The Plutonium Files : America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War

Rating:
Summary: We need more of this!
Review: A friend maintains that "very few conspiracies don't get found out".. this is definitely true in this case, but how many other experiments have been done on children, perhaps wards of the state in numerous states using private agencies subcontracting with state child care agencies that we might never hear about?

Of particular interest is the Fernald school chapter, where MIT researchers befriended vulnerable kids and traded "friendship" and "caring" for doses of irradiated milk the kids were made to drink without their knowledge or consent in Massachusetts.

Rating:
Summary: Important contribution to exposes of nuclear abuses
Review: As a physicist, I learned early on in my education about the dangers of radioactive materials -- sadly, at the time I did not know that the information we had was gained through these heinous human experiments. This book, meticulously researched and believably written, is a convincing expose of the US Army's and the Federal Government's callous attitudes towards the people these two serve and are financially supported by -- the citizens of the US. It is also a history of atomic development. The author delves into the Manhattan Project and into the founding of Los Alamos. The entire book is written in an easy to understand style, with excellent explanations where explanations are needed, so that anyone could read this comfortably. The discomfort is in what was done to the victims, and the continuing publicity and attitude that the American government is the only MORAL government on earth. It is a very sad thing when the Federal Government shows itself to be dangerous to its citizens, but these experiments add to a growing mound of evidence. The author has done a thorough, dedicated, and compassionate job of investigating and documenting. We should be stirred into anger and action by the book, but it is a sad thing too that the American people can't be roused -- it is as if we are more interested in the fictional lives we see on our favorite TV shows than in our own, and our children's, lives. In a way, too, anyone downwind of the above ground nuclear tests (just about all of us, even the unborn and the unconceived) were guinea pigs of airborne radiation, and we are to this day from fallout. This book is about specific people who were directly injected or who ingested radioactive materials, but it is actually about all of us. Chilling things -- the horrible deterioration of the women who used liquid radium to paint the dials on watches and who licked the brushes, the fate of those who died during experimentation, and the coldness of the scientists and physicians (those meant to heal, not kill). This is the history of a horrible, unethical time in our country, and one cannot help wonder what other similar experiments are going on today, under the aegis of the military or of industry, all with the blessing of the government. One cannot help wondering, too, about the scientific community and its blind ambition for knowledge or its competition for the Nobel Prize at all costs. Anyone with any moral conscience should be shocked and wary after reading this book -- but please do read it. If the subject interests you, also check into The River, about the HIV epidemic and the scientists developing the polio vaccine for sub-Saharan Africa, which is another well-researched book exposing the threats posed by the scientific community.

Rating:
Summary: MIXING SENSATIONALISM WITH INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
Review: Having worked nearly four decades in American medical scientific research, I've tangentially (sometimes directly) worked in the medical areas Eileen Welsome attempts to examine in her THE PLUTONIUM FILES. When I bought this book, I was hoping to read something more in depth about the influence of the some 300-400 Nazi doctors (indictable for war crimes!) on American medical research. In 1992, prize winning author and investigative reporter Linda Hunt had already written in her SECRET AGENDA that yes indeed there were many breaches of medical ethics and even illegal medical experiments carried out in the name of national security. Too bad Ms Welsom didn't write about them.

Mixing apples and oranges, Welsom cites the boron-neutron capture experiments (by Dr. William Sweet) and confuses them with radiation experiments conducted on convicted criminal prisoners. The boron-neutron experiments were ethical, informed consent experiments on terminally ill patients with invariably fatal brain gliomas. However, the experiments on prsioners [and some of the hospital experiments on unwitting African-American patients] were crimes against humanity; according to the standards of the 1947 Nuremberg Code. But it does not serve the inerests for which the Freedom of Information Act was adopted by the United States Congress in 1976 to confuse government sanctioned illegal medical experiments with legitimate ones.

I was hoping to read much more about indeed unethical and illegal experiments, secretly sponsored by the United States government during the Cold War era. Wading through THE PLUTONIUM FILES left me disappointed. There is a story to tell about a sinister Nazi medical influence on military experiments in the United States and medical crimes against American citizens serving in the U.S. military. Alas, Welsom neglects to tell it.

Rating:
Summary: Well, she doesn't need any help from me!
Review: I have been reading books about human experimentation due to my work in the Deaf community and medical school. Since I am Deaf and many of us who are 'disabled' are concerned about attitudes of others which consider us less than human or unable to make a worthwhile contribution to the human race...we often discuss the impact that disability, chronic illness, and limited education has on the ability to make informed consent, and also the attitudes of doctors towards us who may be less than whole. Ms. Welsome totally supported mine and others with disabilities and illnesses fears that there are those in the military and in the medical fields who feel we are fair game for any 'experiment' they feel interest in pursuing. It isn't just the wackos like Kervorkian we have to watch out for, but the government and the established medical community who in spite of the Nuremburg Code went ahead and performed and supported experiments which had no firm basis in medical alleviation of pain or possible exposure. Ms. Welsome is an exquisite writer and more than deserved the Pulitzer prize. This book should be required reading for all medical students in medical ethics classes, and I am certainly recommending it to those in the Disability rights community so that we can protect our communities from these fanatics and prevent the Disabled Holocaust from happening again in the United States. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh, [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Don't miss this one
Review: One of the first emotions this book elicits from readers is indignation and shock that physicians and government agencies could let the kind of experiments described in this book occur, and the treatment the patients received. This book will no doubt attract significant attention because of the radiation experiments described, but the book seems be more about the prevailing attitudes of physicians and scientists towards patients and research at the time. The activities that take place in the book occur during a time when science and medical research came first, and the patient second, and when physicians seemed as gods to their patients. As with other stories of "medical guinea pigs", emphasis is placed on those scientists and physicians for whom the patients just happens to be a convenient vessel to carry out experiments on. It ultimately boils down to a question of whether or not the means justifies the ends. Some of the experiments performed did provide useful information about the effects of radiation on humans, which produced significant advances in diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy and has helped to save and prolong the lives of countless others. Other experiments described sound poorly designed, and seem like they were performed just for the sake of seeing what would happen.

The book starts out with a descriptive history of the atomic weapons program and the Manhatten project, both on the weapons side and the medical side. Focus shifts to the human experiments conducted in the earliest days of atomic weapon research up until the 1970s. The author manages to provide a fascinating insight on the attitudes of the researchers as well as providing a description of the patients experimented on. Read the book and decide for yourself. Those were different times, different attitudes.

Rating:
Summary: Plutonium Files (not x-files)
Review: The release of Eileen Welsome's book "THE PLUTONIUM FILES- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War" in paperback will hopefully make this important book more accessible to the general public.

Detailing the effort of the US government to test the effects of Plutonium and other radioactive substances on people, the book outlines first the creation and evolution of the nuclear program that created the need for such testing, and then the US government's attempt to conduct such testing on its own citizens without their knowledge or informed consent. On strictly a superficial level there is much here which will attract the "x-files" crowd: Super-secret installations, eccentric scientists and far-fetched experiments on unsuspecting citizens. The kind of information that makes conspiracy theorists sit back from their computers in darkened little rooms, pump their fist in the air and utter that now-hackneyed phrase: "The truth is out there"

Fortunately for the reader, Welsome assiduously avoids such sensationalism and instead draws a largely compassionate picture of the US government's program and of the people who perpetrated it and who participated in it. Welsome's well structured and organized account of the growth of the plutonium testing programs involving critically ill persons across America during the Cold War years teems with information and insight, yet it manages to treat victim and perpetrator alike with a measure of respect and empathy that places this book well above the level of the standard "Shocking Expose". To her great credit Welsome goes beyond merely packaging the results of her extensive research and alarming discoveries in a "tell-all" book.

Certainly, THE PLUTONIUM FILES introduces information which, by its nature is bound to shock and disturb many, but the book also addresses the too-often forgotten issue of context: Was what happened acceptable by the standards of the time in which it occurred? In addressing this question Welsome probes more deeply into her subject, examining the duality, the moral dichotomy, inherent in the decision to implement this program. In a time when the world was still dealing with the results of a devastating world war and the possibility of another seemed likely the need for answers had an immediacy which could be ignored only at the world's peril. Hard decisions had to be made and extraordinary measures taken; Welsome is clearly cognizant of this as she assess each program and as she examines and balances the need against the action and its end result, the author treats the reader to some of her best analysis.

The Plutonium Files- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is certainly an important book; one which adds a significant chapter to the recorded history of the growth of atomic science. Despite its scientific topic and exhaustive sourcing the books narrative is direct and engaging, its organization straightforward and its conclusions informed and objective. A book that is well worth its price, Welsome's book would be a great Christmas present for everyone from an avid historian to the omni-present x-files fan; who will find much in here to confirm their most exotic fears. Overall an excellent book for which the author has received two much deserved awards.

Rating:
Summary: Skeletons in the closet
Review: The release of Eileen Welsome's book "THE PLUTONIUM FILES- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War" in paperback will hopefully make this important book more accessible to the general public.

Detailing the effort of the US government to test the effects of Plutonium and other radioactive substances on people, the book outlines first the creation and evolution of the nuclear program that created the need for such testing, and then the US government's attempt to conduct such testing on its own citizens without their knowledge or informed consent. On strictly a superficial level there is much here which will attract the "x-files" crowd: Super-secret installations, eccentric scientists and far-fetched experiments on unsuspecting citizens. The kind of information that makes conspiracy theorists sit back from their computers in darkened little rooms, pump their fist in the air and utter that now-hackneyed phrase: "The truth is out there"

Fortunately for the reader, Welsome assiduously avoids such sensationalism and instead draws a largely compassionate picture of the US government's program and of the people who perpetrated it and who participated in it. Welsome's well structured and organized account of the growth of the plutonium testing programs involving critically ill persons across America during the Cold War years teems with information and insight, yet it manages to treat victim and perpetrator alike with a measure of respect and empathy that places this book well above the level of the standard "Shocking Expose". To her great credit Welsome goes beyond merely packaging the results of her extensive research and alarming discoveries in a "tell-all" book.

Certainly, THE PLUTONIUM FILES introduces information which, by its nature is bound to shock and disturb many, but the book also addresses the too-often forgotten issue of context: Was what happened acceptable by the standards of the time in which it occurred? In addressing this question Welsome probes more deeply into her subject, examining the duality, the moral dichotomy, inherent in the decision to implement this program. In a time when the world was still dealing with the results of a devastating world war and the possibility of another seemed likely the need for answers had an immediacy which could be ignored only at the world's peril. Hard decisions had to be made and extraordinary measures taken; Welsome is clearly cognizant of this as she assess each program and as she examines and balances the need against the action and its end result, the author treats the reader to some of her best analysis.

The Plutonium Files- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is certainly an important book; one which adds a significant chapter to the recorded history of the growth of atomic science. Despite its scientific topic and exhaustive sourcing the books narrative is direct and engaging, its organization straightforward and its conclusions informed and objective. A book that is well worth its price, Welsome's book would be a great Christmas present for everyone from an avid historian to the omni-present x-files fan; who will find much in here to confirm their most exotic fears. Overall an excellent book for which the author has received two much deserved awards.

Rating:
Summary: Just Amazing
Review: This book was completely amazing.

First, you want to be appalled {as well you should} with the amount and type of experiments that were carried out {radioactive cocktails for pregnant women!!}. How could anyone do this to another person??

Then, you think of the people in your own life who have gotten bone marrow transplants, or radiation treatment for cancer. It gets harder to hold the original doctors as evil monsters. Don't misunderstand me - informed consent is a must. How do you inform them of outcomes that are absolutely unknown - how do you start to know?

I thought a lot about this book as I read it, and continue to think about it now that I'm done. I'm sure there must be a middle ground between what they did, and what needed to be done. It is riveting and amazing.

Rating:
Summary: Soul killers
Review: What makes criminals worse than violent serial rapists and mass murderers? What can pale the war crimes committed by armies of all sides of wars? It is when self-important humans, who were convinced by God knows whom, that they in their majesty can play God to all others. These malformed humans have been educated beyond their capabilities to think rationally. These special criminals, American scientists, "The Good Guys.", experimented not only on human guinea pigs, but also with the genes of their descendants. And to show their disdain for their laboratory rats, these Igor-like experimenters often didn't even bother to follow thru with their nighmarish whimsies. They must have been bored and went on to something else. What a yawn it must have been. Never mind how they tortured countless individuals. These brilliant scientists have not only poisoned the chromosomes of untold families, cities, and possibly the whole world, but they have very possibly given our Mother Earth a cancer from which we humans shall suffer, and are suffering. But not to worry. The Earth's disease has a half-life of only 24,000 years. The publishing of Eileen Welsome's book is like a miracle. I can't believe the book was allowed to come to light. One of the best books I've ever read. I hope she comes out with more. I can't believe that our great nation hasn't graduated to better things.