A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People (24 page)

When another experiment was proposed for Operation Tumbler-Snapper, the 1952 Nevada tests, the AEC sought a “release of AEC responsibility “on grounds that “there is a possibility that permanent eye damage may result.” It is not clear how the military responded, but the experiment proceeded. Twelve subjects witnessed the detonation from a darkened trailer about sixteen kilometers from the point of detonation. Each of the human “observers” placed his face in a hood; half wore protective goggles, while the other half had both eyes exposed. A fraction of a second before the explosion, a shutter opened exposed the left eye to the flash. Two subjects incurred retinal burns; at which point the project for that test series was terminated. The final report recorded that both subjects had
“completely recovered.’

At the 1953 tests, the Department of Defense engaged in further flashblindness study. During this experiment “twelve subjects in a light-tight trailer were exposed to five nuclear detonation flashes at distances of from 7 to 14 miles.” There is no documentation showing whether subsequent flash blindness experiments, which followed upon the issuance of the secretary of defense’s 1953 memorandum, required informed and written consent.
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Recently recovered documents show that upon a 1954 review of a report showing the injuries at the 1952 experiment, AFSWP medical staff immediately declared, “A definite need exists for guidance in the use of human volunteers as experimental subjects.” Further inquiry revealed that a Top Secret policy on the subject existed. That policy detailed “very definite and specific step “that had to be taken before volunteers could be used in human experimentation. But the AFSWP wrote, “No serious attempt has been made to disseminate the information to those experimenters who had a definite need-to-know.”

In early 1954, the Air Force’s School of Aviation Medicine reported that animal studies and injuries at bomb tests (to non-experimental participants) had shown that potential for eye damage was substantially worse than had been understood. Studies of flashblindness with humans continued in both field and laboratory tests through the 1960s and into the 1970s. These experiments tested prototype versions of eye protection equipment and the results were used to recommend requirements for eye protection for those exposed to atomic explosions.

Research on Protective Clothing

Following the first Desert Rock exercise with flashblindness subjects, the government conducted the first in a series of “atomic exercises.”
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This exercise was designed primarily to train and indoctrinate troops in the fighting of atomic wars. The exercise also provided an opportunity for psychological and physiological testing of the effects of the experience on the troops.

Operation Jangle detonated two nuclear weapons, one on the surface and one buried seventeen feet underground. The two Jangle shots were tests where the weapon’s fireball touched the ground. When a nuclear weapon’s fireball touches the ground, it creates much more local fallout than an explosion that bursts in the air. Consequently, these tests posed potential hazard to civilians who lived near the test site and to test observers and participants.

Two weeks before Jangle, the DOD requested an additional 500 observers at each of the Jangle shots to acclimate the troops to nuclear weapons. The AEC advised against the additional participants declaring that, “[t]his [the
first detonation] was an experiment which had never been performed before and the radiological hazards were unpredictable.” In the AEC’s view no one should approach ground zero for three or four days after the surface shot.

The AEC seems to have been successful in persuading the Department of Defense not to include the extra observers, but the DOD did not agree to the AEC’s suggestion on approaching ground zero. Four hours after the first shot, the DOD conducted research involving troops who were accompanied by radiation safety monitors. Eight teams of men walked over contaminated ground for one hour to determine the effectiveness of protective clothing against nuclear contamination. Similar tests were conducted after the second shot at Jangle, but this time after a longer period. Five days after the shallow underground shot, men crawled over contaminated ground again to determine the effectiveness of protective clothing. Other men rode armored vehicles through contaminated areas to check the shielding effects of tanks and to check the effectiveness of air-filtering devices.

According to the final report, the protective clothing was “adequate to prevent contact between radioactive dust and the skin of the wearer.” The information on this research is limited. The only mention of the subjects in the report reads, “The volunteer enlisted men, too numerous to mention by name, who participated in the evaluation of protective clothing were of great
assistance which is gratefully acknowledged.” It is likely that at the time these men were not viewed as subjects of scientific research but rather as men who had volunteered for a hazardous or risky assignment. We know nothing about what these men were told about the risks or whether they felt they could have refused the assignment if they had an interest in doing so.

The Jangle activities are a good illustration of difficulties in drawing boundaries in the military between activities that are research involving human subjects and activities that are not. Although the Jangle evaluation was likely not considered an instance of human research at the time, it has many similarities to ground-crawling activity conducted several years later, not in conjunction with a nuclear test that was treated as research involving human subjects. In 1958, 90 soldiers at Camp Stoneman in Pittsburg, California were asked to perform “typical army tactical maneuvers” on soil that had been contaminated with radioactive lanthanum.
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The soldiers were then monitored for their exposure to study beta contamination from this non-penetrating form of radiation. In 1963, soldiers were again asked to maneuver on ground contaminated with artificial fallout, this time at Camp McCoy in Wisconsin.

Perhaps by listening to what Joan McCarthy a member of NAAV, the New Jersey Association of Atomic Veterans had to say before the Interagency Working Group, we can get a look at the real impact these tests had. Unlike the final reports’ findings, this is what Joan had to say,

“Fifteen years ago on his deathbed, my husband told me about his participation in a nuclear test. He also asked me to find out what happened to the other men. This led to founding, with the help of the media and many good people, the New Jersey Association of Atomic Veterans. In the 15 years I’ve been at the deathbeds of many atomic veterans who died, thinking that their government wants them dead so the truth will be buried with them; and I do believe that truth eventually surfaces and I hope that we’re doing something about it now and it doesn’t just get buried again.”

Human Radiation Experiments

The 4,000 human radiation experiments reviewed by ACHRE were carried out or funded by the U.S. Government primarily through the Department of Defense (DOD) and Department of Energy (DOE) or its predecessor agencies, and were conducted at numerous major medical institutions including Johns Hopkins Hospital.

The Administration did propose that 7,600 veterans treated in NRI experiments reviewed by ACHRE be declared eligible for health screening under the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Ionizing Radiation Program, but children at higher risk treated in Baltimore were not even mentioned in the Action Report. The Center for Disease Control estimates of nasopharyngeal irradiation were between 8,000 and 20,000 servicemen, and 500,000 to 2,000,000 Americans, who may have received this type of irradiation. Several contemporary researchers have warned that patients who received
the nasopharyngeal irradiation run a greater risk of contracting head and neck cancers.
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The Advisory listed six categories of experiments that they identified:

Eileen Welsome also details one other large study done in Oak Ridge Tennessee from 1957 to 1974 on 194 patients and funded by NASA at the Medical Division Hospital run by the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies (ORINS). Eileen’s book should be consulted for the most comprehensive
account of plutonium and other
radiation experiments during the Cold War that I have ever read. She won the Pulitzer Prize for her reporting.

One experiment absent from the Clinton Administration’s Implementing Report involved 582 third graders in the Baltimore public schools who were
part of a
1948-1954 experiment conducted by Johns Hopkins to test the effects of Nasal Radium Irradiation. Ruth Faden, who chaired the advisory committee, was employed by John Hopkins University, which seems to be a glaring conflict of interest. None of the victims or their relatives were appointed to this panel.
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The Johns Hopkins NRI experiment in question was completely overlooked as to any medical notice or follow-up action by the federal government. This was done despite ACHRE’s earlier determination that children in this Hopkins radiation experiment had the greatest cancer mortality risk of any experiment it examined for which people were still alive and might benefit from medical notice and follow-up.
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The National Institute for Health had recommended in 1977, that children who received the nasal radium treatments be examined every one to two years. Radiation oncologist Eli Glatstein was outvoted thirteen to one in her belief that patients given the radium nasal treatments should be medically monitored. She told Stewart Farber who first brought the experiments to the public’s attention, that it was “not salable in today’s political environment” to recommend screening for so many victims. The ACHRE’s panel also overlooked the issue of other radiation-induced diseases and non-fatal malignancies such as thyroid tumors, which are extremely painful and dependent on early intervention and medical monitoring for cure.
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Another experiment that is absent from the ACHRE report was performed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the basement of the pathology building.
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Peter Lewis, who had biomedical experiments performed on him received proof after the death of his adoptive father who had served in Army Medical Research.

Mr. Lewis testified before the Staff Stakeholder Workshop of the Department of Energy twice. His first testimony seemed to be ignored, consequently he returned, determined to bring his plight before the public. He even offered his evidence to the National Archives so that people would believe, and he might prevent this from happening again. Peters’ testimony speaks for itself.