Re: HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

["Sandy Perle" <sandyfl@ix.netcom.com>]

>---The questions you raise were not applicable in World War II. Our
elected representatives authorized the draft and the public was
overwhelmingly supportive.<

I don't take exception with this. The public supported the war 
effort. Supporting the overall effort does not correlate with 
supporting "all" actions taken by our elected representatives. Do we 
know who actually authorized these tests? Was this decision delegated 
to the military .. or was it authorized at the highest levels of 
govenment?



>About 100,000 men gave up their lives and
about a million were wounded. Where is the ethical problem? Isn't it
reasonable, while this was going on, to do the plutonium injection
experiments to aid the war effort.<

The draft was a legal and accepted practice. Those who are in the 
military are there with the knowledge that they will be fighting in a 
war, and in war there is death and casualty. That is an accepted 
fact. There is nothing wrong or ethically immoral about sending men 
(or women) to war. They know what the risks are. The plutonium 
injections were needed, so we are told, to learn about the potential 
risks of working with plutonium as part of our national defense. Then 
we are told that there were no risks inherent in this test, to those 
receiving the injections. If we knew that then, what was the purpose 
of the tests? If we know that the conclusion of the tests is that 
there is no harm, then why were the tests conducted?

<There is good reason to believethat there was oral informed consent, 
which was the common practice atthat time. These people were terminally 
ill and the plutonium would do them no harm. I would have jumped at the 
chance to leave the navylanding craft on which I was preparing to participate
 in the invasionof Japan at that time, to come back and participate in the plutonium
injection experiments, even though I wasn't terminally ill.<

There is no positive evidence that there was consent. This is 
speculative and serves no purpose other than to condone a practice 
that many fine offensive. You and many others would have volunteered 
for the tests. That too is the point. You had the opprotunity to 
weigh the risks and make that personal decision ... whether or not 
you wanted to participate. Nobody has the right to decide what 
should be done with your body, mind or soul. That is the whole issue. 
It still has nothing to do with what is desired to be learned or how 
the information will be used, or whether or not there are risks or 
not. It all evolves around with truthfulness and allowing an 
individual to chose oto be or not to be part of an experiment.



Sandy Perle
Director, Technical Operations
ICN Dosimetry Division
Office: (800) 548-5100 Ext. 2306 
Fax: (714) 668-3149

E-Mail: sandyfl@ix.netcom.com