Human radiation experiments

Since the discovery of ionizing radiation, a number of human radiation experiments have been performed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, specifically with the element plutonium.

Experiments performed in the United States

Main article: Human radiation experiments in the United States

Numerous human radiation experiments have been performed in the United States, many of which were funded by various U.S. government agencies such as the [[United States Department of Defense and the United States Atomic Energy Commission. Experiments included, but were not limited to:

• Injecting radioactive iodine into pregnant women seeking abortion, in order to track the mass transfer between placenta and carriers bloodstream. Another experiment administered radioactive iodine to newborns.^{[citation needed]}
• irradiating the heads of children
• feeding radioactive material to mentally disabled children(Tanner Spencer)
• exposing U.S. soldiers and prisoners to high levels of radiation
• irradiating the testicles of prisoners, which caused severe birth defects
• exhuming bodies from graveyards to test them for radiation (without the consent of the families of the deceased)

On January 15, 1994, President Bill Clinton formed the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), chaired by Ruth Faden, Ph.D., MPH of the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. One of the primary motivating factors behind his decision to create ACHRE was action taken by his newly appointed Secretary of Energy, Hazel O’Leary, J.D. One of her first actions on taking the reins of the Department of Energy was to announce a new openness policy for the Department. The policy led almost immediately to the release of over 1.6 million pages of classified records. The records made clear that since the 1940s the Atomic Energy Commission had been sponsoring tests on the effects of radiation on the human body. American citizens who had checked into hospitals for a variety of ailments were secretly injected with varying amounts of plutonium and other radioactive materials without their knowledge. Most patients thought it was "just another injection," but the secret studies left enough radioactive material in many of the patients' bodies to induce life threatening conditions. Such experiments were not limited to hospital patients, but included other populations such as those set out above, e.g., orphans fed irradiated milk, children injected with radioactive materials, prisoners in Washington and Oregon state prisons. Much of the experimentation was carried out in order to assess how the human body metabolizes radioactive materials, information that could be used by the Departments of Energy and Defense in Cold War defense/attack planning.

Adding to the political pressure created by Secretary O'Leary's documents release were the activities of any number of non-governmental organizations. One such organization was the Human Experiments Litigation Project (H.E.L.P.)

The first step in founding HELP was begun in 1984 when H. W. Cummins, Esq., founder of the Radiation Health Effects Public Interest Law Group (RADLAW), reached out to the National Association of Radiation Survivors (NARS)’s then Executive Director, Fred Allingham, to discuss the formation of a litigation group. One of the results of the meeting was Cummins and Allingham being approached by E. Cooper Brown, Esq. on behalf of organizations such as the National Committee for Radiation Victims (NCRV), and the Task Force on Radiation and Human Rights. Both organizations asked RADLAW to assess the subjects’ legal rights and assist them in securing legal representation. In order to meet these need, RADLAW encouraged a number of qualified attorneys to form the HELP.

The HELP attorneys included principals from three of the nation’s most prestigious law firms: Daniel Berger of Berger & Montague, P.C., Philadelphia; Anthony Roisman of Cohen, Milstein, Hausfeld & Toll, Washington, D.C.; and Len Marks of Gold, Farrell & Marks, New York City. These seasoned trial lawyers joined Cummins and Brown with Cummins acting as an expert in management, administration, ADR, and mediation, Brown in federal administrative and radiation health effects law. In addition, HELP recruited the support of several of-counsel advisors, including Leonard Schroeder, Esq., Seattle, and former Secretary of the Interior, the Hon. Stewart Udall.

HELP’s first radiation experiment claim was "Robert Mousso et al v. University of Rochester et al." That case was quickly followed by "Robert William Slack et al. v. University of Rochester et al.; William Holmes v. University of California et al.; Mary Jean Connell v. University of Rochester et al.; Evelyn Heinrich et al. v. William Sweet et al.; Harold Bibeau et al. v. Pacific Northwest Laboratories et al.; Gordon Shattuck et al. v. MIT et al.; In re Cincinnati Radiation Litigation; Kelley et al. v. University of California et al.; Blaz et al. v. Michael Reese Hospital."

The HELP litigation acted as a coda to the testimony of the numerous individuals and organizations which testified before ACHRE. The latter's recommended reforms are encapsulated in the following overarching recommendation:

The Committee calls for changes in the current federal system for the protection of the rights and interests of human subjects. These include changes in institutional review boards; in the interpretation of ethics rules and policies; in the conduct of research involving military personnel as subjects; in oversight, accountability, and sanctions for ethics violations; and in compensation for research injuries. Unlike the 1944-1974 period, in which the Committee focused primarily on research that offered subjects no prospect of medical benefit, our recommendations for the future emphasize protections for patients who are subjects of therapeutic research, as many of the contemporary issues involving research with human subjects occur in this setting. We also call for the adoption of special protections for the conduct of human research or environmental releases in secret, protections that are not currently in place.

ACHRE's final report was also a factor in the Department of Energy establishing an Office of Human Radiation Experiments (OHRE) that assured publication of DOE’s involvement (by way of its predecessor, the AEC) in Cold War radiation research and experimentation on human subjects. The final report issued by the ACHRE can be found at the Department of Energy's website:.

See also

• MKULTRA
• Project SUNSHINE
• Nuclear and radiation accidents
• Radiation poisoning
• Radioactive contamination
• Human experimentation
• Totskoye range nuclear tests
• Walter E. Fernald State School

Further reading

• Killing Our Own: The disaster of America's experience with atomic radiation, by Harvey Wasserman, Delacorte Press, c1992, ISBN 978-0440045670
• The Treatment: The Story of Those Who Died in the Cincinnati Radiation Tests, by Martha Stephens, Duke University Press, c2002, Durham, N.C., ISBN 0-8223-2811-9
• Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World, by Holly M. Barker, Wadsworth, 2004. ISBN 0-534-61326-8
• Chair's Perspective on the Work of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments by Ruth Faden

External links

• PROJECT SUNSHINE AND THE SLIPPERY SLOPE
• The nuclear bodysnatchers
• Grave injustices
• "A Little of the Buchenwald Touch": America's Secret Radiation Experiments
• Cheryl Welsh, Outlaw nonconsensual human experiments now The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, June 16, 2009.
• Embassy of the Republic of the Marshall Islands
• The Final Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments

the plutonium files