Plutonium Files: How the U.S. Secretly Fed Radioactivity to Thousands of Americans

[hammer4all]

Denver-based journalist Eileen Welsome reveals how as a reporter for the tiny Albuquerque Tribune (circulation 35,000) she uncovered one of the country's great Cold War secrets: the U.S. government had knowingly exposed thousands of human Guinea pigs with radiation poisoning including 18 Americans who had plutonium injected directly into their bloodstream.

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In a Massachusetts school, seventy-three disabled children were spoon-fed oatmeal laced with radioactive isotopes.

In an upstate New York hospital, an eighteen-year-old woman believing she was being treated for a pituitary disorder, was injected with plutonium.

At a Tennessee clinic, 829 pregnant women were served "vitamin cocktails" containing radioactive iron, as part of their regular treatment.

No these are not acts of terrorism by common criminals.

These are just some of the secret human radiation experiments that the U.S. government conducted on unsuspecting Americans for decades as part of its atom bomb program.

In a gruesome plot that spanned 30 years, doctors and scientists working with the US atomic weapons program, exposed thousands of unwilling and unknowing Americans to radiation poisoning to study its effects.

This is no joke guys; the investigative reporter who discovered all this eventually won a Pulitzer. Listen to today's fascinating interview if you want to learn more:

http://www.democracynow.org/article..../05/05/1357230

[Y2KDREAD]

Wow.

[Asuka{eve}]

Whats next plutonium in cheereo's? This is sick but not the only case. Just look at the tuskegee experiment.

[brandon11983]

Originally posted by Asuka{eve}
Whats next plutonium in cheereo's? This is sick but not the only case. Just look at the tuskagee experiment.

That would be acceptable only if they made me 50 ft. tall and gave me laser vision.

[iamnormal]

Never heard of Nuclear Medicine?

[kurty[B]]

Watch Trinity and Beyond, you can see what other fucked up things our nation did when testing bombs.

Trinity and Beyond

[iamnormal]

We nuke our country more than any did any others.

[Spartak]

Old news really, I stumbled upon similar reports when I researched a speech on nuclear weapons for highschool.. some four years ago.

I don't know if the article mentions it, but I found the most disturbing to be the experiments dealing with ingestion of plutonium on pregnant women. (*edit*: oh, I see it does).

[bender]

Kind of makes one think about the trust that they put into there government.

[Cynthetiq]

eh... old news....

*puts tin foil hat back on*

[raeanna74]

Any wonder why cancer is on the rise?

[animosity]

Originally posted by bender
Kind of makes one think about the trust that they put into there government.

yes, this certainly doesnt help my already dwindling respect for my country. *sighs*

[Lokus]

Originally posted by raeanna74
Any wonder why cancer is on the rise?

And that is why me must use more radiation to kill the cancer!

[MSD]

Originally posted by raeanna74
Any wonder why cancer is on the rise?

My area got a few particularly big doses due to rainstorms dropping fallout on us after nuclear tests in Nevada. You can find several times the normal (but supposedly far below the safe level) of background radiation

[Lebell]

Old news and people need to remember that.

[Sapper]

I am curious as to which radioisotope the pregnant women were administered. The longer the half-life, the less adverse the reactions are likely to be.

Point of interest: ask any nuclear chemist and they will tell you that the universe is trying to turn into 56Fe (Iron-56) which is the most electrically stable nucleus known.

Next, REM (Roentgen equivilent mammal) = RBE (radioactive biological equivilent) x RAD. The most dammaging (tissue wise) radiation is the Alpha particle - which I believe are in the pathway of the "heavier" isotopes of Iron. Alpha radiation carries an RBE of 10-20 whereas Beta- decay carries roughly 1-2 (if memory serves).

The radioactive isotope(s) of iron administered could include:

Isotope - Half-life

52Fe - 8.3 hours
53Fe - 8.5 minutes
55Fe - 2.7 years
59Fe - 44 days
60Fe - 1.5M years
61Fe - 6.0 minutes
62Fe - 68 seconds

Shorter half-life = more dangerous (depending on the decay pathway).

[sprocket]

Mabye old news, but it does make one wonder what kind of tests the government is doing today that we dont know about.

[ARTelevision]

The government retains the right to expose the population to necessary national security research.

It's called sovereignty.

And as has been implied, it's only news to those who don't know the facts.

Do some research on CIA experiments with public releases of LSD in San Francisco in the early '60s. There are more than a few of these sort of instances.

And personally, I don't have a problem with sovereignty at all.

[SpikeQX99]

In my opinion, while working in the nuclear power realm, things like this happen, how else are we to study the effects of things on the human body? Use prisoners? Then all the bleeding hearts out there say that using them is "cruel and inhumane", so rather than telling everyone about what they are doing, just do it on the QT and study the effects over time.

Alpha particles are the weakest particles released from radioactivity. They can be stopped by a sheet of paper.

Beta particles are next strongest. It takes a ream of paper (100 sheets)
to stop them.

Gamma particles are the most powerful, they can travel right through the human body, and they are what cause problems in the human biology. They require large amounts of dense material, like lead to stop them. and even then sometimes they still sneak through.

[filtherton]

And to think, we got all pissy about saddam gassing his own people. Maybe we should have just respected soveriegnity like Art says.

[ARTelevision]

Wantonly killing a segment of the population for political reasons is not the same thing as research in the interest of national security.

[Astrocloud]

This is government for the people and by the people. Nobody would be complaining if they created a superhero from their experiments?

[filtherton]

Originally posted by ARTelevision
Wantonly killing a segment of the population for political reasons is not the same thing as research in the interest of national security.

Sovereignty is sovereignty. If its not about sovereignty than don't paint it like that.

[ARTelevision]

If I meant that nations can do whatever they want to their citizens in the name of sovereignty I would have said exactly that.

The unique living and evolving contracts that exist between specific nations and their citizens is a significant dimension of world history.

[Captain Canada]

Wow, that's pretty damn scary.

[tehhappyboy]

Um 1/10,000,000,000 of an ounce of plutonium will kill you. Injected. Not unless death soon followed.

[filtherton]

Originally posted by ARTelevision
[B]If I meant that nations can do whatever they want to their citizens in the name of sovereignty I would have said exactly that.

The government retains the right to expose the population to necessary national security research.

It's called sovereignty.

Didn't you say that? What the goverment may deem necessary may be injecting human beings with radioactive material or infecting minority airforce pilots with syphilus, just to see what happens. Would you volunteer for such national security research in respect for the unique evolving contract that exists between you and your government? What if they didn't ask you and did it anyway?

[Asuka{eve}]

The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
The United States government did something that was wrong—deeply, profoundly, morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all our citizens. . . . clearly racist.
—President Clinton's apology for the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment to the eight remaining survivors, May 16, 1997
For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 black men in the late stages of syphilis. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,”1 their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis at all. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis—which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”

Using Human Beings as Laboratory Animals
The true nature of the experiment had to be kept from the subjects to ensure their cooperation. The sharecroppers' grossly disadvantaged lot in life made them easy to manipulate. Pleased at the prospect of free medical care—almost none of them had ever seen a doctor before—these unsophisticated and trusting men became the pawns in what James Jones, author of the excellent history on the subject, Bad Blood, identified as “the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history.”

The study was meant to discover how syphilis affected blacks as opposed to whites—the theory being that whites experienced more neurological complications from syphilis whereas blacks were more susceptible to cardiovascular damage. How this knowledge would have changed clinical treatment of syphilis is uncertain. Although the PHS touted the study as one of great scientific merit, from the outset its actual benefits were hazy. It took almost forty years before someone involved in the study took a hard and honest look at the end results, reporting that “nothing learned will prevent, find, or cure a single case of infectious syphilis or bring us closer to our basic mission of controlling venereal disease in the United States.” When the experiment was brought to the attention of the media in 1972, news anchor Harry Reasoner described it as an experiment that “used human beings as laboratory animals in a long and inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone.”

A Heavy Price in the Name of Bad Science
By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. How had these men been induced to endure a fatal disease in the name of science? To persuade the community to support the experiment, one of the original doctors admitted it “was necessary to carry on this study under the guise of a demonstration and provide treatment.” At first, the men were prescribed the syphilis remedies of the day—bismuth, neoarsphenamine, and mercury—but in such small amounts that only 3 percent showed any improvement. These token doses of medicine were good public relations and did not interfere with the true aims of the study. Eventually, all syphilis treatment was replaced with “pink medicine”—aspirin. To ensure that the men would show up for a painful and potentially dangerous spinal tap, the PHS doctors misled them with a letter full of promotional hype: “Last Chance for Special Free Treatment.” The fact that autopsies would eventually be required was also concealed. As a doctor explained, “If the colored population becomes aware that accepting free hospital care means a post-mortem, every darky will leave Macon County . . .” Even the Surgeon General of the United States participated in enticing the men to remain in the experiment, sending them certificates of appreciation after 25 years in the study.

Following Doctors' Orders
It takes little imagination to ascribe racist attitudes to the white government officials who ran the experiment, but what can one make of the numerous African Americans who collaborated with them? The experiment's name comes from the Tuskegee Institute, the black university founded by Booker T. Washington. Its affiliated hospital lent the PHS its medical facilities for the study, and other predominantly black institutions as well as local black doctors also participated. A black nurse, Eunice Rivers, was a central figure in the experiment for most of its forty years. The promise of recognition by a prestigious government agency may have obscured the troubling aspects of the study for some. A Tuskegee doctor, for example, praised “the educational advantages offered our interns and nurses as well as the added standing it will give the hospital.” Nurse Rivers explained her role as one of passive obedience: “we were taught that we never diagnosed, we never prescribed; we followed the doctor's instructions!” It is clear that the men in the experiment trusted her and that she sincerely cared about their well-being, but her unquestioning submission to authority eclipsed her moral judgment. Even after the experiment was exposed to public scrutiny, she genuinely felt nothing ethical had been amiss.

One of the most chilling aspects of the experiment was how zealously the PHS kept these men from receiving treatment. When several nationwide campaigns to eradicate venereal disease came to Macon County, the men were prevented from participating. Even when penicillin was discovered in the 1940s—the first real cure for syphilis—the Tuskegee men were deliberately denied the medication. During World War II, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were consequently ordered to get treatment for syphilis, only to have the PHS exempt them. Pleased at their success, the PHS representative announced: “So far, we are keeping the known positive patients from getting treatment.” The experiment continued in spite of the Henderson Act (1943), a public health law requiring testing and treatment for venereal disease, and in spite of the World Health Organization's Declaration of Helsinki (1964), which specified that “informed consent” was needed for experiment involving human beings.

Blowing the Whistle
The story finally broke in the Washington Star on July 25, 1972, in an article by Jean Heller of the Associated Press. Her source was Peter Buxtun, a former PHS venereal disease interviewer and one of the few whistle blowers over the years. The PHS, however, remained unrepentant, claiming the men had been “volunteers” and “were always happy to see the doctors,” and an Alabama state health officer who had been involved claimed “somebody is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.”

Under the glare of publicity, the government ended their experiment, and for the first time provided the men with effective medical treatment for syphilis. Fred Gray, a lawyer who had previously defended Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, filed a class action suit that provided a $10 million out-of-court settlement for the men and their families. Gray, however, named only whites and white organizations in the suit, portraying Tuskegee as a black and white case when it was in fact more complex than that—black doctors and institutions had been involved from beginning to end.

The PHS did not accept the media's comparison of Tuskegee with the appalling experiments performed by Nazi doctors on their Jewish victims during World War II. Yet in addition to the medical and racist parallels, the PHS offered the same morally bankrupt defense offered at the Nuremberg trials: they claimed they were just carrying out orders, mere cogs in the wheel of the PHS bureaucracy, exempt from personal responsibility.

The study's other justification—for the greater good of science—is equally spurious. Scientific protocol had been shoddy from the start. Since the men had in fact received some medication for syphilis in the beginning of the study, however inadequate, it thereby corrupted the outcome of a study of “untreated syphilis.”

In 1990, a survey found that 10 percent of African Americans believed that the U.S. government created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks, and another 20 percent could not rule out the possibility that this might be true. As preposterous and paranoid as this may sound, at one time the Tuskegee experiment must have seemed equally farfetched. Who could imagine the government, all the way up to the Surgeon General of the United States, deliberately allowing a group of its citizens to die from a terrible disease for the sake of an ill-conceived experiment? In light of this and many other shameful episodes in our history, African Americans' widespread mistrust of the government and white society in general should not be a surprise to anyone. —BB

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0762136.html
No one asked but this is the story of the Tuskegee experiment

[ARTelevision]

My government exists in an evolving socio-historical global context. My understanding of that history and context impels me to conclude that it is an overall force for good. It is the organism that represents hundreds of millions of people. As such it has actual authority over me. I am not a greater authority as to what constitutes the good of the many.

You're free to question anything you want. I don't have the same questions or issues that you have regarding governmental authority in these instances.