US Government's secret human radiation experimentation no one would touch
Husband of All FBI n NSA Agents
Columbia Journalism Review
March/April 1994 | Content
The Media & Me
THE RADIATION STORY
NO ONE WOULD TOUCH
by Geoffrey Sea
Sea is an Oakland-based writer, radiological health physicist, and
international activist on radiation issues. He is the founder and director
of In Vivo: Radiation Response and the Atomic Reclamation and Conversation
Project of the Tides Foundation, and a co-founder of IRIS: International
Radiation Injury Survivors.
Suddenly, at the close of 1993, the public was bombarded with "news" about
the feeding of radioactive substances to pregnant women and mentally
retarded students, about the unethical irradiation of workers, soldiers,
medical patients, and prison inmates, and about the government's own
internal fears that these experiments had "a little of the Buchenwald
touch." But the story that appeared in The Albuquerque Tribune (circulation:
35,000) on November 15-17, and was then projected into the national
headlines by the forthright admissions and initiatives of Secretary of
Energy Hazel O'Leary, was hardly new.
By 1984, activists and researchers across the country were systematically
investigating the human experimentation program and attempting to bring it
to public attention. By 1986, documentation of the program was massive,
solid, and publicly available.
I am among those who persistently tried to get national media coverage of
this outrageous example of government wrongdoing. To say that the media were
reluctant to listen would be an understatement. The fact is that, for more
than a decade, documentation was ignored and facts were misreported.
What follows is a chronology of significant events in the strange history of
this important story -- one that began to receive adequate coverage only
after almost all the victims were dead and most of the perpetrators retired:
1971: The Washington Post reveals that a research team at the University of
Cincinnati, under the leadership of Eugene Saenger, has been irradiating
"mentally enfeebled" patients -- all of them poor and most of them black --
at dose rates known to have harmful effects. The aim of the research, funded
by the Department of Defense: to discover whether and under what conditions
soldiers on an atomic battlefield would be cognitively imparied.
A review panel is established at the University of Cincinnati. However, the
ethical issues are subordinated to the relatively technical question of the
mechanism for obtaining consent. The experiments continue. No one seems to
consider the obvious ethical problem involved in extracting "informed
consent" from patients selected because of their "low-educational level . .
. low-functioning intelligence quotient . . . and strong evidence of
cerebral organic deficit." The researchers claim that the patients "benefit"
from the radiation exposure, despite the fact that the radiation far exceeds
recommended therapeutic doses, that the treatments are not intended to have
a therapeutic effect, and that, in Saenger's own estimation, eight patient
deaths could possibly be attributed to the "treatments."
1972: The researchers quietly end their experiments when evidence of harmful
effects begins to mount. After a cursory review by the American College of
Radiology, no one bothers to reopen the case for public scrutiny. No attempt
is made to monitor the health of the surviving experimental subjects.
1975: Following revelations of army-sponsored LSD experiments, Senator
Edward Kennedy chairs hearings on human experimentation funded by the
Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency. Radiation
experiments, however, are not mentioned either in the hearings or in media
coverage.
1976: Science Trends, a newsletter published in the National Press Building
in Washington, D.C., reveals an experiment carried out in San Francisco,
Chicago, and Rochester, New York, as part of the Manhattan Project, that
"involved the injection of relatively massive quantities of bomb-grade
plutonium into the veins of 18 men, women, and children." The article
implies that the experiment was an isolated historical case, and concludes:
"Whether injecting the key ingredient of the atomic bomb into unsuspecting
patients can be equated with Nazi wartime experiments is a matter which is
today considered moot."
1981: The case of Dwayne Sexton, irradiated as a child as part of
NASA-sponsored research aimed at discovering the potential effects of
radiation exposure on astronauts, gains fleeting attention when the mother
of the child links the death of her son to the experiments. Mother Jones
runs a cover story on the Sexton case. Albert Gore, then a young congressman
from Tennessee, where the experiments had taken lace, follows up with
hearings on the Oak Ridge Total Body Irradiation Program. Neither the
article nor the hearings links the Sexton case with the Saenger experiments
or with the broader program of human experimentation with radiation.
Early-1980s: A network of activist-researchers starts to compile the full
and extensive record of U.S. radiation experiments on humans.
* In Cincinnati, Ohio, Dr. David Egilman of the Greater Cincinnati
Occupational Health Center and I are investigating experiments conducted on
nuclear workers and following the trail of the Saenger experiments. At the
time, I am employed as a health consultant by the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic
Workers Union and the Fernald Atomic Trades and Labor Council. The unions
are concerned about the intentional radioactive contamination of workers'
skin as a means of testing external cleansing agents and about the
continuing use of workers as experimental subjects in the development of
chelation drugs to treat internal exposure to radioactive heavy metals.
In the course of pressing claims for worker's compensation, we discover that
the AEC/DOE has secretly contracted with local hospitals and coroners for
the collection of fluid and tissue samples, surgically removed organs, and
autopsy specimens -- in some cases, whole cadavers of atomic workers. Some
of these specimens are being taken and destroyed by the government, often
without the knowledge or against the expressed wishes of the workers and/or
their survivors.
We suspect that this "body-snatching" program serves a dual purpose: it
helps the government accumulate data for military purposes, while at the
same time it results in the destruction of physical evidence that could
support compensation claims. Finally, we are concerned that Dr. Saenger has
become the chief consultant and expert witness for the government in
defending itself and its contractors against liability suits.
* In California, Dorothy Legarreta, who had worked on the Manhattan Project
as a laboratory technician, organizes the National Association of Radiation
Survivors (NARS) and starts to write a book about human experimentation. In
1982, while examining the papers of Joseph Hamilton -- the scientist in
charge of radiation experiments at the University of California -- at the
library of the University of California at Berkeley, she comes across a 1950
memo written to Shields Warren, then director of the Atomic Energy
Commission's Division of biology and medicine. The memo advised that large
primates -- chimpanzees, for example -- be substituted for humans in the
planned studies on radiation's cognitive effects (the very same program of
experimentation that Dr. Saenger was to execute). The use of humans,
Hamilton wrote, might leave the AEC open "to considerable criticism," since
the experiments as proposed had "a little of the Buchenwald touch."
After Legarreta finds the so-called Buchenwald memo, Hamilton's papers are
removed from public access by University of California administrators. Soon
after this, Legarreta files a Freedom of Information Act request with the
Department of Energy, asking for all documents concerning experiments in
which humans were intentionally exposed to radioactive materials through
injection or ingestion. Later that year, NARS receives a two-foot-high
carton of documents in response -- documents that, for the first time,
expose the widespread human experimentation program of the U.S. government.
* In Missouri, Dotte Troxell is trying to document her own horrific
experience and to demonstrate the bonds that unite all experiment survivors.
In 1957, while working at the AEC's Kansas City plant, run by Bendix, she
had been involved in a serious radiation accidnet. When the symptoms of
acute radiation syndrome began appearing (hair loss, nausea, purpura, and
hemorrhaging), she was sent to the Lovelace Clinic in New Mexico, a clinic
established by the AEC for developing treatments for radiation injury.
Because Troxell was thought to be near death, and presumably because she had
been exposed to a Cobalt-60 calibration source that allowed the dose to her
organs to be precisely determined, the doctors at Lovelace did exploratory
surgery on her, probably to obtain tissue biopsies from her internal organs.
When she awoke from surgery and asked what had been done to her, the doctors
said they could not tell her for "national security" reasons. After
suffering radiogenic cataracts in both eyes and giving birth to a son with
congenital diabetes, Troxell founds VOTE: Victms and Veterans Opposed to
Technological Experimenation.
* In Knoxville, Tennessee, Clifford T. Honicker and Jacqueline Kittrell are
investigating the human experimentation program at the DOE's nuclear complex
at Oak Ridge. They locate and begin to analyze the papers of Stafford
Warren, who had been medical director of the Manhattan Project and who
subsequently directed the Oak Ridge medical program. Those of Warren's
papers that are obtained, including classified documents and medico-legal
files, provide a clear picture of the origins of the government's human
experimentation program, as well as of the government's policy of denying
compensation to radiation survivors. Honicker and Kittrell found the
Radiation Research Project, which later becomes the American Environmental
Health Studies Project.
Mid-1980s: Our network has accumulated enough documentation on the human
experimentation program to go public. We do so at press conferences held in
Cincinnati (November 1984), Knoxville (May 1985), Kansas City (May 1986),
and Berkeley (July 1986). At each of the last three conferences, Hamilton's
Buchenwald memo is released to the press, but no mainstream paper mentions
it.
1985-86: In contract talks, the labor council representing workers at the
DOE's Fernald, Ohio, uranium plant demands disclosure of all human studies
involving uranium and plutonium, as well as information about toxic releases
to the environment, use of atomic workers as experimental subjects, and the
body-snatching program. Rather than release this information to the labor
council, DOE officials contact the AFL-CIO leadership and threaten to close
the plant if labor will not honor its "national security obligations." Frank
Martino, president of the International Chemical workers Union, writes to
Paul Burnsky, president of the AFL-CIO Metal Trades Department, calling for
an end to "continued efforts to represent the community" -- a reference to
the council's attempt to obtain information from the DOE through collective
bargaining. The unions back off on their demand for information and abruptly
terminate my employment. Dr. Egilman is instructed to stop all
radiation-related work. He chooses instead to resign.
Dr. Egilman and I decide that now is the time to take everything we have and
give it to The New York Times. Dr. Egilman gives the Buchenwald memo to
Times reporter Matthew Wald, a college acquaintance. But no article appears
in 1985, and there is no word from the Times. I contact Times reporter
Stuart Diamond, describe the outlines of the story, arrange a meeting,
assemble a stack of documents, and fly to New York. Diamond and I meet at a
restaurant at La Guardia Airport. After reviewing the documents, including
the Buchenwald memo, he says he will come to Ohio and look into the story.
On January 28, 1986, the date of Diamond's intended arrival, I am working at
my desk with the television turned on but the sound off, as I often do. I am
distracted at one point by a striking picture on the TV screen: a beautiful
white plume of smoke unfurling against the azure sky. It is the explosion of
the space shuttle Challenger. Within the hour Diamond calls to say that he
will be investigating the Challenger disaster -- and thus won't becoming to
Ohio any time soon. He tells me to wait until he's done with the Challenger
story. I wait for three months.
On April 26, the number three unit at the Chernobyl nuclear energy station
explodes, and melts down. Diamond leaves to cover the accident. I leave
Cincinnati and head for Kansas City, where, on May 5, Dotte Troxell and I
hold a press conference. We say that U.S. criticism of Soviet secrecy on
Chernobyl is hypocritical and call on the U.S. government to release all
data on human experimentation. In our press release we attack the
credibility of Dr. Saenger -- who has quickly been hired to advise the U.S.
government on Chernobyl's impact on U.S. personnel stationed in Europe and
has become the media's authority on Chernobyl's health effects. Our press
release also details the U.S. human experimentation program "that has, at
various times, included the exposure of prisoners, mental patients, terminal
cancer patients, and paid volunteers to 'non-therapeutic' radiation doses .
. ." Again, we show the Buchenwald memo to the press. The press responds
with silence. A number of us start working our congressional contacts. Cliff
Honicker, Dorothy Legarreta, and I all had a close working relationship with
the House Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power when it had been
under the chairmanship of Representative Richard Ottinger of New York. Near
the end of his tenure, Ottinger had authorized a full-scale staff
investigation into the DOE's human experimentation program.
By 1986 chairmanship of the subcommittee has passed to Edward Markey of
Massachusetts. Eager to see some result of the investigation, we press the
subcommittee to go public inhearings and a report. No hearings are held -- a
curious fact given the magnitude of the issue -- but in October the staff
issues its report. "American Nuclear Guinea Pigs: Three Decades of Radiation
Experiments on U.S. Citizens." Markey simultaneously issues a press release
that states: "The purpose of several experiments was actually to cause
injury to the subjects . . . American citizens thus became nuclear
calibration devices for experimenters run amok."
The Markey report, which contains all the relevant facts that would be
treated as major revelations seven years later, results in minor and often
misleading news stories in several papers. The New York Times's Matthew Wald
extracts a single strand from the ninety-five-page report -- news that some
of the releases of radioactive iodine from the Hanford, Washington, nuclear
facility had been intentional -- and turns it into a story that runs on page
A-20. The other ninety-plus pages of the report, which deal with unethical
clinical experiments, are downplayed in a small, unbylined piece headed
VOLUNTEERS AROUND U.S. SUBMITTED TO RADIATION. Contrary to the Markey report
and to fact, the headline and article imply that all subjects had
volunteered for the experiments and that they knew they were subjected to
radiation. Neither article mentions the Buchenwald memo.
Of all the papers that come to our attention, only The Daily Californian,
the student newspaper at the University of California at Berkeley, points up
the Buchenwald memo. In a piece titled "At Buchenwald and Berkeley,"
editor-in-chief Howard Levine quotes from the November 28, 1950, memo by Dr.
Hamilton and incisively criticizes reporting on the Markey report by the San
Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times. Both papers, he writes,
"minimized the gross inhumanity of these tests by downplaying their scope
and ignoring the fact that most of the experiments were conducted without
the 'informed consent' demanded by the Nuremburg protocols of 1946-47."
1987: Eileen Welsome of The Albuquerque Tribune starts looking into the
plutonium-injection experiment, after coming across a footnote about it in a
report on animal experimentation at the Air Force Weapons Laboratory at
Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico.
1988: Dorothy Legarreta is killed in a mysterious car crash, reminiscent of
the death of Karen Silkwood. Legarreta's briefcase -- listed on the accident
report as being found -- is missing. The tow-truck driver says that the
solid aluminum case was discarded because it was badly damaged,, though such
an action would be against the law. I was working with Legarreta just prior
to herdeath and know that her briefcase contained a file titled "hot
docs" -- formerly secret documents that she and I had culed from government
papers obtained through a class action lawsuit by veterans who had been
intentinoally exposed to atomic blasts and radiation while in the service.
1989: On November 19, The New York Times Magazine publishes an article by
Cliff Honicker titled "The Hidden Files." The subtitle reads: "In 1946, a
Nuclear Accident Killed One Scientist and Injured Several Others. The
Government Response to That Tragedy Established a Pattern of Secrecy That
Still Exists." Based in large part on the files Honicker had discovered five
years earlier, the closely focused article does not deal with the
government's years-long human experimentation program and its origins.
1991: 60 Minutes airs a segment on the government's body-snatching program.
In his introduction to the January13 segment, Harry Reasoner says: "In the
case of the men and women who have worked in this country's nuclear-weapons
industry, the government is apparently wiling to go to any lengths to defeat
workers' claims that they were injured or killed by exposure to radiation --
any lengths, including falsifying records, concealing evidence, even trying
to steal human remains . . ." Oddly, according to the segment's producer,
one of the most powerful interviews -- with a courier who arranges for the
shipment of body parts to Los Alamos and who was present at a secret autopsy
at which body parts were removed without the knowledge or consent of the
family --winds up on the cutting room floor.
Meanhwile, Jackie Kittrell and Cliff Honicker have been combing the hills of
Tennessee, trying to track down women who, while pregnant, had been
unwitting subjects in radioisotope ingestion studies decades earlier. Since
some of the initial recruitment for the experiments had been through
classified ads placed in newspapers in remote Appalachian towns, Jackie and
Cliff try, repeatedly, to get the same papers to run articles describing the
experiments and asking the women to come forward on a confidential basis.
They try to persuade the Nashville Tennessean to run such articles because
one of the largest experiments, involving more than 800 pregnant women, took
place at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville. At least one reporter --
Carolyn Shoulders at The Tennessean -- proposes articles about the
experimentation program to her editors, but no proposal meets with approval.
1992: In May, frustrated by the feeling that we are shouting in the wind,
Dotte Troxell announces that she will begin a hunger strike in July, which
she says she will continue until death unless the government releases all
data on the experiments and provides care for all survivors. She says she
prefers death "on her own terms" to a slow, quiet death preceded by the
intensifying pains of her radiation injuries and she wants to use the hunger
strike to help establish a union called IRIS: International Radiation Injury
Survivors. But, fatigued and under the influence of pain-killing drugs, she
dies in a tractor accident in late-May. She leaves behind the text of an
intended final speech in which she asks to be cremated so that "the
perpetrators of cruel and barbaric experimentation" will be denied "the
knowledge they seek." She also for gives all those in the government, the
public interest community, and the media who continue to "ignore our plight,
for they know not -- they were not on shipboard in the nuclear Pacific tests
or in the trenches in Nevada, nor are they with the veterans in VA hospitals
. . ."
1993: In mid-November, The Albuquerque Tribune publishes EileenWelsome's
three-part series, "The Plutonium Experiment." In late-December, a decade
after Kittrell and Honicker alerted the paper to the story -- The Tennessean
finally publishes an article about the Vanderbilt experiment and its medical
follow-up study.
Emma Craft, who had never known that she had been fed radioactive iron in
the 1940s, reads a detailed description of the 1958 death by cancer of an
unnamed eleven-year-old girl whom she recognizes as her daughter.
1994: Craft, along with a handful of other women who have learned through
The Tennessean that they had been experimental subjects, files a class
action lawsuit against a long list of defendants, led by Vanderbilt
University. (I sign on as a radiation expert with the law firm representing
the women and surviving children.)
Acting as if the recent "revelations" are news to him, John Herrington,
Secretary of Energy in the Reagan administration and now vice-chairman of
the California republican party, tells The Associated Press that during his
tenure "there had not been enough work done to establish that there was a
problem." This is reported without comment or correction.
Jason Gillespie
"Husband of All FBI n NSA Agents" <HusbandOfAll...@America.Com>
wrote in message news:fpgq92$cus$1...@aioe.org...
Human experimentation by American govt was massive, solid and publicly
available but still completely ignored by the media, the american public and
the world.
Why am I not surprised.
> I am among those who persistently tried to get national media coverage of
> this outrageous example of government wrongdoing. To say that the media
> were reluctant to listen would be an understatement. The fact is that, for
> more than a decade, documentation was ignored and facts were misreported.
I thought these cruel experiments and mass murders only happen in muslim
countries and
asian dictatorships like North Korea and China but NOT in democratic free
society
countries with full of freedom and respect for human rights like the great
USA.
> What follows is a chronology of significant events in the strange history
> of this important story -- one that began to receive adequate coverage
> only after almost all the victims were dead and most of the perpetrators
> retired:
US Government is very intelligent or should I say very cunning, deceptive
and manipulative to release the news "AFTER" the victims were dead.
> 1971: The Washington Post reveals that a research team at the University
> of Cincinnati, under the leadership of Eugene Saenger, has been
> irradiating "mentally enfeebled" patients -- all of them poor and most of
> them black --
Inferior colored "BLACKS aka niggers" (in American govt parlance) are the
majority of those victims.
Directly proves American government is OFFICIALLY RACIST.
> at dose rates known to have harmful effects. The aim of the research,
> funded by the Department of Defense: to discover whether and under what
> conditions soldiers on an atomic battlefield would be cognitively
> imparied.
BLACKS in America are nothing but GUINEA PIGS per American Governments
official policy.
Any one noticed how easily vice chairman of california republican party
John Herrington BRUSHED OFF the illegal, secret radiation experimentation
of BLACKS in America ?