Re: HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Sat, 23 Nov 1996, Sandy Perle wrote:

> >---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?

It was authorized by the group guiding the radiation health issues for the
Manhattan Project. No one has claimed that there was anything illegal
about the plutonium injections -- they were carried out in keeping with
generally accepted practice at that time. The only reaon for raising the
issue now is the political capital from playing on the public's fear of
radiation.

 > >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.

--On any particular military mission, they did not know what the risks
were, so there was no informed consent. And there was no consent involved
in them being in the army.

 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?

--The purpose of the tests was to determine how the human body metabolizes
plutonium; e.g. how to interpret urine and fecal analyses. The reason
there was no harm expected to the injectees is  (1) the amounts injected
were generally quite small and (2) the injectees were terminally ill and
not expected to live more than the 10 years required for cancers to
develop.

 > 
> <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.

-- The positive evidence is that when the matter was investigated in the
early 1970s, the colleagues of the doctor who did the injections (he had
died) said that they knew his practices very well and were very confident
that he had obtained the oral informed consent in accordance with normal
procedures at that time. He could not have told them about it because
everything about plutonium was top secret at that time. 

 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.

--If you think your statement here applies to those drafted into the army,
you don't understand the draft or the army.

 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.
> 

--In what sense were draftees allowed to choose?

> 
> 
> Sandy Perle
> Director, Technical Operations
> ICN Dosimetry Division
> Office: (800) 548-5100 Ext. 2306 
> Fax: (714) 668-3149
> 
> E-Mail: sandyfl@ix.netcom.com    
>