DUCK AND COVER(UP): U.S. RADIATION TESTING ON HUMANS
by Tod Ensign and Glenn Alcalay
If you have any lingering thoughts that the
government's failure to disclose radiation
experimentation on humans was driven by misguided
national security concerns, throw them in the nearest
nuclear waste dump. At least some officials knew what
they were doing was unconscionable and were
ducking the consequences and covering their tails. A
recently leaked Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
document lays out in the most bare-knuckled manner
the policy of coverup. It is desired that no document
be released which refers to experiments with humans
and might have adverse effect on public opinion or
result in legal suits. Documents covering such work
field should be classified `secret,' wrote Colonel O.G.
Haywood of the AEC. *1 This letter confirms a policy
of complete secrecy where human radiation
experiments were concerned.
The Haywood letter may help explain a recently
discovered 1953 Pentagon document, declassified in
1975. The two-page order from the secretary of
defense ostensibly brought U.S. guidelines for human
experimentation. in line with the Nuremberg Code,
making adherence to a universal standard official U.S.
policy. Ironically, however, the Pentagon document
was classified and thus was probably not seen by
many military researchers until its declassification in
1975.2
As these and a steady stream of similar reports
confirm, for decades, the U.S. government had not
only used human guinea pigs in radiation experiments,
but had also followed a policy of deliberate deception
and cover up of its misuse of both civilians and military
personnel in nuclear weapons development and
radiation research. While the Department of Energy
(DoE) has made some belated moves toward greater
openness, there are clear indications that other federal
agencies and the White House have not yet deviated
from the time-honored tradition of deceit and
self-serving secrecy.
CRACKS IN THE WALL OF SILENCE
The Clinton administration's first halting step toward
taking responsibility for past government misdeeds
occurred on Pearl Harbor Day 1993, when DoE
Secretary Hazel O'Leary confirmed that the AEC, her
agency's predecessor, had sponsored experiments in
which hundreds of Americans were exposed to
radioactive material, often without their consent.
That O'Leary had decided to break with her agency's
long tradition of secrecy and deception was something
of a surprise. After all, she came to the job after a
career in the nuclear power industry. But, confronted
by a media firestorm over the government's Cold War
nuclear experiments, O'Leary was left with few
options.
Her decision to confirm some government abuses and
reveal others was precipitated by a series of reports by
journalist Eileen Welsome in the Albuquerque Tribune
last November and the nearly simultaneous release of
a Government Accounting Office (GAO) report on
radiation releases. *3 Following a six-year
investigation, Welsome uncovered details of five
experiments in which plutonium was injected into 18
people without their informed consent.
The GAO report, meanwhile, is an important finding
that government scientists deliberately released
radioactive material into populated areas so that they
could study fallout patterns and the rate at which
radioactivity decayed. It profiles 13 different releases
of radiation from 1948-52. All were part of the U.S.
nuclear weapons development program. The report
concludes that other planned radioactive releases not
documented here may have occurred at ... U.S.
nuclear sites during these years. *4 The disclaimer
suggests that a good deal of information about
radiation experiments remains locked away in
government files.
Top DoE aide Dan Reicher pulled O'Leary out of a
meeting last November just before the story broke to
warn her that People were injected with plutonium
back in the 1940s, and there's a newspaper in New
Mexico that's about to lay out the whole thing. *5
O'Leary provided information about experiments at
major universities, including MIT, the University of
Chicago, California, and Vanderbilt. Experimenters
exposed about 2,000 Americans to varying degrees of
radiation. These numbers may grow as more
information about experiments is released.
INCIDENTAL FALLOUT
When O'Leary confirmed the human experiments, she
also revealed two other important activities. First, she
admitted her agency had secretly conducted 204
underground nuclear tests in Nevada from 1963-1990.
These clandestine blasts were in addition to the
800-plus nuclear tests publicly announced during that
period. DoE's secrecy may have deceived only
Congress and the U.S. public. In 1990, the Soviet
Union's minister for atomic energy produced an
estimate of U.S. detonations that was very close to the
actual number including the secret ones.
O'Leary's other significant disclosure concerned DoE's
massive stock of weapons-grade plutonium: 33.5
metric tons of stockpiled plutonium and another 55.5
metric tons deployed in nuclear warheads and for
similar uses. *6 This admission calls into question
DoE's past claims that national security required the
continued operation of unsafe plutonium processing
plants to produce unnecessary stockpiles of
plutonium.
O'Leary's disclosures about the human experiments
have produced a torrent of publicity. Much less
attention has been paid to her admissions about
secret nuclear tests and plutonium stocks, which have
much greater long-term implications for nuclear
weapons policy.
DOWN THE MEMORY HOLE
O'Leary's promises of full disclosure by DoE aside, *7
one well-placed source within the agency suggested
that the Pentagon, NASA and the CIA were just going
through the motions. *8 For example, the CIA
announced in January 1994 that after searching its
files it could locate only one reference to human
experimentation with radiation. Former CIA official
Scott Breckenridge charged that in 1973, Dr. Sidney
Gottlieb, chief of the chemical division of the CIA's
Technical Services Division, may have destroyed
many secret files, including those on human radiation
experiments. *9
The history of partial revelation and near complete
inaction is long. In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission
first revealed that the CIA may have conducted
radiation experiments, *10 but the records if not
destroyed have yet to be uncovered. William Colby,
CIA director from 1973 to 1975, recently said, I recall
the various drug tests, which were scandalous, but
nothing about radiation. *11 So far, the institutional
memories of the implicated agencies appear to be as
conveniently spotty as Colby's.
SECRET EXPERIMENTS
While officials have dallied, dedicated reporters, angry
victims, and a handful of government whistleblowers
have exposed a pattern of secrecy and deception. A
brief sampling of some of the macabre, secret human
experiments uncovered by Welsome and others is
chilling.
* In 1945, Albert Stevens, a 58-year old California
house painter suffering from a huge stomach ulcer,
was injected with doses of plutonium 238 and 239
equivalent to 446 times the average lifetime exposure.
*12 Doctors recommended an operation and told his
children he had only six months to live. For the next
year, scientists collected plutonium-laden urine and
fecal samples from Stevens and used that data in a
classified scientific report, A Comparison of the
Metabolism of Plutonium in Man and the Rat. There
is little doubt scientists knew of the danger: The
problem of chronic plutonium poisoning is a matter of
serious concern for those who come in contact with
this material, the report concluded.13 AEC officials in
1947 refused to release the information because it
contains material, which in the opinion of the [AEC],
might adversely affect the national interest. 14
* In 1947, doctors injected plutonium into the left leg
of Elmer Allen, a 36-year-old African American railroad
porter. Three days later, the leg was amputated for a
supposed pre-existing bone cancer. Researchers
analyzed tissue samples to determine the physiology
of plutonium dispersion. *15 In 1973, scientists
summoned Allen to the Argonne National Laboratory
near Chicago, where he was subjected to a follow-up
whole body radiation scan, and his urine was analyzed
to ascertain lingering levels of plutonium from the
1947 injection. *16
* Beginning in 1949, the Quaker Oats Company, the
National Institutes of Health, and the AEC fed minute
doses of radioactive materials to boys at the Fernald
School for the mentally retarded in Waltham,
Massachusetts, to determine if chemicals used in
breakfast cereal prevented the body from absorbing
iron and calcium. The unwitting subjects were told that
they were joining a science club. The consent form
sent to the boys' parents made no mention of the
radiation experiment. *17
* In 1963, 131 prison inmates in Oregon and
Washington state were paid about $200 each to be
exposed to 600 roentgens of radiation (100 times the
allowable annual dose for nuclear workers). They
signed consent forms agreeing to submit to X-ray
radiation of my scrotum and testes, but were not
warned about the possibility of contracting testicular
cancer. Doctors later performed vasectomies on the
inmates to avoid the possibility of contaminating the
general population with irradiation-induced mutants.
*18
* From 1960-71, in experiments which may have
caused the most deaths and spanned the most years,
Dr. Eugene Saenger, a radiologist at the University of
Cincinnati, exposed 88 cancer patients to whole body
radiation. *19 Many of the guinea pigs were poor
African-Americans at Cincinnati General Hospital with
inoperable tumors. All but one of the 88 patients have
since died. *20 There is evidence that scientists forged
signatures on the consent forms for the Cincinnati
experiments. Gloria Nelson testified before the House
that her grandmother, Amelia Jackson, had been
strong and still working before she was treated by Dr.
Saenger. Following exposure to 100 rads of whole
body radiation (about 7,500 chest X-rays), Amelia
Jackson bled and vomited for days and became
permanently disabled. Jackson testified that the signa-
ture on her grandmother's consent form was forged.21
WATCHING THE BOMB
While researchers were running tests on relatively
small numbers of hapless civilians, the military was
conducting a series of potentially lethal experiments
on a massive scale. From 1946-63, the military
ordered more than 200,000 active-duty GIs to observe
one or more nuclear bomb tests either in the Pacific or
at the Nevada Test Site. The 195,000 GIs who served
as part of the occupation force in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki may also have suffered the effects of
radiation. A vast body of information about nuclear
bomb testing and its effects on humans has yet to see
the light of day, but some individual accounts are
harrowing.
One atomic veteran, Jim O'Connor, provided a
detailed account of the Turk blast at the Nevada test
site in March 1955. O'Connor reported seeing
someone crawling from a bunker near ground-zero
after the blast:
"There was a guy with a mannequin look who had
apparently crawled behind
the bunker. Something
like wires were attached to his arms and his face
was bloody.
I smelled an odor like burning flesh.
The rotary camera I'd seen [earlier] was going
`zoom, zoom, zoom' and the guy kept trying to
get up." *22
At this point, O'Connor fled and was picked up by
AEC rad-safety monitors who took him to a hospital
where he was treated for radiation overdose. The
Defense Nuclear Agency refused to confirm or deny
O'Connor's account, although there are reports which
refer to a volunteer officer program at several of the
test blasts.
Navy officer R.A. Hinners was another nuclear guinea
pig. *23 Only a mile from ground zero, he and seven
other volunteers witnessed the detonation of a
55-kiloton bomb (four times the Hiroshima blast) on
April 25, 1953. While the Army's report, Exercise
Desert Rock VII and VIII, covers the 1957 test series
and notes that the observers suffered no adverse
effects, the Pentagon has not released any material
relating to the use of volunteers at any other tests.
*24
DELIBERATE ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION RELEASES
Nuclear researchers did not limit themselves to small
groups of selected guinea pigs or large groups of
soldiers under orders. The U.S. government also
deliberately released radioactive materials into the
atmosphere, endangering military personnel and
untold numbers of civilians. Unsurprisingly, the people
exposed during these tests were not informed.
In four of these tests at the AEC's facility at Los
Alamos, New Mexico, bomb-testers set off
conventional explosives to send aloft clouds of
radioactive material, including strontium and uranium.
When the AEC tracked the clouds across northern
New Mexico, it detected some radioactivity 70 miles
away. According to a Los Alamos press officer, there
may have been as many as 250 other such tests
during the same period.25
Nor was this intentional release the largest. During the
December 1949 Green Run test at the Hanford
(Washington) Nuclear Reservation, the AEC loosed
thousands of curies of radioactive iodine-131 several
times the amount released from the 1979 Three Mile
Island disaster into the atmosphere simply to test its
recently installed radiological monitoring equipment.
Passing over Spokane and reaching as far as the
California-Oregon border, Green Run irradiated
thousands of downwinders, as civilians exposed to the
effects of airborne radiation tests are known, and
contaminated an enormous swath of cattle grazing
and dairy land. *26 A team of epidemiologists is now
looking into an epidemic of late-occurring thyroid
tumors and other radiogenic disorders among the
downwind residents in eastern Washington state.
The plant's emissions control systems were turned
off during the experiment, releasing into the
atmosphere almost twice as much radioactive
iodine-131 as originally planned. The GAO report
notes that the off-site population was not forewarned
[nor] made aware of the [test] for several decades. It
also notes that although adverse weather patterns
kept the radiation from spreading as far as expected,
monitoring Air Force planes detected hot clouds over
100 miles northeast of the site. *27
SACRIFICIAL LAMBS
Even when the government took steps to create the
appearance of openness, it was less than candid.
You are in a very real sense active participants in the
Nation's atomic test program, proclaimed a 1955 AEC
propaganda booklet widely disseminated to downwind
neighbors of the Nevada Test Site. Some of you have
been inconvenienced by our test operations, and at
times some of you have been exposed to potential risk
from flash, blast, or fallout. You have accepted the
inconvenience or the risk without fuss, without alarm,
and without panic. *28
The AEC's concern for inconveniences or honesty,
however, did not extend to the 4,500 Utah and Nevada
sheep who died mysteriously in 1953 after exposure to
fallout. The AEC denied any causal connection
between the sheep's exposure to radioactive fallout
from the 1953 Upshot-Knothole tests and their
deaths. *29 In a 1956 trial, Utah and Nevada sheep
ranchers lost their lawsuit against the government.
But years later, Harold Knapp, a former AEC scientist
who analyzed the 1953 sheep deaths, challenged the
AEC's accounts. The simplest explanation, he told a
1979 congressional committee, of the primary cause
of death in the lambing ewes is irradiation of the ewe's
gastrointestinal tract by beta particles from all the
fission products ingested by the sheep along with
open range forage. *30
In a 1982 retrial, A. Sherman Christensen, the same
judge who presided over the 1956 trial, noting that
fraud was committed by the U.S. Government when
it lied, pressured witnesses, and manipulated the
processes of the court, ruled for the ranchers. *31
PARADISE LOST
U.S. government callousness and deception extended
halfway around the world. Another nuclear experiment
was underway in the Marshall Islands a de facto
strategic colony of the U.S. located in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean. Between 1946 and 1958, the U.S.
exploded 67 atomic and hydrogen bombs at Bikini and
Enewetok, two Marshall group atolls. Once again, the
full impact and consequences of this experiment would
not be disclosed for decades, and then only
reluctantly.
The largest and dirtiest of the Marshall Islands blasts
was code-named Bravo. At 15 megatons more
than 1,000 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb
Bravo rained lethal radioactive fallout over thousands
of unsuspecting islanders under circumstances which
remain mysterious. The people of Rongelap atoll were
especially hard-hit. They were evacuated from their
home islands two days after Bravo, following the
absorption of massive doses of high-level fallout.
Following the Rongelap evacuation, the AEC
considered repatriating the islanders to their home
atoll in order to gather vital fallout data. In 1956, Dr. G.
Failla, chair of the AEC's Advisory Committee on
Biology and Medicine, wrote to AEC head Lewis
Strauss: The Advisory Committee hopes that
conditions will permit an early accomplishment of the
plan [to return the Rongelap people]. The Committee
is also of the opinion that here is the opportunity for a
useful genetic study of the effects on these people. 32
Three years later, Dr. C.L. Dunham, head of the AEC's
Division of Biology and Medicine, reiterated the AEC's
interest. Studying the Rongelap victims of the Bravo
blast will, he wrote, ... contribute to estimates of long
term hazards to human beings and to an evaluation of
the recovery period following a single nuclear
detonation. *33 Having established the near-perfect
longitudinal human radiation experiment in 1954, DoE
continues to compile data from their Marshallese
subjects.
It appears that AEC was guilty of both negligently
disregarding the well-being of the Marshallese and
then lying about its actions. On February 24, 1994,
Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.), chair of the House
Committee on Natural Resources, convened a hearing
on Bravo. Recalling weather data that demonstrated
prior knowledge that islanders would receive
substantial fallout, and that winds had not
unexpectedly shifted, *34 Rep. Miller declared that
We have deliberately kept that information from the
Marshallese. That clearly constitutes a cover-up. *35
A PATTERN OF IGNORED DISCLOSURES
The record of U.S. government lies,
misrepresentation, and cover-ups to support its
nuclear research program is incontrovertible, if not yet
complete. From the inception of the U.S. nuclear
program, government policy has placed military and
scientific interests above both the well-being of
thousands of people and the truth. And, Secretary
O'Leary's evident openness notwithstanding, the
government's record in responding to earlier
disclosures is not reassuring. When faced with
damaging disclosures in the past, the government
attempted to stonewall. When that would not suffice,
the government only grudgingly responded. A few
examples:
* In 1980, Congress issued a stinging report, The
Forgotten Guinea Pigs, which concluded that the
AEC chose to secure, at any cost, the atmospheric
nuclear weapons testing program rather than to
protect the health and welfare of the residents of the
area who lived downwind from the site. *36
* In 1982, the New York Times provided evidence
that policy-makers foresaw dangers and acted to
cover them up. The story included a statement by a
former Army medic, Van R. Brandon, of Sacramento,
that his medical unit kept two sets of books of radiation
readings at the Nevada Test Site during the 1956-57
tests. One set was to show that no one received an
[elevated] exposure, Brandon told the paper. The
other set of books showed ... the actual reading. That
set was brought in a locked briefcase every morning,
he recalled. *37 DoE officials simply denied Brandon's
allegations, and no further investigation was pursued.
*38
* In 1986, Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) released a
report detailing human radiation experiments that AEC
and its successors conducted between the 1940s and
the 1970s. Many were designed to measure the
effects of radiation on humans, and according to
Markey, American citizens thus became nuclear
calibration devices for experimenters run amok. 39
The Markey report, American Nuclear Guinea Pigs,
described 31 grisly experiments involving 695 people
who were captive audiences or populations that some
experimenters frighteningly might have considered
`expendable.' 40
When the Reagan administration refused to
investigate the disclosures, the Markey report was
quickly forgotten. There was a massive public
relations relationship that existed between the
[Reagan] administration, the defense contractors and
experimenters in America, charged Markey, that
worked very effectively throughout the 1980s. I'd say
something, and I'd get attacked, and it would be a
one-day story. *41
A LONG, HARD ROAD TO JUSTICE
From the beginning of the nuclear age, the federal
government not only ignored or suppressed
knowledge of abuses in the nuclear experimental
program, it also fought all attempts to hold it
accountable for damages. A series of Supreme Court
decisions dating back to 1950 bars both atomic
veterans and downwinders from suing the federal
government. *42 Veterans are denied the right to sue
for injuries suffered while on active duty because the
Court believes that this would interfere with military
necessity and national security. *43
Downwinders have also encountered many obstacles
in their long struggle for medical studies and
compensation. One group of Utah residents who lived
under the fallout during the 1950s and early 1960s
finally succeeded in bringing their federal lawsuit to
trial in 1982. They scored an important victory when
the trial judge found the bomb tests were responsible
for their cancers and awarded them damages. *44 But
the appeals court reversed this verdict by re-defining
the discretionary function exception to the Federal
Tort Claims Act to make the government immune from
lawsuits of this kind. *45 In essence, the court held
that setting off nuclear bombs was within the
discretionary power of high-ranking officials and could
not be questioned in a lawsuit for damages.
After the federal appeals court stripped the
downwinders of their victory, in 1990, Congress finally
stepped in and adopted the Radiation Exposure
Compensation Act for downwinders and some groups
of uranium miners. Claimants must document
residence in the fallout area and that they suffer from
one of 13 cancers linked to radia-tion exposure. The
program, administered by the Department of Justice,
places a ceiling of $50,000 per claim, although many
awards were smaller. Justice granted 818 claims out
of 1,460 which were submitted as of January 1994.46
In 1988, Congress acted on behalf of atomic veterans,
forcing the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to
establish a limited compensation plan with a $75,000
cap. It provides presumptive disability to veterans
who can prove that they suffer from one of a list of 13
cancers (e.g., bone, breast, skin, stomach, thyroid,
leukemia, etc.), and that they were present during one
or more nuclear test blasts.
Of more than 15,000 veterans' claims filed as of
January 1994, only 1,401 have been approved,
indicating that most claimants are unable to qualify
under the terms of the program. *47 One problem
confronting many veterans is inaccurate or missing
military records that omit service at a nuclear test site.
*48 Another is to prepare a radiation dose
reconstruction that estimates the amount of exposure
the veteran received. Many vets have challenged the
accuracy of dose estimates prepared by a private
contractor, Science Applications International. This
privately held research corporation includes among its
stockholders Defense Department officials including
Secretary William Perry and Deputy Secretary John
Deutch, and one-time nominee Bobby Ray Inman. The
Defense Department has little to say about potential
conflicts of interest. We're going to decline to
comment on this. I don't think we would have anything
that would be meaningful to say, said Pentagon
spokesman Capt. Michael Doubleday. *49
A final obstacle is that just having cancer isn't enough;
veterans must prove they are disabled by it.
WHAT WILL CLINTON DO?
The Clinton administration is about to undergo a test
of its own. The key question will be how it defines who
will be considered a nuclear test victim for purposes of
health research and compensation. Given the
decades-long record of coverup and callousness,
there is little reason to assume that the recent
revelations concerning human experimentation will
produce any lasting benefit for the tens of thousands
of veterans and civilians harmed by nuclear weapons
testing and radiation experiments over the past half
century let alone the estimated five million U.S.
citizens exposed to dangerous levels of radiation
during the Cold War. *
Early indications are that the White House will stake
out a restrictive position. DoE head O'Leary also
appears to be seeking some remedy short of
compensating all categories of victims. So, apparently,
is the GAO.
The GAO's report on atmospheric radiation releases
provides a glimpse of the emerging strategy. In
assessing the significance of the Green Run test, the
GAO struck a cautious note. The test [was not]
intended to be a radiation experiment or a field test of
radiobiological effects. [After] examining still classified
passages [we] found that they don't refer to any such
intentions. *50 This interpretation could provide the
basis for a restrictive reading of who is entitled to
compensation and follow-up health studies.
STACKING THE DECK
The Clinton administration may also be moving to
head off potentially monstrous payouts to victims. To
deal with the predicted avalanche of claims, as well as
to fend off adverse publicity, the administration has
established an advisory committee and an interagency
working group to define policy. The advisory
committee's mission statement, as well as the
backgrounds of some of the people appointed to the
panels, give victims cause for skepticism.
The President's Advisory Committee on Human
Radiation Experiments is composed of scientists,
medical ethicists, and lawyers and is chaired by Dr.
Ruth Faden of Johns Hopkins University. The White
House announcement stated that its mission is to
evaluate the ethical and scientific standards of
government sponsored human experiments which
involved intentional exposure to ionizing radiation. *51
(emphasis added) When read in conjunction with the
GAO report's cautious conclusion, this language
appears to sharply limit possible claimants.
And one of the advisory panel members, Washington,
D.C. lawyer Kenneth Feinberg, has credentials that
have raised eyebrows. Feinberg played a controversial
role in forging an 11th-hour settlement of the class
action lawsuit against Agent Orange manufacturers in
1984. Working at the direction of trial judge Jack
Weinstein in Brooklyn, New York, Feinberg helped
ram through a $180 million settlement. Although the
figure seems large, it is grossly inadequate in light of
the 250,000 veteran-claimants and the severity of their
disabilities. Since the settlement, Judge Weinstein has
blocked every subsequent lawsuit against the Agent
Orange makers even for veterans whose cancer
appeared years after the settlement was reached. *
The Interagency Working Group has representatives
from every federal agency involved in radiation
research and also includes a lawyer member whose
past clients raise questions about his impartiality. Joel
Klein, recently named White House Deputy Legal
Counsel, was previously a partner in Klein Farr Smith
& Taranto, a Washington, D.C. law firm which
represented a number of corporate defendants in
cases involving the due process rights of class action
members. In 1985, Klein's firm won a Supreme Court
decision in Phillips Petroleum v. Shutts, which
narrowly interpreted the rights of claimants in class
actions. Klein also has a case pending before the
Supreme Court, Ticor Title v. Brown, which experts
expect will further diminish the rights of injured parties
in class action suits.
CLOUDED HORIZONS
It is too early to tell what role either Feinberg or Klein
will play in determining compensation for nuclear test
victims, but their histories don't lend cause for
optimism. And given the administration's efforts at
damage control, some advocates of radiation victims
are dubious that the recent disclosures will bring any
more change than those in the past. Rob Hager, a
public interest lawyer in Washington, has been fighting
the DoE for years. He has waged an 11-year legal
battle on behalf of the widow of Joe Harding, who
developed cancer after working at a DoE uranium
processing plant in Paducah, Kentucky.
The DoE's approach to compensation is a scorched
earth policy; settle no claims and litigate to the hilt,
Hager charges. They've changed their head, but it
doesn't seem to be connected to the body. *52
Eileen Welsome agrees. The Albuquerque journalist,
who recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting on
this issue, was asked what she learned. She
responded, The DoE of today is no different from the
DoE of 50 years ago. It's an obstructionist agency; it
doesn't follow the law. I think it's an agency that bears
careful scrutiny and constant scrutiny. 53
***************************
THE BUCHENWALD TOUCH
***************************
The still-emerging history of nuclear experimentation
raises important issues of medical ethics and calls into
question the scientific community's sensitivity to and
awareness of these issues. It also raises the question
of whether these experimenters, in furthering the
Pentagon's military and security demands, violated
international standards on human experimentation.
Even at this late date, it seems that some scientists
involved are unable to see any problems with their
behavior. Patricia Durbin, a scientist at the Lawrence
Livermore Laboratory in California who participated in
plutonium experiments, recently said:
"They were always on the lookout for somebody who
had some kind of terminal
disease who was going to
undergo an amputation. These things were not done
to
plague people or make them sick and miserable.
They were not done to kill people. They were done to
gain potentially valuable
information. The fact that they
were injected and provided this valuable data should
almost be a sort of memorial rather than something to
be ashamed of. It doesn't
bother me to talk about the
plutonium injectees because of the value of the
information they provided. *1"
And Dr. Victor Bond, a medical physicist and doctor at
Brookhaven National Laboratory, recently defended
the Fernald experiments, in which retarded children
were deliberately given radioactive substances in their
breakfast cereal. A question arose as to whether
chemicals in breakfast cereals interfered with the
uptake of iron or calcium in children. An answer was
needed, declared Bond. In reference to the entire
series of cold war nuclear experiments, Bond offered
that It's useful to know what dose of radiation
sterilizes; it's useful to know what different doses of
radiation will do to human beings. *2
While Drs. Bond and Durbin rationalized such
programs, other scientists have spoken out. Referring
to the Cincinnati experiments in which 88 cancer
patients were exposed to massive whole body doses
of radiation, Dr. David Egilman, a former Cincinnati
faculty member, said, The study was designed to test
the effects of radiation on soldiers. It was known that
whole-body radiation wouldn't treat the patients'
cancer. What happened was one of the worst things
this government has done to its citizens. *3 And Dr.
Joseph Hamilton, a neurologist at the University of
California Hospital in San Francisco, referred to his
own human radiation experiments in the 1940s as
having a little of the Buchenwald touch. *4
THE BUCHENWALD TOUCH is not limited to Cold
War-related experiments. In what has come to be
known as the Tuskegee Study, 412 African American
sharecroppers suffering from syphillis were rounded
up in Tuskegee, Alabama, in the early 1930s. For forty
years, the men were never told what had stricken
them while doctors from the U.S. Public Health
Service observed the ravages of the disease, from
blindness and paralysis to dementia and early death.
Even after penicillin proved to be an effective
treatment for syphilis, they were left untreated. *5
Nor are such experiments a thing of the past. Recent
congressional hearings revealed studies on
schizophrenia in the late 1980s where doctors
intentionally worsened patients' symptoms, causing
relapses and leading to the death by suicide of at least
one of the patients. Dr. Michael Davidson, who led a
study at the VA Hospital in the Bronx, defended the
study, saying, it would not be advisable to [warn] the
patients about psychosis or relapse. *6
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