Seven newborn boys, six of whom were black, were injected with radioactive iodide in the early 1950s at a hospital in Memphis as part of a study funded by the federal government.

Lester Van Middlesworth, the scientist who conducted the Memphis study, said it was one of at least five studies conducted in different parts of the nation on a total of 235 newborns and older infants.

Van Middlesworth lost track of the babies several years later, and in a recent interview, said he doesn't know whether the radioactive injections could have harmed the children.

"Naturally, we hoped there was no damage," said Van Middlesworth, a professor emeritus of physiology, biophysics and medicine at the University of Tennessee's College of Medicine.

Scientist John Gofman of Berkeley, Calif., one of the world's leading experts in the dangers of low-level radiation, said such an experiment would have increased the risk of getting cancer.

"It's like saying, `We're going to visit cancer on some of you-not necessarily all of you-but we have increased the risk individually and some of you will get it,' " Gofman said. "It's not a nice thing to do to children."

Mike Gauldin, the director of public affairs at Department of Energy headquarters in Washington, D.C., said the department knows nothing about the Memphis study.

Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary has promised to review some 800 radiological experiments on American citizens during the Cold War.

The infants used in Van Middlesworth's study were injected in 1953-54 at John Gaston Hospital, a now-defunct facility operated by the City of Memphis and staffed by physicians from the University of Tennessee's medical school, Van Middlesworth said.

Van Middlesworth said the mothers of the infants gave permission for the injections. "We told them it was important in the evaluation of the thyroid function of the newborn."

Many of the mothers subsequently gave up the babies for adoption, Van Middlesworth said.

Similiar studies were conducted in Detroit; Omaha; Little Rock, Ark.; and Iowa City.

Published in such journals as Pediatrics, the American Journal of Diseases of Children and the Journal of Nuclear Medicine, the reports show that scores of premature and normal infants-some only minutes or hours old-were injected or ingested radioactive iodine.

Two of the studies, including the Memphis project, were supported by grants from the Atomic Energy Commission, the Energy Department's predecessor. But others were supported by grants from the Public Health Service, the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases and the American Cancer Society. The racial makeup of the infants is not identified in those reports.

Race, Van Middlesworth said, was not a factor in the selection of the Memphis newborns. It was "primarily a charity hospital," he said.

Van Middlesworth said the Memphis infants were injected with radioactive iodide to study the thyroid function in newborns. A check of a new newborn's thyroid function, which today is measured through a blood test, is required in every state, he said.

Iodine 131, which disappears from the body in about 80 days, still is widely used today in diagnostic work on the thyroid gland. It is also used in the treatment of hyperthyroidism and some forms of thyroid cancer. Radioactive iodine is rapidly taken up by the thyroid, so the speed at which it accumulates helps doctors determine if the thyroid is over-active or under-active.