1995: Findings of the Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments

1994: Ali Zaidi, a student at the University of Rochester, was not informed about the risks of radiation when he was asked to sign a consent form for a clinical trial testing Heliobacter pylori. The study was eventually terminated and researchers placed on probation.

Background: In the early part of the twentieth century, radium was a symbol of science, medicine, and technology; power and wealth. Radium was a luminous vehicle for progress, publicly displayed for a week at the Public Health Exposition in Grand Central in New York (1921) to which medical students, physicians…

Colonel E.E. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. AEC issues a secret document (07075001, January 8, 1947) stating that the AEC will begin administering intravenous doses of radioactive substances to human subjects. An April 17, 1947, AEC document states: “It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with…

The government began sponsoring total body irradiation (TBI) research in 1942 in connection with the Top Secret Manhattan Project — the nuclear scientists who developed the Atom Bomb. From its inception with the US nuclear program and supporting government policy placed scientific and military advancement far above the safety of…

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…

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…