th. After studying the report of Dr. Drinker which you submitted to me sometime ago, and after our conference on this report with relation to the conditions in your plant, I have come to the following tentative conclusion: I do not feel justified in making any sweeping criticism of Dr. Drinker's report. In the first place I am not a medical man and would not be competent to discuss the pathological con- dition of those employees whose cases were covered in his report. I should, however, like to have seen a more complete anal- ysis of the state of health of all of your employees with reference to the nature of their work, the time which they had been employed, etc., than Dr. Drinker made. From Dr. Drinker's report it is clear that he found several cases where the pathological condition was so pronounced that he felt justified in concluding that they all arose from a common cause that must have existed in your plant. After an analysis of the various possible causes, he concluded that radium was the cause and from the stress which he laid on the dust hazard and from other statements in his report, it appears that he felt that the damage due to radium came from its introduction into the general blood circulation rather than from local causes in the mouth. This conclusion was rather surprising to me and I should not be able to accept it without further supporting evidence. On the other hand, I think Dr. Drinker's opinion that the number of cases was so great and so exceptional that there is no escape from there having existed a special cause in your plent, and I do not feel inclined to disagree with Dr. Drinker that this cause was radium in some form. Having then found myself in agreement to this extent with Dr. Drinker, there still remains the question as to whether your company was justified in disagreeing wit his report at the