In 1998, the Quaker Oats Company and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology settled a $1.85 million lawsuit over an experiment conducted in the 1940s and 1950s. In this experiment, boys at the Fernald State School in Waltham, Massachusetts were fed oatmeal containing radioactive iron and calcium to study how the digestive system absorbs these substances.

The plaintiffs in the court case claimed their civil rights were violated, as neither they nor their parents were informed that the oatmeal would be irradiated. M.I.T. officials claimed that the radiation caused no health problems and was not dangerous¹⁾.