Humans Used for Radiation Experiments: A Shameful Chapter in US History
[link to www.citywatchla.com]

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The program employed industry and academic scientists who used their hapless patients or wards to see the immediate and short-term effects of radioactive contamination — with everything from plutonium to radioactive arsenic. The human subjects were mostly poisoned without their knowledge or consent.

In one Vanderbilt University study, 829 pregnant women were unknowingly fed radioactive iron. In another, 188 children were given radioactive iron-laced lemonade. Detailed by a 1986 report of the Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power, from 1963 to 1971, 67 inmates in Oregon and 64 prisoners in Washington had their testicles targeted with X-rays to see what doses made them sterile.

At the Fernald State School, mentally retarded boys were fed radioactive iron and calcium but consent forms sent to parents didn’t mention radiation. A 1994 Minneapolis StarTribune report, “48 more human radiation experiments revealed,” noted psychiatric patients and infants were injected with radioactive iodine.

Scientists knew from the beginning of the 20th century that radiation could cause genetic and cell damage, cell death, radiation sickness and even death. A Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was established in 1993 to investigate charges of unethical or criminal action by the experimenters. Its findings were published by Oxford University Press in 1996 as The Human Radiation Experiments.