 | |
| Author | Eileen Welsome |
|---|---|
| Publisher | The Dial Press |
Publication date | 1999 |
| ISBN | 978-0-385-31402-2 |
The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is a 1999 book by Eileen Welsome. It is a history of United States government-engineered radiation experiments on unwitting Americans, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning series Welsome wrote for The Albuquerque Tribune . [1] [2]
The experiments began in 1945, when Manhattan Project scientists were preparing to detonate the first atomic bomb. Radiation was known to be dangerous and the experiments were designed to ascertain the detailed effect of radiation on human health. Most of the subjects, Welsome says, were poor, powerless, and sick. [3]
From 1945 to 1947, 18 people were injected with plutonium by Manhattan project doctors. Ebb Cade was an unwilling participant in medical experiments that involved injection of 4.7 micrograms of plutonium on April 10, 1945 at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. [4] [5] This experiment was under the supervision of Harold Hodge. [6] Other experiments directed by the United States Atomic Energy Commission continued into the 1970s. The Plutonium Files chronicles the lives of the subjects of the secret program by naming each person involved and discussing the ethical and medical research conducted in secret by the scientists and doctors. Albert Stevens, the man who survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human, four-year-old Simeon Shaw sent from Australia to the U.S. for treatment, and Elmer Allen are some of the notable subjects of the Manhattan Project program led by Dr. Joseph Gilbert Hamilton.
The following table lists subjects of the experiments by their subject names: [7]
| Patient number and biographical information at time of injection | Date injected | Date of death | Survival time | Age at death | Cause of death | Weight of injected Pu-239 (mg) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP-12, 55-year-old man | 1945 | 1953 | 8 years | 63 | Heart failure | 4.7 |
| CHI-1, 68-year-old man | 1945 | 1945 | 5 months | 68 | Cancer of chin, lungs | 6.5 |
| CAL-1, 58-year-old man | 1945 | 1966 | 20.7 years | 79 | Heart disease | 0.75 + 0.2 (Pu-238) |
| HP-1, 67-year-old man | 1945 | 1960 | 14.2 years | 81 | Bronchopneumonia | 4.6 |
| HP-2, 48-year-old man | 1945 | 1948 | 2.4 years | 50 | Brain disease | 5.1 |
| HP-3, 48-year-old woman | 1945 | 1983 | 37.2 years | 85 | Acute cardiac arrest | 4.9 |
| HP-4, 18-year-old woman | 1945 | 1947 | 1.4 years | 20 | Cushing's syndrome | 4.9 |
| HP-5, 56-year-old man | 1945 | 1946 | 5 months | 57 | Bronchopneumonia | 5.1 |
| CHI-2, 56-year-old woman | 1945 | 1946 | 17 days | 56 | Breast cancer | 94.9 |
| CHI-3, Young adult male | 1945 | 1946 | 6 months | Unknown | Likely Hodgkin's Disease | 94.9 |
| HP-6, 44-year-old man | 1946 | 1984 | 38 years | 82 | Natural death | 5.3 |
| HP-7, 59-year-old woman | 1946 | 1946 | 9 months | 60 | Pulmonary failure | 6.3 |
| HP-11, 69-year-old man | 1946 | 1946 | 6 days | 69 | Bronchopneumonia | 6.5 |
| HP-8, 41-year-old woman | 1946 | 1975 | 29.7 years | 71 | Unknown | 6.5 |
| HP-9, 64-year-old man | 1946 | 1947 | 1.2 years | 65 | Bronchopneumonia | 6.3 |
| CAL-2, 4-year, 10-month old boy | 1946 | 1947 | 8 months | 5 | Bone cancer | 2.7 + radio-cerium and yttrium |
| HP-10, 52-year-old man | 1946 | 1957 | 10.9 years | 63 | Heart disease | 6.1 |
| CAL-3, 36-year-old man | 1947 | 1991 | 44 years | 80 | Respiratory failure | .006 (Pu-238) |
In Nashville, pregnant women were given radioactive mixtures. In Cincinnati, some 200 patients were irradiated over a period of 15 years. In Chicago, 102 people received injections of strontium and caesium solutions. In Massachusetts, 73 children were fed oatmeal laced with radioactive tracers in an experiment sponsored by MIT and the Quaker Oats Company. In none of these cases were the subjects informed about the nature of the procedures, and thus could not have provided informed consent. [3]
In the book these stories are interwoven with details of more well-known radiation experiments and accidents. These include accounts of U.S. soldiers deliberately exposed to nuclear bomb blasts, families who lived downwind from atomic tests, radiation exposure in the Marshall Islands and the Japanese Lucky Dragon trawler caught in the fallout from the Castle Bravo test in 1954. [3]
Lucky Dragon Crew and their effect on the historical narrative:
The intersection of the Cold War and popular culture is illuminated through Kimmy Yam's analysis of the Godzilla franchise in her NBC News article "'Godzilla was a metaphor for Hiroshima, and Hollywood whitewashed it.'" [8] Yam draws attention to how America's commercialization of Godzilla modifies the anti-nuclear stance of Japan's 1954 Gojira, originally inspired by the "accidental" radiation exposure to the Lucky Dragon Crew. American adaptations of the movie completely remove any connection to American nuclear-weapons testing, with "an estimated 20 minutes of the original Japanese film, predominantly the politically charged portions, [being] cut out of the American version." This new narrative, which transforms a murderous ape into a hero, retells the story of death and positions nuclear technology as a tool that protects lives, thereby taking attention away from the nefarious actions perpetuated by the U.S. government.
Government involvement:
The government covered up most of these radiation mishaps until 1993, when President Bill Clinton ordered a change of policy and federal agencies then made available records dealing with human radiation experiments, as a result of Welsome's work. The resulting investigation was undertaken by the President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, and it uncovered much of the material included in Welsome's book. The committee issued a controversial 1995 report which said that "wrongs were committed" but it did not condemn those who perpetrated them. [3] The final report came out on October 3, 1995, the same day as the verdict in the O.J. Simpson case, when much of the media's attention was directed elsewhere.
In their report, the committee explicitly states their decision to focus on "representative case studies reflecting eight different categories of experiments," a choice that suggests an orchestrated effort to shape the public perception of the experiments without presenting the full scope of individual experiences. [9] Furthermore, claims that confirmed "the federal government[s] sponsor[ing] of several thousand human radiation experiments" were followed by the implication that these atrocities were committed out of a greater obligation. [10] The statement, "in the great majority of cases, the experiments were conducted to advance biomedical science" is a direct example of discrete indoctrination by use of dialogism. [11] By opting for a controlled narrative, this report raises questions about the extent to which the historical record has been influenced by the very entities responsible for the experiments.
Jonathan D. Moreno was a senior staff member of the committee. He wrote the 1999 book Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans, which covers some of the same ground as The Plutonium Files. [12]
Glenn Theodore Seaborg was an American chemist whose involvement in the synthesis, discovery and investigation of ten transuranium elements earned him a share of the 1951 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His work in this area also led to his development of the actinide concept and the arrangement of the actinide series in the periodic table of the elements.
The United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by the U.S. Congress to foster and control the peacetime development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S. Truman signed the McMahon/Atomic Energy Act on August 1, 1946, transferring the control of atomic energy from military to civilian hands, effective on January 1, 1947. This shift gave the members of the AEC complete control of the plants, laboratories, equipment, and personnel assembled during the war to produce the atomic bomb.
A nuclear and radiation accident is defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as "an event that has led to significant consequences to people, the environment or the facility." Examples include lethal effects to individuals, large radioactivity release to the environment, or a reactor core melt. The prime example of a "major nuclear accident" is one in which a reactor core is damaged and significant amounts of radioactive isotopes are released, such as in the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 and Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.
Louis Alexander Slotin was a Canadian physicist and chemist who took part in the Manhattan Project. Born and raised in the North End of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Slotin earned both his Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from the University of Manitoba, before obtaining his doctorate in physical chemistry at King's College London in 1936. Afterwards, he joined the University of Chicago as a research associate to help design a cyclotron.
Strong Memorial Hospital (SMH) is an 886-bed medical facility, part of the University of Rochester Medical Center complex, in Rochester, New York, United States. Opened in 1926, it is a major provider of both in-patient and out-patient medical services. Attached to Strong is the 190-bed Golisano Children's Hospital, which serves infants, children, teens, and young adults aged 0–21.
The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was established in 1994 to investigate questions of the record of the United States government with respect to human radiation experiments. The special committee was created by President Bill Clinton in Executive Order 12891, issued January 15, 1994. Ruth Faden of The Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics chaired the committee.
Plutonium-238 is a radioactive isotope of plutonium that has a half-life of 87.7 years.
Joseph Gilbert Hamilton was an American professor of Medical Physics, Experimental Medicine, General Medicine, and Experimental Radiology as well as director (1948–1957) of the Crocker Laboratory, part of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Hamilton studied the medical effects of exposure to radioactive isotopes, which included the use of unsuspecting human subjects.
Plutonium is a chemical element; it has symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is a silvery-gray actinide metal that tarnishes when exposed to air, and forms a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation states. It reacts with carbon, halogens, nitrogen, silicon, and hydrogen. When exposed to moist air, it forms oxides and hydrides that can expand the sample up to 70% in volume, which in turn flake off as a powder that is pyrophoric. It is radioactive and can accumulate in bones, which makes the handling of plutonium dangerous.
The Zero Power Physics Reactor or ZPPR was a split-table-type critical facility located at the Idaho National Laboratory, Idaho, USA. It was designed for the study of the physics of power breeder systems and was capable of simulating fast reactor core compositions characteristic of 300-500 MWe demonstration plants and 1000 MWe commercial plants.
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.
Albert Stevens (1887–1966), also known as patient CAL-1 and most radioactive human ever, was a house painter from Ohio who was subjected to an involuntary human radiation experiment and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human. On May 14, 1945, he was injected with 131 kBq of plutonium without his knowledge because it was erroneously believed that he had a terminal disease.
Eileen Welsome is an American journalist and author. She received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1994 while a reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune for a 3-part story titled "The Plutonium Experiment" published beginning on November 15, 1993. She was awarded the prize for her articles about the government's human radiation experiments conducted on unwilling and unknowing Americans during the Cold War. Welsome also has received a George Polk Award, the Selden Ring Award for Investigative Reporting, an Investigative Reporters and Editors Gold Medal, the Heywood Broun Award, as well as awards from the National Headliners Association and the Associated Press. In 1999, Welsome wrote the book The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. In 2000, Welsome received the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and the PEN Center USA West Award in Research Nonfiction for The Plutonium Files.
Numerous experiments which were performed on human test subjects in the United States in the past are now considered to have been unethical, because they were performed without the knowledge or informed consent of the test subjects. Such tests have been performed throughout American history, but have become significantly less frequent with the advent and adoption of various safeguarding efforts. Despite these safeguards, unethical experimentation involving human subjects is still occasionally uncovered.
Human subject research legislation in the United States can be traced to the early 20th century. Human subject research in the United States was mostly unregulated until the 20th century, as it was throughout the world, until the establishment of various governmental and professional regulations and codes of ethics. Notable – and in some cases, notorious – human subject experiments performed in the US include the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, human radiation experiments, the Milgram obedience experiment and Stanford prison experiments and Project MKULTRA. With growing public awareness of such experimentation, and the evolution of professional ethical standards, such research became regulated by various legislation, most notably, those that introduced and then empowered the institutional review boards.
Ebb Cade was a construction worker at Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and was the first person subjected to injection with plutonium as an experiment.
Wright Haskell Langham was an internationally renowned expert in the fields of plutonium exposure, aerospace and aviation medicine, Eniwetok nuclear tests, the Palomares and Greenland nuclear accidents. Sometimes Langham was referred to as Mr. Plutonium.
Donald Francis Mastick was an American chemist who worked at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory. As part of Project Alberta, he was part of the planning and preparation for the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, for which he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal. Mastick is known for a lab incident in 1944 when he accidentally ingested a small amount of plutonium, traces of which remained detectable in his body decades later. After the incident, he worked for the Naval Radiological Defense Laboratory and the Atomic Energy Commission.
Louis Henry Hempelmann Jr, was an American physician who was the director of the Health Group at the Manhattan Project's Los Alamos Laboratory during World War II. After the war he was involved in research into radiology. A paper he published in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1949 warned of the dangers of using fluoroscopes to measure the size of children's feet.
Robert Spencer Stone was a Canadian-American physician who served as head of the Health Division of the Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory as part of the Manhattan Project. He oversaw experiments in which test subjects were injected with radioactive materials such as plutonium in order to measure their metabolism and excretion.