1995: Findings of the Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments
1995: The Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments cataloged 81 pediatric radiation exposure projects — 27 of these experiments were judged to be non-therapeutic.
1995: The Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments cataloged 81 pediatric radiation exposure projects — 27 of these experiments were judged to be non-therapeutic.
During WWII, hundreds of scientists and technicians working to develop the atomic bomb at Los Alamos were exposed to radioactive substances, including plutonium, whose hazards were not entirely known. Pioneers of nuclear science, such as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Louis Hempelmann, and Stafford Warren, masterminded the experiments from the headquarters they…
In 1950, Dr. Joseph G. Hamilton, a top radiation biologist at the AEC, sent a memo to Dr. Shields Warren, a senior AEC official who directed human radiation experiments; he warned him that the radiation experiments might have “a little of the Buchenwald touch,” and that commission officials “would be…
1995: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published a Roadmap of Human Radiation Experiments summarizing 150 plus an additional 275 radiation experiments conducted by DOE and its predecessor, the AEC, during the 1940s–1970s. The Roadmap cites a 1986 congressional report entitled American Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Three Decades of Radiation Experiments on…
In December of 1993, Scott Allen, a journalist at the Boston Globe, uncovered documents showing years of ethically dubious experiments conducted on Fernald Center youth. The day after Christmas, he published an article, “Radiation Used on Retarded,” noting that “Records at the Fernald State School list them as “morons,” but…
1953–1957: Oak Ridge-sponsored experiment injected uranium into eleven patients at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston. (ACHRE staff report) Dr. William Sweet, chief of Neurosurgery at Harvard’s MGH conducted numerous unethical experiments on terminally ill patients. Some of the experiments were conducted under a government shield of secrecy: for example,…
1960–1972: University of Cincinnati Medical School researchers led by Dr. Eugene Saenger conducted whole-body radiation experiments on 88 patients its charity hospital — 62% of who were African American. These experiments may have caused the most deaths and they spanned the most years. All but one of the 88 patients…