Final report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

  • United States. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.
Date:
1996
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Final report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    gue Tribune published a series of articles that, for the first time, publicly revealed the names of Americans who had been injected with pluto- nium, the man-made material that was a key ingredient of the atom bomb. Reporter Eileen Welsome put a human face to what had previ- ously been anonymous data published in offi- cial reports and technical journals. As World War II was ending, she wrote, doctors in the United States injected a number of hospitalized patients with plutonium, very likely without their knowledge or consent. The injections were part of a group of experiments to determine how plutonium courses through the human body. The experiments, and the very existence of plu- tonium, were shrouded in secrecy. They were conducted at the direction of the U.S. govern- ment, with the assistance of university research- ers in Berkeley, Chicago, and Rochester (New York), with the expectation that the information gained could be used to limit the hazards to the thousands of workers laboring to build the bomb. | On reading the articles, Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary expressed shock, first to her staff, and then in response to a question posed at a press conference. She was particularly concerned because the Department of Energy had its ear- liest origins in the agencies responsible for build- ing the atomic bomb and sponsoring the pluto- nium experiments. During the Cold War, these agencies had continued to do much of their work in the twilight zone between openness and se- crecy. Now, the Cold War was over. The time had come, Secretary O’Leary determined, to make public anything that remained to be told about the plutonium experiments. Subsequent press reports soon noted that the plutonium injections were not the only human radiation experiments that had been conducted during the war and the decades that followed. In Massachusetts, the press reported that mem- bers of the “science club” at the Fernald School for the Retarded had been fed oatmeal contain- ing minute amounts of radioactive material. In Ohio, news articles revived an old controversy about University of Cincinnati researchers who had been funded by the Defense Department to gather data on the effects of “total-body irradia- tion’ on cancer patients. In the Northwest, the papers retold the story of Atomic Energy Com- mission funding of researchers to irradiate the testicles of inmates in Oregon and Washington prisons in order to gain knowledge for use in government programs. The virtually forgotten 1986 report prepared by a subcommittee headed by U.S. Representative Edward Markey, “Ameri- can Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Three Decades of Ra- diation Experiments on U.S. Citizens,” was also recalled to public attention.! Coincidentally, the fact that the environment had also been used as a secret laboratory became a subject of controversy. A November 1993 con- gressional report uncovered thirteen cases in which government agencies had intentionally released radiation into the environment without notifying the affected populations.” At various times, tests were conducted in Tennessee, Utah, New Mexico, and Washington state. This report had been prepared at the request of Senator John Glenn in his capacity as chair of a committee that had undertaken a comprehensive oversight investigation of the nuclear weapons complex. As a young marine in 1945, the senator was in a squadron being trained for possible deployment to Japan when the atomic bomb ended the war; as an astronaut, he had been the subject of con- stant testing and medical monitoring by space - administration flight surgeons; as a senator he was at the center of the country’s efforts to un- derstand and control nuclear weapons. Senator Glenn understood the importance of national security, but he found it “inconceivable . . . that, even at the height of the communist threat, some of our scientists and doctors and military and perhaps political leaders approved some of these experiments to be conducted on an unknowing and unwitting public.” In the immediate aftermath of Secretary O’Leary’s press conference and the further press reports, thousands of callers flooded the Depart- ment of Energy’s phone lines to recount their own experiences and those of friends and fam- ily members. Underlying the outrage and concern expressed by government officials and members of the public were many unanswered questions. How many human radiation experiments were con- ducted? No one knew if the number was closer to 100 or 1,000. Were all the human radiation