Beware of the Fountain of Youth

In the 1920s, everyone wanted the Youth Serum that turned out to be a Death Sentence

Fads with health aids are nothing new, from the fountain of youth to the semoglutides (Ozempic, etc.) as miracle weight loss drugs. Before embracing the newest trend, we should consider some of our earlier experiences.

The snake oil salesman has taken on colloquial meaning, but they are still around just in a corporate envelope. The enthusiasm in 1923 was all about taking a new miracle drug that was seen as the new and improved “fountain of youth” giving you energy and a youthful glowing appearance. Ready to sign up?

It was radium.

This story is shocking, and the Ozempic fad (and the emerging organ damage reports from its use) reminded me of this mostly forgotten lesson from the 1920s.

It involved toxicology, working-class women who were used, a brilliant female scientist, the wealthy, profit-seeking companies, patent-stealing scientists, corruption, litigation and coverups. In a strange turn of events, the very doctor/scientist who was the inventor of “undark” paint (and who stood to profit from it); transformed himself from villain to hero when he changed from being the biggest promoter to the biggest opponent of the use of the product he invented.

The “undark” paint was used by women to hand-paint the numbers on clock faces so that they glowed in the dark. As they painted, they would fashion a point on their brush by putting it in their mouths. The result was disfiguring injuries and early deaths.¹

Several years ago, I wrote a screenplay as a way to depict this emotionally evocative story, and so in telling this story here, I want to share with you some excerpts from that screenplay.

Logline: Dr. Sabin, entrepreneur with one of the most valued substances in the world, turns from ecstatic success to horrific dread as women who worked for him begin to die. He turned against his own company to seek justice for the women before they (and he) succumbed to the deadly radium paint.

Summary: Dr. Sabin, successful entrepreneur and scientist, sees his workers begin to die from his radium paint, “Undark”, and his enthusiasm turns to dread as he warns his own company board to stop. Instead, they fire him and he begins a fight against the company he founded to seek justice for the women he doomed. Dr. Sabin saw only five meager settlements before he died a long painful death from radium poisoning.

WILLIAM HAMMER, Assistant to Thomas Edison, talks to Dr. Sabin von Sochocky, known throughout his life as “Dr. Sabin”, about his trip to visit Marie Curie, her gift to him, and his work. He describes how he experimented by mixing the radium with glue and zinc sulfide to add luminescence to the glow of the radium. He shows his invention of paint to Sabin von Sochocky, by bringing him into his painting gallery and then turning off the lights. They see a green glow in the framed artworks. Dr. Sabin is visibly impressed.

Hammer is in the patent office in New York, objecting to Dr. Sabin filing a patent for the paint. But the office rightly states he was first to file and shows evidence in his lab book of the steps he took to invent it, plus he is the first to reduce it to practice (with the watchdial painting). They ask Hammer each of those questions, and if he has any evidence and he says no, of course not, to each question. Dr.

Sabin von Sochocky is given a patent with the name “Undark”.

Dr. Sabin shows GEORGE WILLIS another chemist, the paint and together, they found what is later called US Radium Corporation. They show workers how to make the “undark" paint and show them how to wear protective gear and tell them it is required, due to the dangers of exposure to radium. (This will contrast starkly with the lack of protective gear worn in the next scene by the women painters.)

. A water dish is on the table and girls are dipping their brushes in the water dishes, leaving the water cloudy white.

MERCEDES REED, the supervisor, makes an announcement that they will no longer be using the water dishes as someone gathers them up from each girl. The supervisor explains they were losing too much radium and the water and they must now do without the water dishes.

The girls ask, “What do we do to clean our brushes, then?”

Merc Reed explained and demonstrated, “You will use your mouth. Lip,Dip and Paint.”

“Is it safe?” Grace’s friend asked.

“Absolutely safe,” Merc Reed, answers, and takes a spatula of the paint and eats it to demonstrate it is safe. The girls laugh and feel safe.

SCENE

1922

At the long table of girls, they talk about Molly Maggia.

“Molly has been sick. Her dentist has pulled a lot of her teeth and she has to hold a handkerchief to her face to stop the oozing.”

“Some people are saying it is dangerous to work here.”

“The company is saying it’s syphilis.”

“Molly is a nice girl.”

“Maybe she’s not as nice as we thought.”

Dr. Sabin (who has visibly aged) walks through and overhears the conversation and rubs his short, nubby finger.

SCENE 18.

Molly in a dentist chair (1920s) and her jaw falls out into the hands of the dentist who is appalled. He writes in his notebook, that he has never seen anything like this.

SCENE 19.

Girls at the long table at work.

“Did you hear Molly died?” She had lost her entire jaw and was bleeding to death from her juggler vein.”

SCENE 35

SUPER: 1925

Martland, New Jersey medical examiner, and Dr. Sabin began running tests measuring the radioactivity in the breath of the girls. They went to their hospital beds and measured high levels of radon gas being exhaled by the girls.

Dr. Martland leaves the room and while he is away Dr. Sabin tests his own breath and discovers he is exhaling the highest level or radon ever seen in a living human. He realizes for the first time that he is going to die from radium, and probably soon.

June 4, 1928

Four days before jury selection was to begin, the girls settle for $10,000 each, in cash, with an annual payment of $600, payment of previous medical bills of $7500 and payment of all future medical bills related to the illness, subject to the approval of a three-physician panel. This was better than the $4000 they would have received had worker’s compensation covered their illness.

Epilogue

In 1935, cases were filed against other radium painting companies. A case for Elizabeth Caufield is filed in N.J. 1935 LaPorte v. United States Radium Corp., 13 F. Supp. 263 (D.N.J. 1935).² Caufield case. Dr. May, only expert. The case was before the court for a question of whether the plaintiffs could have an injunction against the defendants pleading the statute of limitations. The plaintiffs argued the statute of limitations should not apply because of fraud on the part of the defendants as they knew of the dangers of radium long before the exposure, injuries and deaths. After hearing expert testimony from only Dr. May, the court concluded the manufacturer could not have possibly known of the dangers until the symptoms and deaths occurred, and that these were all unforeseeable. Thus, no fraud and the statute of limitations would protect them from payments for the injuries and deaths of the women who died of radium poisoning.

The court suggested that legislation was needed now that the dangers were known, and this is an unusual statement from a court. At the time, the new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was no regulatory authority but used that of other agencies to pursue fraudulent drugs. It was not until 1935 that FDA was given the authority by Congress to require drugs be shown to be safe before they could be marketed.³

But the “undark” paint would not have been covered within the scope of this regulation and new agency. As a consumer product, it would not need to be shown to be safe to be marketed in the U.S. under the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) which was not even created until 1972.⁴ The CPSC’s power is limited to recalls and urging manufacturers to take recall and compensation steps. Today radium is regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) but that did not occur until 2005, that Congress legislated the authority to regulate radium.⁵ EPA sets maximum allowable levels of radium that occurs naturally in drinking water (Safe Drinking Water Act) but exceeding that level is merely reported by the water supplier each year.⁶ EPA also regulates radium in effluent under the Clean Water Act through permits for industries that may have radium waste, and other aspects of environmental contamination are also regulated by EPA.⁷ Other aspects of radium regulation apply to environmental cleanup and safety.⁸

Radium water also sold in this period would have fallen under the food safety umbrella of the FDA, but they were focused on fraud. Many babies died of an elixir for colic that contained morphine, which also escaped regulation. One device with a radium pack was placed on the lower back and strapped on the body, advertised to cure everything and prevent cancer. Today, this would fall under the “device” category of FDA regulation and be tested for safety and efficacy before it was allowed to be placed on the market, through a pre-market application (PMA) because this would likely be a Class III device, meaning among other things, it has unknown risks that still need to be evaluated. This regulatory mechanism was not established until 2012.⁹

Radiation has joined as one of the four major types of materials used in terrorism: Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN). Radium has a half life of 1,600 years,¹⁰ presenting a horrific prospect of damage and recovery from such an attack.

Even today, something novel may escape regulation, with known or unknown health risks and it is important to learn from the past. Dr. Sabin demonstrates the story of a scientist that when presented with new evidence changed his scientific opinion and acted on that conviction. All scientists should do that but this story was a dramatic unraveling of a career in recompense for the immense suffering of all the users and those exposed to “undark” and other radium products.

The Fountain of Youth turned into the Fountain of Death.

The five girls, known as the “Radium Girls” as well as Marie Curie died on these dates:

Quinta MacDonald died December 7, 1929, age 34

Grace Fryer died October 27,1933, age 30

Katherine Schaub died February 18, 1933, age 30

Marie Curie died July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, age 66

Edna Hussman died March 30,1939, age 37

Albina Larice died November 18,1946, age 51

The radium girls and their families never received justice, but they live on in this story which I hope never dies and is never forgotten.

1. https://blogs.loc.gov/headlinesandheroes/2019/03/radium-girls-living-dead-women/

2. https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/FSupp/13/263/2096834/

3. https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-history/milestones-us-food-and-drug-law

4. https://www.cpsc.gov/s3fs-public/CPSC_Timeline_9-30-22.pdf?VersionId=KlCTHOaCm7no4_Ok.30SukgzfrM4tAkK

5. https://www.nrc.gov/materials/types/radium.html

6. https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-regulations-and-laws

7. https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-regulations-and-laws

8. https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/radium.html

9. https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/cdrh-transparency/evaluation-automatic-class-iii-designation-de-novo-summaries

10. https://www.nrc.gov/materials/types/radium.html