Re: HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

[Schoenhofer <schoenho@via.at>]

At 15:52 20.11.1996 -0600, you wrote:
>	Yesterday there was a report that the U.S. government will pay $4.8 
>million in compensation for injecting eleven individuals with plutonium and 
>one individual with uranium without their knowledge as a part of a Cold War
>-era radiation experiment.  This news was reported in today's Tulsa World 
>under the headline "U.S. to Pay Human Guinea Pigs."  
>====================================

=====================================>	
>	We learn from yesterday's practices, but we must not allow the 
>human radiation experiments to be cast as some unique evil.  The Report 
>clearly shows this not to be the case.  As scientists, we must make sure 
>that the story is told accurately.  
>
>
>David Gooden, Ph.D., J.D. 
>Director, Biomedical Physics 
>Saint Francis Hospital 
>Tulsa, OK  74136 
>(918) 494-1444 
>FAX  (918) 494-1452 
>
>
=====================================================================

David,

I am quite sure without having read the report that your statements as to
the question of injury are correct. I agree, that the human radiation
experiments were not unique evil. But I believe that any - really any -
medical experiments, which are secret and without the consent of the patient
are evil. I cannot believe that the legal aspects on that are different in
the USA or were different. Therefore the experiments must have been illegal
- as well as feeding any medicine experimentally to a person without its
consent. This is in my opinion the point which is not correct. That
experiments on humans might have been done illegally in many other cases,
not using radioactive material, is no excuse. 

We had a case many years ago in Austria, where a professor at a childrens
hospital adminstered Ca-45 to small children to study the metabolism. The
parents were not informed or non-German speaking parents were asked to sign
a paper in German, which they could not read of course. There was a lawsuit,
but since it is so long ago, I do not remember the outcome. 

Franz
Schoenhofer
Habichergasse 31/7
A-1160 WIEN
AUSTRIA/EUROPE
Tel./Fax:	+43-1-4955308
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e-mail:		schoenho@via.at