Government-sponsored Radiation Research in Prison
1. The radiation experiments began in the 1940s and lasted through the 1970s, involving between 600 and 800 human subjects. In December 1993, the Department of Energy opened a toll-free line to collect information about the scope of the radiation experiments. In just one hour, the department received as many as 700 phone calls through the hot line (McCally, Cassey, and Kimball 1).
2. These radiation experiments included 57 inmates at the Oregon State Prison and 64 inmates at the Washington State Prison. In the Oregon Prison, the inmates’ testicles were irradiated between 1953 and 1971 (McCally, Cassey, and Kimball 6). These particular experiments were known as the Heller Experiments, which the government fully funded between 1963 and 1973 to examine the effects of radiation on testes (Reiter 507). In the Washington Prison, the inmates received a radiation dose to their testicles that was enough to render them sterile. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) provided $1 million dollars in funding to the lead researcher at Oregon Prison, Carl G. Heller and the lead research at Washington State, C. Alvin Paulsen (Moreno 229). 3. Responding to media and public outcry the radiation experiments, the US Department of Energy released a statement in February of 1987 stating: a. “There is no scientific reason to expect that any of the subjects who are not already being monitored with incur any harmful effects. Therefore, there is neither any reason for attempting any further follow-up studies on these subjects, nor to propose new legislation to compensate them” (McCally, Cassey, and Kimball 6). |
1. In Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans, Jonathan Moreno recounts:
a. “Harold Bibeau was in an Oregon penitentiary back in the 1960s when he was given the opportunity to volunteer for an experiment. Bibeau was instructed to lie on his stomach while scrotum was put in a plastic box containing warm water so the testes would descend. A calibrated dose of radiation was then emitted from each side. Bibeau was then vasectomized, as he had agreed, in case the radiation caused chromosomal damage, and his testicles were biopsied. He received $25 for submitting to the vasectomy and the same amount per biopsy. Far more than the 25 cents a day that was the then-going rate for work in prison industry” (Moreno, 228). 2. Here we find another example of the use of unduly inducements via financial benefits to entire prisoners to participate. Aside from the physical and mental harm, a major concern with these experiments was the lack of disclosure and informed consent provided to participants in the research. “With one exception, the historical record suggest that these patient-subjects [who received plutonium injections] were not told that they were to be used in experiments for which there was no expectation that they would benefit medically, and as a consequence, it is unlikely that they consented to this use of their person.” – President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (1995). |