In order to track absorption, several radioactive calcium tracers were given orally or intravenously. Radiation levels in stool and blood samples would serve as dependent variables. In another study, 17 subjects received iron supplement shots containing radioisotopes of iron. Neither the children nor their parents ever gave adequate informed consent for participation in a scientific study. The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, reporting to the United States Department of Energy in 1994, reported on these experiments: It has been claimed that the highest dose of radiation that any subject was exposed to was 330 millirem, the equivalent of less than one year's background radiation in Denver. A 1995 class-action suit resulted in a 1998 District court decision awarding the victims a $1.85 million settlement from MIT and Quaker. The school also participated in studies of thyroid function in patients with Down Syndrome and their parents. This study showed that their iodine metabolism was similar to normal controls. Reform lawsuit This situation changed in the 1970s, when a class action suit, Ricci v. Okin, was filed to upgrade conditions at Fernald and several other state institutions for persons with intellectual disability in Massachusetts. U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Louis Tauro, who assumed oversight of the case in 1972, formally disengaged from the case in 1993, declaring that improvements in the care and conditions at the facilities had made them "second to none anywhere in the world". A result for Fernald residents of the class action suit which took effect in 1993 was the provision of "a guaranteed level of care, regardless of cost, to compensate for decades of neglect and abuse". Twenty-first century The buildings and grounds survived into the 2000s as a center for mentally disabled adults, operated by the Massachusetts Department of Mental Retardation. In 2001, 320 adults resided at Fernald, with ages ranging from 27 to 96 years and an average age of 47 years. According to a December 13, 2004 article in the Boston Globe, Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announced in 2003 that the facility would be closed and the land sold by 2007. In 2003, a coalition of family advocates and state employee unions began a campaign to save Fernald and asked Judge Tauro to resume his oversight of the "Ricci v. Okin" class action lawsuit that had led to improvements at Fernald and the other state facilities beginning in the 1970s. In an August