The Plutonium Files

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War
AuthorEileen Welsome
PublisherThe Dial Press
Publication date1999
ISBN978-0-385-31402-2

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is a 1999 book by Eileen Welsome. It is a history of United States government-engineered radiation experiments on unwitting Americans, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning series Welsome wrote for The Albuquerque Tribune.

Overview

The experiments began in 1945, when Manhattan Project scientists were preparing to detonate the first atomic bomb. Radiation was known to be dangerous and the experiments were designed to ascertain the detailed effect of radiation on human health.

From 1945 to 1947, 18 people were injected with plutonium by Manhattan project doctors. Ebb Cade was an unwilling participant in medical experiments that involved injection of 4.7 micrograms of plutonium on April 10, 1945 at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. This experiment was under the supervision of Harold Hodge. Other experiments directed by the United States Atomic Energy Commission continued into the 1970s. The Plutonium Files chronicles the lives of the subjects of the secret program by naming each person involved and discussing the ethical and medical research conducted in secret by the scientists and doctors. Albert Stevens, the man who survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human, four-year-old Simeon Shaw sent from Australia to the U.S. for treatment, and Elmer Allen are some of the notable subjects of the Manhattan Project program led by Joseph Gilbert Hamilton.

Subjects

The following table lists subjects of the experiments by their subject names. 17 out of 18 have been identified in The Plutonium Files.

Patient number and biographical information at time of injection Name Date injected Date of death Survival time Age at death Cause of death Weight of injected Pu-239 (microgram)
HP-12, 55-year-old man Ebb Cade 1945 1953 8 years 63 Heart failure 4.7
CHI-1, 68-year-old man Arthur Hubbard 1945 1945 5 months 68 Cancer of chin, lungs 6.5
CAL-1, 58-year-old man Albert Stevens 1945 1966 20.7 years 79 Heart disease 0.75 + 0.2 (Pu-238)
HP-1, 67-year-old man Amedio Lovecchio 1945 1960 14.2 years 81 Bronchopneumonia 4.6
HP-2, 48-year-old man William Purcell 1945 1948 2.4 years 50 Brain disease 5.1
HP-3, 48-year-old woman Eda Schultz Charlton 1945 1983 37.2 years 85 Acute cardiac arrest 4.9
HP-4, 18-year-old woman Jean Daigneault 1945 1947 1.4 years 20 Cushing's syndrome 4.9
HP-5, 56-year-old man Paul Galinger 1945 1946 5 months 57 Bronchopneumonia 5.1
CHI-2, 56-year-old woman Una Macke 1945 1946 17 days 56 Breast cancer 94.9
CHI-3, Young adult male Unknown 1945 1946 6 months Unknown Likely Hodgkin's Disease 94.9
HP-6, 44-year-old man John Mousso 1946 1984 38 years 82 Natural death 5.3
HP-7, 59-year-old woman Edna Bartholf 1946 1946 9 months 60 Pulmonary failure 6.3
HP-11, 69-year-old man Harry Slack 1946 1946 6 days 69 Bronchopneumonia 6.5
HP-8, 41-year-old woman Janet Stadt 1946 1975 29.7 years 71 Unknown 6.5
HP-9, 64-year-old man Fred Sours 1946 1947 1.2 years 65 Bronchopneumonia 6.3
CAL-2, 4-year, 10-month old boy Simeon Shaw 1946 1947 8 months 5 Bone cancer 2.7 + radio-cerium and yttrium
HP-10, 52-year-old man Daniel Nelson 1946 1957 10.9 years 63 Heart disease 6.1
CAL-3, 36-year-old man Elmer Allen 1947 1991 44 years 80 Respiratory failure .006 (Pu-238)

Two hours after Clinton gave a speech on a report on the events, the verdict in the O.J. Simpson case was issued, and much of the media's attention was directed elsewhere.

Jonathan D. Moreno was a senior staff member of the committee. He wrote the 1999 book Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans, which covers some of the same ground as The Plutonium Files.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Book review, The New England Journal of Medicine, Volume 341:1941–1942, December 16, 1999. doi:10.1056/NEJM199912163412519.
  2. ↑ Book Review, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, Volume 76, Number 3, Fall 2002, pp. 637–638.
  3. 1 2 Longworth, R. C. (1999). "Injected!". The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 55 (6): 58–61. Archived from the original on 2020-03-10. Retrieved 2026-08-11.
  4. ↑ Moss, William, and Roger Eckhardt. (1995). "The human plutonium injection experiments." Los Alamos Science. 23: 177-233.
  5. ↑ DOE Openness (June 1998). Human Radiation Experiments: ACHRE Report. "Chapter 5: The Manhattan district Experiments: the first injection". Washington, D.C. Superintendent of Documents US Government Printing Office.
  6. ↑ AEC no. UR-38, 1948 Quarterly Technical Report
  7. ↑ "Human Plutonium Injection Experiments". large.stanford.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-21.
  8. ↑ Michael Flynn (November 1999). "The volunteers who didn't". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 55 (6): 61–62. Bibcode:1999BuAtS..55f..61F. doi:10.2968/055006017.