Re: HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

["Frank "Free Spirit" Borger" <frank@rover.bsd.uchicago.edu>]

> Apples and oranges isn't it?  Drafting people into the armed services for
> purposes of national defense is a "little" different from taking advantage
> of a patient's trust to administer un-needed agents for purposes of
> scientific inquiry.
> Keith Welch
	I have to say something. There are two basic questions involved.

	1/ Was there or was there not informed consent?

	2/  What were the relative risks/benifits.

	1) Informed consent is still not always followed. 

	My kids' pediatrician occasionally has residents help him in
	examinations, etc. He is scrupulous about making sure I know
	they are students.  Conversly, some time ago I ended  up in an
                   emergency room with a bad Asthma reaction. During the routine 
	exam, I was told, "Dr so-and-so HAS to give you a digital rectal
	exam." If I wasn't flat on my back I would have told that MD where
	his Resident could stick it!  (Yea, I hope all the hoopla over prostate
	finally boils over someday...)

	2) Although informed consent was the exception rather than  the
	rule in the past,  the possible gains were significant whereas the
	relative risks were miniscule  in the case of most experiments.

	3/ The only whole-sale experiments  I can think of, (and the
	government seems  to forget about,) were the tests to see what
	it would be like for ground troops to be deployed very near
	a Tactical Nuclear explosion, just to test their fighting ability.

Frank R. Borger - Physicist - Center for Radiation Therapy
net: Frank@rover.uchicago.edu   ph: 312-791-8075 fa: 791-3697

"If there is only one plane left  to make a final run-in, I
want that man to go in and get a hit." - LCDR John C. Waldron,
CO USS Hornet's Torpedo Squadron 8. at the battle of Midway