Report: Humans In Secret Radioactive Tests- Drank, Inhaled or Were Injected Radioactivity

[Jcrowley]

Humans in secret radioactive tests
By Rob Edwards, Environment Editor

Official documents reveal volunteers drank and inhaled infected material to assess contamination risks


DOZENS OF people drank, inhaled or were injected with radioactivity as part of a series of secret experiments carried out by the nuclear industry in the 1960s, according to official documents passed to the Sunday Herald. Tests exposing humans to radioactive caesium, iodine, strontium and uranium were conducted despite doubts about their legal and ethical implications. One proposal even envisaged injecting plutonium into elderly people to help assess contamination risks.

The new evidence could form part of the government inquiry launched last week into the industry's shady past. The trade and industry secretary, Alistair Darling, appointed Michael Redfern QC to investigate concerns that body tissue from dead nuclear workers had been removed for tests without the consent of relatives.

Tissue from organs and bones were taken from 65 deceased workers at Sellafield in Cumbria and other nuclear plants between 1962 and 1991. They were sampled for radioactive contamination to help improve understanding of the health risks.

Now documents from the National Archives in London have shed new light on other scandals involving the nuclear industry. A memo from the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) in August 1965 summarised a series of "experiments involving exposure of volunteers to radiation". It said 10 volunteers from Harwell in Oxfordshire drank a liquid containing caesium-132 and caesium-134 in November 1962. Two volunteers from Sellafield, then known as Windscale, also ingested some strontium 90 to investigate "uptake by the gut".

http://www.sundayherald.com/news/heraldnews/display.var.1346632.0.humans_in_secret_radioactive_tests.php

[jwirr]

1. Are these experiments the ones that include the radiation tests on

mentally retarded inmates of some Massachusetts institutions? I think they put some radiation into the oatmeal for their breakfasts? I don't know about the rest of you but if I have to do things like this to survive then I do not want to survive. I will not ask a vulnerable person to put their life on the line for me.

Unfortunately *ss and co. and their ilk seem to thrive on this kind of survival. Hurry, feed the virgins into the volcano.

[Jcrowley]

2. No

these were in Britain. The parallels are harrowing.

As to those you speak of Eileen Wilsome wrote an award-winning 5 part series on that in the 90's for a paper in Albuquerque that became the basis for her book "The Plutonium Files." Clinton came out with some big apology and that story was really starting to gain steam and then it was swallowed by the OJ trial.

The investigation in the UK is expanding and ongoing.

Here's an interview with Eileen from the Dem Now! archives:
n a Massachusetts school, seventy-three disabled children were spoon-fed oatmeal laced with radioactive isotopes.

In an upstate New York hospital, an eighteen-year-old woman believing she was being treated for a pituitary disorder, was injected with plutonium.

At a Tennessee clinic, 829 pregnant women were served "vitamin cocktails" containing radioactive iron, as part of their regular treatment.

No these are not acts of terrorism by common criminals.

These are just some of the secret human radiation experiments that the U.S. government conducted on unsuspecting Americans for decades as part of its atom bomb program.

In a gruesome plot that spanned 30 years, doctors and scientists working with the US atomic weapons program, exposed thousands of unwilling and unknowing Americans to radiation poisoning to study its effects.

For years, the experiments by the U.S. government and the identities of their human guinea pigs were covered up. Then after a six-year investigation, investigative reporter Eileen Welsome uncovered the names of 18 people who were injected with plutonium in the 1940s without their knowledge by federal government scientists. In 1993, she published her finding in The Albuquerque Tribune and later received the Pulitzer Prize for her work.

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/05/1357230&mode=thread&tid=25

Audio and video at above link, transcript as well.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. Did you ever wonder what happened to all the German scientists that

were absorbed by the U.S.? Or is that a myth?

[pitohui]

4. it is not a myth, many went to work for NASA EOM

,

[jwirr]

5. It was no myth. Although it is possible that we do not know exactly

how many of them there were and how many other professionals also. Most of them are probably dead now but how many of their children still see themselves as the master race?

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. I think their descendants all settled down on my street.

[DKRC]

9. You live on Pennsylvania Ave?

:evilgrin:

[Jcrowley]

6. It's not a myth

There is a fair amount of documentation about Operation Paperclip but less information about the numerous other ex-Nazis that entered into the US governmental bureaucracy at various positions.

Among others I've heard Kevin Phillips, not exactly your radical lefty, and John Buchanan touch upon this.

Also brought to the US were Belarusian Nazis:
http://www.geocities.com/dudar2000/Bcc.htm

[PDJane]

8. No, it's not a myth.

Nor is it a myth that Bush's grandfather, Prescott, was highly regarded by the Nazi apparatus, helped to build Aushwitz, and laundered money for Farben.

Nor is it a myth that the justification for Nazi "cleansing" policies was given to Hitler by American eugenics believers.

Klaus Barbie was used by the US (and shuffled off to South America when they finished with him). He was finally extradited to France, and died in prison. General Rheinhard Gehlen served as Adolf Hitler's top anti-Soviet spy. During World War II, Gehlen oversaw all German military-intelligence operations in Eastern Europe and the USSR. After the war, he was recruited as a CIA asset. However, Gehlen's habit of employing compromised ex-Nazis - and the CIA's willingness to sanction this practice - enabled the USSR to penetrate West Germany's secret service by blackmailing numerous agents. (more at http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA/Gehlen_Org.html).

Otto von Bolschwing, who as an SS officer served on Adolf Eichmann's staff and was one of the chief masterminds behind the plan to exterminate the Jews, was finally stripped of his citizenship, but died in a California nursing home of a degenerative brain disease.

Operation Paperclip had the U.S. secretly bringing over hundreds of Nazi scientists to work in American military and industrial labs. Werner von Braun was probably the most famous of these; Wilhem Eitel is another. These men had their records whitewashed by the CIA.

It's a pretty sad and shameful period, and there are direct ties to the current and previous administrations.

[kickysnana]

10. Entomologists etc at U of MN

Worked as a church secretary in a small church near the St Paul campus in the mid 1980'sand many of the former German scientiests belonged to the church. Took me by surprise. Very conservative bunch.

[The Backlash Cometh]

12. It's funny how some people use religion to justify their staunch,

excessive, and sometimes, inhumane beliefs.

Makes you wonder if we would be more capable of spotting evil people easier if they weren't so conveniently hiding behind the cross.

[kickysnana]

11. Heard about the tissue samples first hand

Child of a former nuclear worker was notified his father had passed away suddenly in Wisconsin and By the time they could get there the Dad had been autopsied by "the Feds." Couldn't get any answers and was as quite bitter that they could do that.

[Jcrowley]

13. Kicking