Stories like Albert Gagne’s are heartbreaking. They’re also all too common.

When Gagne was a young boy in Massachusetts, he was removed from his home by the state. The house was dirty, Gagne and his siblings were abused and in bad shape. They had lice, rags for clothes and had been bitten by rats. Massachusetts plucked the children from a horrible situation. And then made it worse.

Gagne, now 66 and living in Bowdoin, was thrown away, tossed into the recesses of the state’s system where he was lost until his 18th birthday. He was incorrectly labeled a “moron” and institutionalized at the Walter E. Fernald School for the feeble minded.

There, he suffered. He was fed radioactive oatmeal as part of a government experiment. He was locked in a closet. He became little more than a laboratory rat, forced to grow his own food and dissect the brains of other boys who died in the system.

Gagne and eight other people who ate the tainted oatmeal successfully sued over the experiments. They were awarded about $50,000 each.

Now, decades later, the stigma from his time in state custody still follows Gagne around. He’d like to have the term “moron” removed from his state files. He’d like an apology.

He deserves a lot more.

The government did not readily admit its actions. It wasn’t until the Clinton administration declassified Department of Energy documents that the truth became known.

We have seen this before. Black men in the United States military were infected with syphilis and then studied.

Infamy has not bypassed this state. In 1908, the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded opened in New Gloucester. It became Pineland Center before closing in 1996. The haunting tales of poor treatment and horrible conditions have not diminished with the passage of time. Pineland was the warehouse for the state’s unwanted.

Albert Gagne was robbed of his dignity at the hands of a malevolent state. It’s time for Massachusetts to set the record straight. That’s the least that should be done.

More on roads

Here’s another reason to oppose the Bush administration’s plans to roll back protections of national forests: cost.

If President Bush has his way and is successful in opening up about 60 million acres of national forest to new road construction, taxpayers will actually subsidize the costs. Already, the U.S. Forest Service has $10 billion worth of maintenance that’s waiting for funding. Opening up more wilderness to roads will make that problem much worse.

But the costs don’t stop there. Logging companies working in national forests often pay less than market value for the timber they cut. According to Taxpayers for Common Sense, which opposes the changes in the roadless rules, 30 percent of all Forest Service timber was sold with only one bid. Using a complicated formula that allows for deep discounts, the Forest Service is under-compensated for public timber. Logging companies get a windfall.

That costs Maine. Not only does the federal government miss revenue, but the timber companies that operate in Maine on private land may face a competitive disadvantage to those working on public lands, where much of the cost is shouldered by taxpayers.