Human radiation studies: Remembering the early years: Oral history of pathologist Clarence Lushbaugh, M.D., conducted October 5, 1994 Page: 12 of 53
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Interview with Dr. Clarence C. Lushbaugh
Date of Interview: October 5,1994; Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Interviewers: Roger Anders and Darrell Fisher, DOE Office of Human Radiation Experiments
Assisted by Ann Sipe
was known to everybody who was involved in the Hiroshima bombs. It was
also the number that I tried to find some basis for in the various kinds of
radiation which were done with the Heubline equipment. I was unable to do
that in the various kinds of hospitals that I visited. I think we studied the
records of 260-some-odd patients that were involved in this study.
SIPE: Right.LUSHBAUGH:
We visited some 60 hospitals.
SIPE: We studied close to 3,000 patients.
LUSHBAUGH:
Really.
FISHER: So what you're saying is you looked at data on up to as many as 3,000
patients who had received whole body radiation to determine what the
LDo3o was.
LUSHBAUGH: Right.
FISHER: For gamma radiation. What did you conclude from this analysis?LUSHBAUGH:
I was thinking about this the other day and my conclusion was that 450 R
was as good as anything. Subsequently, roentgens became rads and rads
became rem, so 450 R became 400 rads or 400 rem-I invented in one of
my articles that I wrote in Radiation Research, the epigastric6 rad. My
dear friend and high school chum who is presently emeritus professor of
radiation at University of Cincinnati, Dr. Eugene Saenger, took askance at
the epigastric rad. I think if I ever want Dr. Saenger to burst into a fit of
laughter, I need only mention "epigastric rad" to him. He loves it. But the
Britisher, Robin Mole, who was a radiation therapist and who was a
physician and a physicist, subsequently wanted to reduce that number, I
believe. I think it ought to be reduced, too, but I'm not certain by how much
it should be reduced.Move to Los Alamos
Going back now to Franklin McLean and his offer of a job in Los Alamos.
I went to Los Alamos and looked at the job and found that there was a job
there for a pathologist and that the pathologist would be loaned 50 percent
of his time to the Los Alamos Medical Center. I subsequently took the job
and went to Los Alamos; it was in 1949, one year after I received my M.D.
at the University of Chicago in 1948. I took the examination for the State
of New Mexico for the practice of medicine. I took the scientific
examination, which was then given by the AMA in Denver, Colorado, and
I did qualify. I passed the basic sciences exam and then, by virtue of the
fact that I had spent another year at Chicago as the assistant professor of
Pathology, I was given that time as radiation practice and medical practice
and I was licensed in the state of New Mexico.
16 lying upon, distributed over, or pertaining to the epigastrium-that is, the upper and medium parts of the
abdomen, lying over the stomach8
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Human radiation studies: Remembering the early years: Oral history of pathologist Clarence Lushbaugh, M.D., conducted October 5, 1994, report, April 1, 1995; United States. (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc672291/m1/12/: accessed May 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Government Documents Department.