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         MindNet Journal - Vol. 1, No. 10
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         V E R I C O M M / MindNet         "Quid veritas est?"
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    Notes:

    Permission is given to reproduce and redistribute, for
    non-commercial purposes only, provided this information and the
    copy remain intact and unedited.

    The views and opinions expressed below are not necessarily the
    views and opinions of VERICOMM, MindNet, or the editors unless
    otherwise noted.

    Editor: Mike Coyle

    Contributing Editors: Walter Bowart
                          Harlan Girard

    Assistant Editor: Rick Lawler

    Editor's Note:

    The following information was presented to the Advisory
    Committee On Human Radiation Experiments, 1994.

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    Human Plutonium Injection Experiments

    The Manhattan Project and Plutonium Health Hazards Discovered in
    1941 by Glenn Seaborg and others at Berkeley, plutonium supported
    nuclear fission, a process that split atoms and released
    tremendous energy. Plutonium became an urgently needed material
    for one variety of atomic bomb; uranium-235, the fissionable
    isotope of natural uranium, was used in the other bomb type.

    The first appreciable quantities of plutonium became available by
    January 1944. At that time, Seaborg warned of its potential
    health hazards and suggested immediate studies to learn its
    biological behavior. This was a critical issue: the longer the
    material stayed in the body, the more damage it could do.
    Hundreds of workers would soon be exposed to plutonium, and
    exposure standards were necessary. Overexposure would not only
    hurt workers; it could compromise secrecy and disrupt production
    schedules.

    About 10 percent of the plutonium supply was allocated for animal
    studies in January 1944. By the summer of that year, those
    studies provided enough information about plutonium retention to
    justify removal of several Los Alamos workers with high previous
    exposures from further work with the material. Los Alamos had
    already had several accidental human exposures to plutonium, and
    the imminent prospect of working with far larger quantities
    increased the desire for even more metabolic information.

    The early animal studies showed that different species excreted
    known amounts of plutonium at different rates. This meant that
    there was no accurate way to correlate animal excretion data to
    humans. As a result, sentiment grew among project medical staff
    to administer known amounts of plutonium to humans to derive
    precise excretion data. However, it was not until the winter of
    1944 that Los Alamos Health Group personnel developed methods to
    detect tracer-level concentrations of plutonium in excreta. In
    February 1945, this group, headed by Louis Hempelmann and
    supervised by Wright Langham, used the procedure to monitor
    workers for accidental plutonium uptake.

    With a proven method to detect small amounts of plutonium in
    excreta, Los Alamos personnel met on March 23, 1945, with Robert
    Oppenheimer and Colonel Hymer Friedell of the Manhattan Engineer
    District (MED) to discuss "the medical problems of this project
    and their relationship to the Medical Research Program of the
    Manhattan District." In a memorandum written three days after the
    meeting, Louis Hempelmann stated that the Manhattan Project was
    asked to consider "that a hospital patient at either Rochester or
    Chicago be chosen for injection from 1 to 10 micrograms of
    material [plutonium] and that the excreta be sent to this
    laboratory for analysis." The Manhattan District was also asked
    to help make arrangements for this "human tracer experiment."
    Such arrangements were made, and an MED medical officer
    administered the first human plutonium injection on April 10,
    1945, at the Oak Ridge Hospital.

    The Experiments, Part 1

    How all the injections were coordinated or even if they were
    coordinated is unclear. Following the Oak Ridge test, injections
    were given at the Billings Hospital at the University of Chicago
    on April 26, 1945, and at the University of California Hospital
    in San Francisco on May 14, 1945. By late June, Manhattan Project
    contractors at the University of Rochester's Strong Memorial
    Hospital developed a detailed plan for "rapid (1 year) Completion
    of Human Tracer Studies." These studies were to include
    plutonium, uranium, polonium, and radioactive lead.

    Over the next several months this plan was revised, and on
    September 18, 1945, Wright Langham sent the most recent version
    to Colonel Stafford Warren, Chief of the Manhattan District
    Medical Section, noting that "you and Col. Friedell, will of
    course, have final say as to whether or not the experiment goes
    through in accordance with this plan." The Rochester plutonium
    experiment protocol called for 10 subjects to be admitted to the
    Strong Memorial Hospital metabolism ward in groups of four per
    month for the first two months and two for the third month.

    After injection, samples of blood, urine, and feces were to be
    shipped to Langham at Los Alamos for analysis. Documents show
    that, from October 1945 to July 1946, Rochester injected 11
    patients. One of the later patients (designated as HP 11) died of
    pneumonia and other preexisting ailments 6 days after his
    February 20 injection. Samuel Bassett at Rochester described this
    as an "acute experiment" that did not involve collection of
    excreta, but that did yield organs and other autopsy material
    that was sent to Los Alamos for study.

    When notified of HP 11, Langham told Bassett, "If you should
    decide to do another terminal case, I suggest you use 50
    micrograms [of plutonium] instead of 5. This would permit the
    analysis of much smaller samples and make my work considerably
    easier." Langham also stated, "I have just received word that
    Chicago is performing two terminal experiments using 95
    micrograms each. I feel reasonably certain there would be no harm
    in using larger amounts of material if you are sure the case is a
    terminal one."

    The two Chicago experiments took place at Billings Hospital on
    December 27, 1945. Both subjects died of preexisting ailments
    shortly after injections of 94.91 micrograms of plutonium.

    Experimental protocols exist for the Rochester studies. Langham
    and others who directed the research also described in broad
    terms how subjects were to be selected. Generally, the choice
    fell on older individuals (13 of whom were 45 or older) with
    limited life expectancy. (Ten of the 16 who were tracked died
    within 10 years.) Four subjects did, however, live more than 20
    years after the experiments.

    Although several research reports by others appeared earlier,
    Langham and several colleagues at Los Alamos compiled the most
    substantial account of the plutonium injection experiments. They
    based their conclusions chiefly on the Rochester study. Issued as
    Los Alamos report LA 1151 in September 1950, Distribution and
    Excretion of Plutonium Administered Intravenously to Man
    described the experiments, tabulated the data on plutonium
    metabolism, and derived an empirical formula for calculating
    retained plutonium from urinalysis. Although LA 1151 itself
    remained restricted until 1980, information about the plutonium
    studies made its way into the scientific literature shortly after
    the injections took place.

    The Experiments, Part 2

    During the early 1970s, Patricia W. Durbin, a biophysicist at the
    Lawrence Radiation Laboratory, reevaluated Langham's plutonium
    excretion data. One reason Durbin could improve on Langham's
    results was the unexpected availability of data from long-term
    survivors. During her research, she learned that one subject had
    lived for 20 years after being injected. Painstaking detective
    work revealed that four other subjects were also still alive in
    the early 1970s. With the AEC's approval, support from the Center
    for Human Radiobiology at Argonne National Laboratory, and
    cooperation from the University of Rochester's Strong Memorial
    Hospital, three of the four survivors were reexamined in 1973.
    Researchers gathered and promptly published new data on long-term
    patterns of plutonium retention and excretion. Efforts to find
    and study these surviving subjects ultimately triggered
    controversy. In the time since the work had been done, the
    Government had adopted requirements mandating that subjects give
    informed consent as a condition of research. Questions arose
    whether the plutonium subjects provided consent for the original
    experiments or for the 1973 follow-up examinations. The ensuing
    investigation resulted in two internal AEC reports issued in
    August 1974. Both concluded that only one subject may have
    provided any kind of consent. The other 17 participated with
    little verifiable knowledge of the experiment or its risks.
    Moreover, the reports found that the 1973 follow-up studies were
    also not done with informed consent from the subjects. The three
    subjects were not told they had been injected with plutonium for
    experimental purposes, nor why they had been asked to return to
    the hospital.

    Although the AEC did not publicly release these reports, the
    agency's successor, the Energy Research and Development
    Administration, issued a fact sheet on the matter in 1976. This
    issuance provided details on the experiments and briefly
    discussed results from the 1974 AEC inquiry on informed consent.

    The Plutonium Experiments and the Public

    Publications based on the plutonium studies began to appear in
    the medical literature as early as 1948. In several articles
    during the 1950s and early 1960s, Langham explained the technique
    for measuring excreted plutonium and referred to the validating
    research on plutonium metabolism in humans. Some information,
    however, remained classified for a number of years afterward.

    The public first learned about experiments in 1976, after ERDA
    issued the fact sheet noted above. Several newspapers carried
    stories emphasizing the absence of informed consent and raising
    questions about medical ethics, but the issue seemed to arouse
    little public concern. Ten years later, a congressional committee
    issued a report that criticized the plutonium injections and
    about 30 other Federal human radiation experiments. Commonly
    known as the Markey report after subcommittee chairman Edward J.
    Markey (D-Mass.), this document again stimulated only limited
    media attention at the time.

    What the scientific literature and other information about the
    experiments did not provide was the names of the subjects or
    their personal stories. This approach was pursued by Eileen
    Welsome of the Albuquerque Tribune, who in November 1993,
    published a series on the experiments and its subjects. The
    author had hunted through government reports, scientific
    journals, and newspaper files to piece together facts about the
    experiments, including the names and other personal details of
    several subjects.

    At a December 1993 press conference, Secretary of Energy Hazel
    R. O'Leary discussed the plutonium experiments in conjunction
    with releasing much formerly classified information on a variety
    of subjects. As part of a new policy of openness, she also
    committed the Department to revealing the full scope and details
    of human radiation experiments done by the agency and its
    predecessors. The story of the experiments received extensive
    national attention and led to public demands that the Federal
    government make full disclosure on the topics.

    One year after the Secretary's commitment, the Department has
    found, declassified, and made available much documentation
    relating to the plutonium injections and other human radiation
    experiments. Now under investigation by the Advisory Committee
    on Human Radiation Experiments and others, this information will
    provide the basis for a comprehensive ethical analysis of these
    studies.

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