Mothers 'given radioactive jabs'

BOSTON (Reuter) - Twenty-three pregnant women were injected with radioactive iron in the 1950s as part of a US government medical research programme whose scope is only now becoming known, a Boston newspaper reported yesterday.

Others subjected to tests included retarded teenagers, older civilians and soldiers, according to accounts that have prompted President Bill Clinton to start an inquiry. The Boston Globe said that at the height of the Cold War, doctors at the city's Lying-In Hospital shot iron into 23 pregnant women to learn about the subjects' blood and their foetuses.