Reply #18: Your BFEE at Work -- They're Mean to Grown-Ups, too. [View All]

[Octafish]

It's strange how these people believe other people are less than human. It's also weird how they forget that people, inside, are really children. That's what Jesus said...

DUCK AND COVER(UP): U.S. RADIATION TESTING ON HUMANS

by Tod Ensign and Glenn Alcalay

If you have any lingering thoughts that the government's failure to disclose radiation experimentation on humans was driven by misguided national security concerns, throw them in the nearest nuclear waste dump. At least some officials knew what they were doing was unconscionable and were ducking the consequences and covering their tails. A recently leaked Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) document lays out in the most bare-knuckled manner the policy of coverup. It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such work field should be classified `secret,' wrote Colonel O.G. Haywood of the AEC. *1 This letter confirms a policy of complete secrecy where human radiation experiments were concerned.

The Haywood letter may help explain a recently discovered 1953 Pentagon document, declassified in 1975. The two-page order from the secretary of defense ostensibly brought U.S. guidelines for human experimentation. in line with the Nuremberg Code, making adherence to a universal standard official U.S. policy. Ironically, however, the Pentagon document was classified and thus was probably not seen by many military researchers until its declassification in 1975.2

As these and a steady stream of similar reports confirm, for decades, the U.S. government had not only used human guinea pigs in radiation experiments, but had also followed a policy of deliberate deception and cover up of its misuse of both civilians and military personnel in nuclear weapons development and radiation research. While the Department of Energy (DoE) has made some belated moves toward greater openness, there are clear indications that other federal agencies and the White House have not yet deviated from the time-honored tradition of deceit and self-serving secrecy.

SNIP...

* In 1945, Albert Stevens, a 58-year old California house painter suffering from a huge stomach ulcer, was injected with doses of plutonium 238 and 239 equivalent to 446 times the average lifetime exposure. *12 Doctors recommended an operation and told his children he had only six months to live. For the next year, scientists collected plutonium-laden urine and fecal samples from Stevens and used that data in a classified scientific report, A Comparison of the Metabolism of Plutonium in Man and the Rat. There is little doubt scientists knew of the danger: The problem of chronic plutonium poisoning is a matter of serious concern for those who come in contact with this material, the report concluded.13 AEC officials in 1947 refused to release the information because it contains material, which in the opinion of the , might adversely affect the national interest. 14

CONTINUED...

http://www.netti.fi/~makako/mind/radiatio.htm