When the Greater St. The announcement came at the second-annual meeting of the Greater St. More than attendees heard the good news. Kaplan Fund to pursue its laudable work. It was cause for celebration. But they were unaware of one string attached to the generous gift, a nettlesome detail that may have dampened their enthusiasm that long ago spring evening: the Kaplan Fund was a CIA front. Then as now there were ramped up concerns over an ongoing public health crisis.
In , the problem was the wind-driven dispersal of nuclear fallout. Louisans were worried about the proliferation of nuclear weapons during the Cold War, and the potential health effects that atmospheric testing was having on their children. To address the issue, they enlisted leaders of the scientific community to study the effects of radiation. Louis area and elsewhere. The radioactive isotope, known to be present in nuclear fallout, concentrated in human bones and teeth, particularly growing children who consumed milk.
Kids were encouraged by parents, teachers and dentists to give their teeth to science instead of the tooth fairy.
In return, they were rewarded with a membership card and button to the Operation Tooth Club. The program was called The Baby Tooth Survey. The director of the survey was Dr. Louise Reiss , and its scientific advisory board included Washington University biologist Barry Commoner. The keynote speaker at the meeting of the committee was internationally renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead , according to accounts published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and St. Louis Globe-Democrat.
The same news accounts also reported the generous contribution from the J. Kaplan Fund of New York, which later would be revealed in congressional hearings to be a covert conduit for funneling CIA cash. Jacob M. It is uncertain whether the money donated to the St.
