Comments of the Battelle investigators concerning the study made in their monthly reports were:
December 19, 1977: “We plan to start the Marino 3-generation mouse study in January. It will take 9 months to complete.”
April 5, 1978: “The first generation (F1) of the mice in the three-generation study were born in early March. Breeding for the second experiment will begin in early May, when the F1 reach 60 days of age.”
May 10, 1978: “The three-generation mouse experiment is being conducted with two replicate experiments which are staggered in their timing by three weeks. The first generation of the first replicate is now 60 days old and is being bred this week to provide the second generation. Animals not used for breeding in the first and second generations will be used for evaluation of hematology and serum chemistry by Harvey Regan. Thus we will be extracting a maximal amount of information from these animals. In the first replicate, one group of the first generation had a lower body weight than the others. Since this experiment, like the others, has a double-blind design, the exposure history of these groups will not be available until completion of the experiment in December, i.e. the smaller group could be exposed or sham-exposed. We do not know whether the differences are statistically significant at this time.”
June 19, 1978: “The three-generation mouse study is progressing smoothly and the second generation mice are now two weeks old. The code (exposed and unexposed) will not be broken on this study until all three generations have been achieved, scheduled for December of this year.”
November 22, 1978: “The system for exposing mice will be used continuously until the middle of March when the fourth generation of exposed mice will be 6 weeks old.”
March 14, 1979: “The three-generation mouse experiment has been completed and the data are partially evaluated. There were no significant differences in size or mortality between exposed and sham-exposed animals.”
May 25, 1979: “The data on growth and development of the fourth generation of mice raised in the field have been tabulated and is now being analyzed.”