EXPERIMENTS
SECRETLY EXPERIMENTS ON ITS OWN PEOPLE
THE HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS
How scientists secretly used U.S. citizens
as guinea pigs during the Cold War
2001 by Alan R Cantwell Jr., M.D.
In preparing America for nuclear attack during the Cold War years following World War II, thousands of U.S. citizens became the innocent victims of over 4,000 secret and classified radiation experiments conducted by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and other government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Public Health Service (now the CDC), the National Institutes of Health, the Veterans Administration (VA), the CIA, and NASA.
Millions of people were exposed to radioactive fallout from the continental testing of more than 200 atmospheric and underground nuclear weapons, and from the hundreds of secret releases of radiation into the environment. Over 200,000 "atomic vets" who worked closely with nuclear detonations at the Nevada test site during the 1950s and 1960s were especially vulnerable to radiation fallout.
Also affected were the thousands of so-called "downwinders", who lived in nearby small towns in Nevada, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico. These downwinders (along with the animal populations) suffered the worst cumulative radioactive effects of fallout, along with a contaminated environment teeming with radioactive food and farm products. The plight of these poor country people exposed to government-induced radiation sickness has been recorded in Carole Gallagher's remarkable photo-essay American Ground Zero: The Secret Nuclear War (The Free Press, 1993).
In reviewing declassified AEC records (now the Department of Energy) from the 1950s, Gallagher was shocked to discover one document that described the people downwind of the Nevada Test Site as "a low use segment of the population." Her shock at such callous bigotry caused her to eventually move West to research, investigate and document those who lived closest to the Test Site, as well as workers at the site, and soldiers repeatedly exposed to nuclear bombs during the military tests.
Disinformation and Nuclear Fallout
In the nuclear arms race, government doctors and scientists brainwashed the public into believing low dose radiation was not harmful. Some officials even tried to convince people that "a little radiation is good for you." Totally ignored was the knowledge that the radiation from nuclear fallout could lead to an increased risk of cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders, immune system disease, reproductive abnormalities, sterility, birth defects, and genetic mutations which could be passed on from generation to generation. The full extent of this radiation damage to the American public during the Cold War years will never be known.
A secret AEC document, dated 17 April 1947, reveals that physicians were aware of these radiation hazards but simply ignored them. Under the title "Medical Experiments in Humans," the memorandum read: "It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such field work should be classified 'Secret'."
According to Gallagher, many downwinders testified that the Public Health Service officials told them that their 'neurosis' about the fallout was the only thing that would give them cancer, particularly if they were female. Women with severe radiation illness, hair loss, and badly burned skin, were clinically diagnosed in hospitals as "neurotic." Other severely ill women were diagnosed with 'housewife syndrome'." When Gallagher's investigation led her to ask a Department of Energy spokesperson about the AEC/DOE's practice of waiting until the wind blew towards Utah before testing nuclear bombs or venting radiation in order to avoid contaminating Las Vegas or Los Angeles, the unabashed and unconcerned official actually said on tape, "Those people in Utah don't give a shit about radiation."
Secret Radiation Experiments
Only recently, with the forced release of Top Secret documents, have details been revealed about the unethical and inhumane radiation studies conducted during the Cold War years from 1944 to 1974. The initial story broke in November 1993 in a series of articles in the Albuquerque Tribune which identified the names of 18 Americans secretly injected with plutonium, a key ingredient of the atomic bomb and one of the most toxic substances known to man. Some, but not all, of the patients were terminally ill. This horrifying story by journalist Eileen Welsome (who later won a Pulitzer Prize) unleashed a storm of nationwide protest prompting Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary to order the release of secret files and documents pertaining to these Cold War experiments.
The extremely dangerous plutonium experiment was performed under the auspices of the government's Manhattan Project, which brought together a revered group of distinguished scientists to develop and test the atom bomb. The purpose of these secret experiments was to establish occupational standards for workers who would be producing plutonium and other radioactive ingredients for the nuclear energy industry.
Some of the classified government experiments included:
=Exposing more than 100 Alaskan villagers to radioactive iodine during the 1960s
=Feeding 49 retarded and institutionalized teen-agers radioactive iron and calcium in their cereal during the years 1946-1954.
=Exposing about 800 pregnant women in the late 1940s to radioactive iron to determine the effect on the fetus.
=Injecting 7 newborns (six were Black) with radioactive iodine.
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