Introduction: Tuskegee was thought to be an aberration; but the extensive scope of 4,000 radiation experiments — conducted on an estimated 20,000 unwitting victims, including military personnel, prisoners, federal workers, hospital patients, pregnant women and thousands of infants and disabled children — most of them poor and powerless. These nefarious experiments confirm the moral failure of American medicine and that medical researchers working with the government cannot be trusted.
Reports about secret radiation experiments appeared in the scientific literature as early as 1948, but none were concerned with the serious consequences for the human subjects. Few (if any) Americans had any idea about the nature or risks involved in radiation experiments initiated by their government until 1993 when investigative reporter, Eileen Welsome, wrote a Pulitzer Prize winning series of articles in the Albuquerque Tribune in which she described the nature and devastating effects of Plutonium injected into 18 hospitalized patients who were unwitting subjects: “the unspeakable scientific trials [ ] reduced thousands of men, women, and even children to nameless specimens.”
The malignant flowering of curiosity about the effects of radiation on humans continued for three more decades. Until the 1970s, government scientists and physicians made use of unwitting Americans in order to discover the effects of exposure. Scientists already knew that radiation was dangerous. (Harriet Washington. The New England Journal of Medicine, 1999)
Eileen Welsome’s articles prompted Hazel O’Leary, then Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, successor to the Atomic Energy Commission) promptly declassified the documents pertaining to human radiation experiments and President Bill Clinton appointed t Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE). Its to Report (1995) following a yearlong investigation demonstrates clearly that scientists knew from the beginning of the 20th century that radiation could cause genetic and cell damage, cancer, cell death, radiation sickness and even death.
Secretary Hazel O’Leary confessed being aghast at the conduct of the scientists. She told Newsweek in 1994: “aecI said, ‘Who were these people and why did this happen?’ The only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany.”[vii] None of the victims were provided follow-up medical care.
Dr. Mark Siegler of the University of Chicago stated: “I think the reason we’re seeing so much focus on these radiation experiments is that they involve a large number of Government departments and agencies that were pursuing these research programs for other than traditional medical purposes. It’s not just an outcry against medical research but against Government secretness and the way the Government might use the medical establishment.”
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…
In 1963, prior to flights into space, scientists were concerned about the effect of space radiation on astronauts’ testicles. They also were concerned about radiated gonads of workers at America’s atomic energy plants. So, they conducted experiments designed to test the effects of massive radiation on prisoners’ testicles without any…
1985: The Energy Department conducted large-scale experiments as late as 1985 that deliberately produced reactor meltdowns that spewed radiation across Idaho and beyond. The Washington Post reported the meltdown July 10, 1985, quoting an Energy Department spokesman as saying, “It appears that the test was a complete success.” (http://www.citywatchla.com/4box-right/5005-humans-used-for-radiation-experiments-a-shameful-chapter-in-us-history)
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.
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: 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 2000, the former participants in the Walla Walla experiments settled a $2.4 million class-action settlement from the University. Dr. Paulsen defended the tests stating, “If our work was unethical, then you’d have to say that all the [federal and UW advisory boards] that approved it in those days were…
