US Govt Secretly Dosed People With Radiation During 50s-60s

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > US Govt Secretly Dosed People With Radiation During 50s-60s

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Normally I'd agree that article threads are lame, but this is big enough to warrant its own thread.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/cold-war-radiation-testing-us-widespread-author-claims-50233516

quote:

Three members of Congress are demanding answers after a St. Louis scholar's new book revealed details of secret Cold War-era U.S. government testing in which countless unsuspecting people, including many children, pregnant women and minorities, were fed, sprayed or injected with radiation and other dangerous materials.

The health ramifications of the tests are unknown. Lisa Martino-Taylor, an associate professor of sociology at St. Louis Community College who wrote "Behind the Fog: How the U.S. Cold War Radiological Weapons Program Exposed Innocent Americans," acknowledged that tracing diseases like cancer to specific causes is difficult.

But three House Democrats who represent areas where testing occurred � William Lacy Clay of Missouri, Brad Sherman of California and Jim Cooper of Tennessee � said they were outraged by the revelations.

Martino-Taylor used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain previously unreleased documents, including Army records. She also reviewed already public records and published articles. She told The Associated Press that she found that a small group of researchers, aided by leading academic institutions, worked to develop radiological weapons and later "combination weapons" using radioactive materials along with chemical or biological weapons.

Her book, published in August, was a follow-up to her 2012 dissertation, which found that the government conducted secret testing of zinc cadmium sulfide in a poor area of St. Louis in the 1950s and 1960s. The book focuses on the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s.

An Army spokeswoman declined to comment, but Martino-Taylor's 2012 report on testing in St. Louis was troubling enough to trigger an Army investigation. The investigation found no evidence that the St. Louis testing posed a health threat.

Martino-Taylor said the offensive radiological weapons program was a top priority for the government. Unknowing people in places throughout the U.S., as well as parts of England and Canada, were subjected to potentially deadly material through open-air spraying, ingestion and injection, Martino-Taylor said.

"They targeted the most vulnerable in society in most cases," Martino-Taylor said. "They targeted children. They targeted pregnant women in Nashville. People who were ill in hospitals. They targeted wards of the state. And they targeted minority populations."

The tests in Nashville in the late 1940s involved giving 820 poor and pregnant white women a mixture during their first pre-natal visit that included radioactive iron, Martino-Taylor said. The women were chosen without their knowledge. Blood tests were performed to determine how much radioactive iron had been absorbed by the mother, and the babies' blood was tested at birth. Similar tests were performed in Chicago and San Francisco, Martino-Taylor said.

Cooper's office plans to seek more information from the Army Legislative Liaison, said spokesman Chris Carroll.

"We are asking for details on the Pentagon's role, along with any cooperation by research institutions and other organizations," Carroll said. "These revelations are shocking, disturbing and painful."

In California, investigators created a radiation field inside a building at North Hollywood High School during a weekend in the fall of 1961, Martino-Taylor said. Similar testing was performed at the University of California, Los Angeles and at a Los Angeles Police Department building.

Sherman said he wants a survey of people who graduated from the school around the time of the testing to see if there was a higher incidence of illness, including cancer. He also said he will seek more information from the Department of Energy.

"What an incredibly stupid, reckless thing to do," said Sherman, whose district includes North Hollywood High School.

Among those who recall the testing is Mary Helen Brindell, 73. She was playing baseball in a St. Louis street in the mid-1950s when a squadron of green planes flew so low overhead that she could see the face of the lead pilot. Suddenly, the children were covered in a fine powdery substance that stuck to skin moistened by summer sweat.

Brindell has suffered from breast, thyroid, skin and uterine cancers. Her sister died of a rare form of esophageal cancer.

"I just want an explanation from the government," Brindell said. "Why would you do that to people?"

Clay said he was angered that Americans were used as "guinea pigs" for research.

"I join with my colleagues to demand the whole truth about this testing and I will reach out to my Missouri Delegation friends on the House Armed Services Committee for their help as well," Clay said in a statement.

St. Louis leaders were told at the time that the government was testing a smoke screen that could shield the city from aerial observation in case of Soviet attack. Evidence now shows radioactive material, not just zinc cadmium sulfide, was part of that spraying, Martino-Taylor said.

Doris Spates, 62, was born in 1955 on the 11th floor of the Pruitt-Igoe low-income high-rise where the Army sprayed material from the roof. Her father died suddenly three months after her birth. Four of her 11 siblings died from cancer at relatively young ages. She survived cervical cancer and suffers from skin and breathing problems.

"It makes me angry," Spates said. "It is wrong to do something like that to people who don't have any knowledge of it."

According to Martino-Taylor, other testing in Chicago; Berkeley, California; Rochester, New York; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee, involved injecting people with plutonium-239.

She said her book shines a light on the team of mostly young scientists tasked with developing radiological weapons. They worked in a closed world with virtually no input from anyone "who could say, 'This isn't right,' or put some sort of moral compass on it," she said.

She hopes her book prompts more people to investigate.

"We haven't gotten any answers so far," Martino-Taylor said. "I think there's a lot more to find out."

Learned all the right lessons from Operation Paperclip.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2017 21:04

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 01:24

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Duscat posted:

this is kind of baffling, because for there to be any point to such experiments, you'd have to then collect data, which would involve frequent visits to the area and/or contact with the people

and the iron study sounds more like they were measuring the absorption and retention of iron, and it was only radiolabeled so they could do that

could be garbled in transmission i suppose

According to the article, that test was performed as part of the radiological weapons program.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2017 21:22

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Jose posted:

i for one am shocked that the government involved in the tuskugee experiment also just spread radiation everywhere to see the effect

america was a mistake

Aren't you curious about the testing they did in England?

# ¿ Oct 4, 2017 21:35

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Dairy Days posted:

isn't this old news or is it blending together with all the other mkultra edgewood arsenal fuckery from the same era

it's more the extent of the testing that wasn't previously known, plus the fact that they also tested on white women that makes it novel. apparently it's still not known exactly what the extent of experimentation was because of classified documents.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2017 22:00

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Yeah, if they were developing radiological weapons it'd be for combat use or assassinations. They'd want something that would kill people either immediately or within a few days, so long term study wouldn't be important.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2017 22:31

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Duscat posted:

yeah but you wouldn't test one by actually dropping one on your own population because that would have been unpopular back in those days

Tests like giving pregnant women radioactive iron could've been part of a test to see what kind of delivery mechanism is best for human physiology, and to see what effects it has on newborns. There was still a lot of research to be done about the way radiation works in the late-40s to early 60s.

# ¿ Oct 4, 2017 23:32

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

Thundercracker posted:

We did snatch a bunch of Nazi scientists after WWII. I wouldn't be surprised if the science went as far as "Let's gently caress with these people and see what happens."

We also worked out deals with Japanese scientists to not prosecute them for war crimes in exchange for their research, but stuff like Unit 731 ended up being useless because they didn't control their human experimentation. Anyway, that kind of stuff can end up becoming accepted in your own culture once you've let it off the hook.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 03:59

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

These sort of things are even possible because society accepts the dubious notion that there are things the government has to keep secret from the public for the sake of national security, which is the big open door into stupid poo poo like Operation Condor, the CIA smuggling cocaine into the United States, or human experimentation without informed consent that involves literally poisoning the public.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 06:39

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

rudatron posted:

but there are legitimate reasons for secrecy, it's just that those legitimate reasons form like 5% of all the things that are actually kept out of public view, with like 95% of it either been illegal poo poo, unethical poo poo, or gotta-save-my-own-rear end poo poo

It's actually impossible to know if anything the government does in secret has an actual utility. Because it's secret.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 12:46

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

walgreenslatino posted:

Zinc cadmium sulfide doesn't make people sick.

From the OP posted:

St. Louis leaders were told at the time that the government was testing a smoke screen that could shield the city from aerial observation in case of Soviet attack. Evidence now shows radioactive material, not just zinc cadmium sulfide, was part of that spraying, Martino-Taylor said.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 19:19

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 01:24

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

mister magpie posted:

should make a lead foil hat I guess

https://www.golfworks.com/high-density-lead-foil-tape/p/HDLT/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIvf6X2J3a1gIVBxBpCh1MDwRFEAYYAyABEgKSY_D_BwE :discourse:

# ¿ Oct 5, 2017 20:38

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > US Govt Secretly Dosed People With Radiation During 50s-60s