Human radiation experiments
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
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. Early pioneers did not appreciate the danger of such experiments and quite casually exposed experimenters and subjects to such radiation. In recent years, the danger is well-understood and experiments are carefully designed with close attention to medical ethics and safety for everyone involved. However, there have been a number of experiments that may constitue unethical human experimentation.
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Plutonium experiments
After the end of World War II, doctors working on the Manhattan Project realized that little was known about the behaviour of radioactive substances in the body. They began a program to study these effects. This involved injecting solutions of plutonium into patients thought to be terminally ill, without the consent or even the knowledge of those patients.
The episode is now considered to be a disgraceful breach of medical ethics, but no detailed investigation has been performed, and no one has been punished.
Operation Sunshine
Early in the Cold War, researchers in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia attempted to determine just how much nuclear fallout would be required to make the Earth uninhabitable. They realized that atmospheric nuclear testing had provided them an opportunity to investigate this. Such tests had dispersed radioactive contamination worldwide, and examination of human bodies could reveal how readily it was taken up and hence how much damage it was caused. Of particular interest was strontium-90 in the bones. Infants were the primary focus, as they would have had a full opportunity to absorb the new contaminants.
As a result of this conclusion, researchers began a program to collect human bodies and bones from all over the world, with a particular focus on infants. The bones were cremated and the ashes analyzed for radioisotopes. This project was kept secret primarily because it would be a public relations disaster; as a result parents and family were not told what was being done with the body parts of their relatives.
Further reading
- The Plutonium Files: America's secret medical experiments in the Cold War, by Eileen Welsome, Dial Press, c1999, New York, N.Y., ISBN 0385314027
External links
- PROJECT SUNSHINE AND THE SLIPPERY SLOPE (http://www.show.scot.nhs.uk/scotorgrev/Strontium%2090%20Report/roos90-12.htm)
- The nuclear bodysnatchers (http://www.antenna.nl/wise/index.html?http://www.antenna.nl/wise/548/5272.html)
- Grave injustices (http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=125&category=79)
- "A Little of the Buchenwald Touch": America's Secret Radiation Experiments (http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/reviews_in_american_history/v028/28.4markowitz.html)
- Injected! (http://www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd99longworth)
