The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold WarWhen the vast wartime factories of the Manhattan Project began producing plutonium in quantities never before seen on earth, scientists working on the top-secret bomb-building program grew apprehensive. Fearful that plutonium might cause a cancer epidemic among workers and desperate to learn more about what it could do to the human body, the Manhattan Project's medical doctors embarked upon an experiment in which eighteen unsuspecting patients in hospital wards throughout the country were secretly injected with the cancer-causing substance. Most of these patients would go to their graves without ever knowing what had been done to them. Now, in The Plutonium Files, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Eileen Welsome reveals for the first time the breadth of the extraordinary fifty-year cover-up surrounding the plutonium injections, as well as the deceitful nature of thousands of other experiments conducted on American citizens in the postwar years. Welsome's remarkable investigation spans the 1930s to the 1990s and draws upon hundreds of newly declassified documents and other primary sources to disclose this shadowy chapter in American history. She gives a voice to such innocents as Helen Hutchison, a young woman who entered a prenatal clinic in Nashville for a routine checkup and was instead given a radioactive "cocktail" to drink; Gordon Shattuck, one of several boys at a state school for the developmentally disabled in Massachusetts who was fed radioactive oatmeal for breakfast; and Maude Jacobs, a Cincinnati woman suffering from cancer and subjected to an experimental radiation treatment designed to help military planners learn how to win a nuclear war. Welsome also tells thestories of the scientists themselves, many of whom learned the ways of secrecy on the Manhattan Project. Among them are Stafford Warren, a grand figure whose bravado masked a cunning intelligence; Joseph Hamilton, who felt he was immune to the dangers of radiation only to suffer later from a fatal leukemia; and physician Louis Hempelmann, one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the plan to inject humans with potentially carcinogenic doses of plutonium. Hidden discussions of fifty years past are reconstructed here, wherein trusted government officials debated the ethical and legal implications of the experiments, demolishing forever the argument that these studies took place in a less enlightened era. Powered by her groundbreaking reportage and singular narrative gifts, Eileen Welsome has created a work of profound humanity as well as major historical significance. |
Contents
Prologue | 1 |
THE PRODUCT | 13 |
The Acid Taste of Plutonium | 15 |
Copyright | |
50 other sections not shown
Other editions - View all
The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War Eileen Welsome Limited preview - 2010 |
The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War Eileen Welsome No preview available - 2010 |
The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War Eileen Welsome No preview available - 1999 |
Common terms and phrases
accident ACHRE Air Force Alamos April atomic bomb Atomic Energy Commission Bassett began Berkeley cancer Chicago Cincinnati clinic cloud Committee Cooney detonation doctors documents doses Durbin effects Elmer experimental exposed fallout Gerstner Ground Zero Groves hazards Hazel O'Leary hospital Human Radiation Experiments Hymer Friedell Ibid injected with plutonium interview irradiation Joseph Hamilton laboratory LANL later lawsuits Leslie Groves Los Alamos Louis Hempelmann Manhattan Project memo ment military months neutrons Nevada Nevada Test Site nuclear weapons O'Leary Oak Ridge officials Operation Operation Crossroads Oppenheimer Pacific Proving Ground patients Paulsen physician plutonium plutonium experiment plutonium injections radioactive radioactive iron radioactive materials radioisotopes radium rads received records Robert Oppenheimer Robert Stone Rochester roentgens Saenger samples scientists Shields Warren Stafford Warren tests tion told total body total-body irradiation treatment University uranium urine Wright Langham wrote