Stephens, Martha (Thomas) 1937-

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STEPHENS, Martha (Thomas) 1937-

PERSONAL: Born March 19, 1937, in Waycross, GA; daughter of Bernard L. (a salesman) and Evelyn (Stephens) Thomas; married V. Jerome Stephens (a professor of political science), August 13, 1962; children: Daniel, Paige, Shelley. Education: Georgia State College for Women, A.B., 1958; University of Georgia, M.A., 1962; Indiana University, Ph.D., 1967. Politics: "Reform Socialist." Religion: None. Hobbies and other interests: Gardening, opera, children, reform politics, medicine and consumer problems, American dialects.

ADDRESSES: Home—Cincinnati, OH. Office—Department of English, University of Cincinnati, 4514 Bristol Lane, Cincinnati, OH 45229-1214.

CAREER: Worked as waitress, secretary, and high school teacher until 1967; University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, 1967-98, began as assistant professor, became professor of English. Active in campus reform organizations, civil rights groups, and medical reform actions. Consultant to Time-Life Books.

WRITINGS:

The Question of Flannery O'Connor, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1973.

Cast a Wistful Eye (novel), Macmillan (New York, NY), 1977.

Children of the World: A Novel, Southern Methodist University Press (Dallas, TX), 1984.

The Treatment: The Story of Those Who Died in the Cincinnati Radiation Tests, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2002.

Contributor of articles and reviews to academic journals.

SIDELIGHTS: Early in her career as an assistant professor of English at the University of Cincinnati, Martha Stephens came into possession of documents that told a horrible story: cancer patients in the advanced stages of the disease, coming for treatment at the public hospital located on campus, were being used as subjects in secret experiments conducted for the United States military. The patients were irradiated over their whole bodies, in the manner of soldiers exposed to radiation in nuclear warfare. Ninety people were subjected to this treatment; twenty-one of them were dead within a month. The tests ended after Stephens reported the information, but the story was never printed. Not until many years later was it discovered that other secret military tests had also been conducted at the hospital. Legal action was eventually taken against thirteen researchers and the institutions that sponsored their work. A federal judge likened the tests to crimes committed by Nazi doctors during World War II, and after many bitter battles in court, the researchers agreed to a settlement for the victims. In 1999, a memorial plaque was installed in memory of those who had died in the tests.

In The Treatment: The Story of Those Who Died in the Cincinnati Radiation Tests, Stephens relates the story of the tests, using hospital records, interviews with families of the victims, and documents from the government and the University of Cincinnati. A Publishers Weekly reviewer found The Treatment "selfserving," because most of the book is dedicated to Stephens's battles with the media and the legal system. While allowing that the experiments reflected an inexcusable lack of ethics, the reviewer commented that "Stephens seems positively to revel in it as proof of the racism (most of the patients were black) and mendacity of the medical and political establishment." Tina Neville, a contributor to Library Journal, strongly endorsed the book, saying it "provides a shocking example of why we must remain diligent in our review of medical research."