The Plutonium Files
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| 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]
Overview
[edit]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 Joseph Gilbert Hamilton.
Subjects
[edit]The following table lists subjects of the experiments by their subject names.[7] 17 out of 18 have been identified in The Plutonium Files.
| Patient number and biographical information at time of injection | Name | Date injected | Date of death | Survival time | Age at death | Cause of death | Weight of injected Pu-239 (microgram) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HP-12, 55-year-old man | Ebb Cade | 1945 | 1953 | 8 years | 63 | Heart failure | 4.7 |
| CHI-1, 68-year-old man | Arthur Hubbard | 1945 | 1945 | 5 months | 68 | Cancer of chin, lungs | 6.5 |
| CAL-1, 58-year-old man | Albert Stevens | 1945 | 1966 | 20.7 years | 79 | Heart disease | 0.75 + 0.2 (Pu-238) |
| HP-1, 67-year-old man | Amedio Lovecchio | 1945 | 1960 | 14.2 years | 81 | Bronchopneumonia | 4.6 |
| HP-2, 48-year-old man | William Purcell | 1945 | 1948 | 2.4 years | 50 | Brain disease | 5.1 |
| HP-3, 48-year-old woman | Eda Schultz Charlton | 1945 | 1983 | 37.2 years | 85 | Acute cardiac arrest | 4.9 |
| HP-4, 18-year-old woman | Jean Daigneault | 1945 | 1947 | 1.4 years | 20 | Cushing's syndrome | 4.9 |
| HP-5, 56-year-old man | Paul Galinger | 1945 | 1946 | 5 months | 57 | Bronchopneumonia | 5.1 |
| CHI-2, 56-year-old woman | Una Macke | 1945 | 1946 | 17 days | 56 | Breast cancer | 94.9 |
| CHI-3, Young adult male | Unknown | 1945 | 1946 | 6 months | Unknown | Likely Hodgkin's Disease | 94.9 |
| HP-6, 44-year-old man | John Mousso | 1946 | 1984 | 38 years | 82 | Natural death | 5.3 |
| HP-7, 59-year-old woman | Edna Bartholf | 1946 | 1946 | 9 months | 60 | Pulmonary failure | 6.3 |
| HP-11, 69-year-old man | Harry Slack | 1946 | 1946 | 6 days | 69 | Bronchopneumonia | 6.5 |
| HP-8, 41-year-old woman | Janet Stadt | 1946 | 1975 | 29.7 years | 71 | Unknown | 6.5 |
| HP-9, 64-year-old man | Fred Sours | 1946 | 1947 | 1.2 years | 65 | Bronchopneumonia | 6.3 |
| CAL-2, 4-year, 10-month old boy | Simeon Shaw | 1946 | 1947 | 8 months | 5 | Bone cancer | 2.7 + radio-cerium and yttrium |
| HP-10, 52-year-old man | Daniel Nelson | 1946 | 1957 | 10.9 years | 63 | Heart disease | 6.1 |
| CAL-3, 36-year-old man | Elmer Allen | 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]
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. Following the report, Clinton declared that the experiments, "failed both the test of our national values and the test of humanity". Two hours afterward, the verdict in the O.J. Simpson case was issued, and much of the media's attention was directed elsewhere.[3]
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.[8]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ↑ Book review, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 341:1941–1942, December 16, 1999. doi:10.1056/NEJM199912163412519.
- ↑ Book Review, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 76, Number 3, Fall 2002, pp. 637–638.
- 1 2 3 4 Longworth, R. C. (1999). "Injected!". The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 55 (6): 58–61. Archived from the original on 2020-03-10. Retrieved 2026-08-11.
- ↑ Moss, William, and Roger Eckhardt. (1995). "The human plutonium injection experiments." Los Alamos Science. 23: 177-233.
- ↑ DOE Openness (June 1998). Human Radiation Experiments: ACHRE Report. "Chapter 5: The Manhattan district Experiments: the first injection". Washington, D.C. Superintendent of Documents US Government Printing Office.
- ↑ AEC no. UR-38, 1948 Quarterly Technical Report
- ↑ "Human Plutonium Injection Experiments". large.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
- ↑ Michael Flynn (November 1999). "The volunteers who didn't". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 55 (6): 61–62. Bibcode:1999BuAtS..55f..61F. doi:10.2968/055006017.
