A US government program secretly injected people with plutonium

[pokerfan]

Over the next five days after the injection, doctors collected any excretions from Cade to see how much plutonium he retained in his body. Other tests were more invasive. His bones weren't set until April 15th, and before they were set samples were cut out of them to see how much plutonium had moved into the bone tissue. Fifteen of his teeth were pulled and sampled for plutonium as well. Ebb Cade was never informed about the reasons for any of this, but he might have had an idea of what was happening to him. According to one account, one morning a nurse opened his door to find he'd fled during the night. He died in 1953, of heart failure. He was the first person to be injected with plutonium in the United States, but not the last.

<...>

Researchers at the University of California also took part in these experiments. In May of 1945 Albert Stevens came in for treatment of his stomach cancer. He was injected with plutonium. After the injection, it was found that the cancer was actually an ulcer. When Stevens thought about moving away, he was offered a stipend to stay in the area, so the lab could continue to test him for radiation, but he was never told about the injection. In April of 1946, Simeon Shaw, a four-year-old boy suffering from bone cancer was the next test subject. His parents, who had brought him from Australia for treatment in the United States, were told that the injection, and a subsequent removal of some bone tissue, was part of his cancer treatment. When he got sicker, his parents brought him back to Australia, where he died. It wasn't until thirty years later that they found out what their son was actually injected with.

http://io9.com/5883962/a-us-government-program-secretly-injected-people-with-plutonium

[Fumesucker]

1. That was freedom plutonium..

You know, the good kind.

The kind we made back in the good old days when we were free.

[Lionel Mandrake]

2. What kind of country do we live in?

Last edited Fri Feb 10, 2012, 10:03 PM - Edit history (1)

Doctors didn't tell patients shit before about 1970. That might explain, in part, how such experiments were at all possible. But I still can't imagine what went through the minds of the doctors who were involved in these experiments. It certainly wasn't the part of the Hippocratic oath which states: "I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone."

Here is a more authoritative source:

http://www.hss.doe.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/experiments/index.html

(edited to correct a spelling error)

[HeiressofBickworth]

3. When I was born (1945)

I had a large strawberry birth mark on the top of my head. As I grew up, I was told it was burned off with radiation. As an adult, when I discussed this risk factor with my doctor, he said that it was never done on the West Coast. I lived in Indiana at the time the procedure was done.

This exposure elevates my risk not only of a brain tumor but of thyroid cancer. Knock on wood, nothing has happened to me at this point. But it's a factor mentioned in every annual physical. I was not part of any study and it was not "experimental" but was a decision made by a physician that it was an appropriate treatment for the birth mark. Even doctors didn't know at the time what the long-term risk of radiation exposure was.

So, when my sister was born in 1955, she also had a strawberry birth mark on her head. It was left alone and by age 5, it was gone of it's own accord. At least she escaped the exposure of radiation.

[Matariki]

4. Kind of makes you sympathetic to the anti-vaccine people.

[xfundy]

5. So Doktor Mengele (sp) survived after all.