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…
An exceptionally large-scale radiation exposure experiment at Vanderbilt University was funded by the U.S. Public Health Service and involved 820 poor pregnant Caucasian women who were given tracer doses of radioactive iron in a “cocktail” drink. The researchers worked with the Tennessee State Department of Health and they did not…
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…
U.S. Air Force threw “Radiation bombs” expelled from USAF planes intentionally spread radiation to “unknown distances” endangering Americans young and old alike. 1949: “Green Run” intentional radioactive contamination experiment over Hanford, WA. A massive intentional experiment was conducted by General Electric officials and officials from the Department of Defense (DOD)…
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…
Between1948–1954, 582 Baltimore school children were subjected to radiation in a federally-funded experiment whose stated intent was to gauge long-term hearing loss. The treatment was incorporated as “standard care,” and an average of 150 patients a month, mostly children, were given the treatment at the Johns Hopkins clinic over a…
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…
Dr. Lester Middlesworth of the University of Tennessee injected 7 newborn babies with radioactive iodine in an experiment sponsored by the Atomic Energy Commission at a hospital treating low income people. Six of the babies were African American. Dr. Middlesworth lost track of the infants — no follow-up records were…
1953: CIA’s Project MK-ULTRA included at least four sub-projects specifically using children; 102, 103, 112, and 117 to radiation. Indeed the Advisory Commission on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) heard testimony from persons who had been used in mind control experiments when they were children. ACHRE identified 81 pediatric radiation exposure…
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…
