Unethical human experimentation in the United States
In 1953, the AEC ran several studies at the University of Iowa on the health effects of radioactive iodine in newborns and pregnant women. In one study, researchers gave pregnant women from of iodine-131, in order to study the women's aborted embryos in an attempt to discover at what stage, and to what extent, radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In another study, they gave 25 newborn babies (who were under 36 hours old and weighed from ) iodine-131, either by oral administration or through an injection, so that they could measure the amount of iodine in their thyroid glands, as iodine would go to that gland.
Carbonyl oxidation with hypervalent iodine reagents
The mechanism of carbonyl oxidation by iodine(III) reagents varies as a function of substrate structure and
reaction conditions, but some generalizations are possible. Under basic conditions, the active iodinating species are iodine(III) compounds in which any relatively acidic ligands on iodine (such as acetate) have been replaced by alkoxide. In all cases, the α carbon forms a bond to
iodine. Reduction of iodine(III) to iodine(I) then occurs via attack of a nucleophile on the now electrophilic α
carbon. Under basic conditions, nucleophilic attack at the carbonyl carbon is faster than attack at the α carbon. Iodine
displacement is actually accomplished intramolecularly by the carbonyl oxygen, which becomes the α-hydroxyl oxygen in the
product.