A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on Our Children and Other Innocent People (29 page)

From 1950 until 1954, researchers at the Children’s Hospital, George William Hooper Foundation, College of Dentistry, University of California, San Francisco, CA studied oral and alimentary effects of radioactive elements to investigate local and systemic effects of irradiation of the alimentary canal and oral cavity. Findings were to include description of gross pathological changes, description of histopathological changes, biochemical analysis of gastric, intestinal and salivary secretions, and radioautographic survey of the localization of the isotopes in the gastrointestinal canal and mouth. No information was available as to the number of participants or research results.

In Harlem City Hospital, New York in 1950, a duplicate study was done. The purpose of the investigation was to study injury to the capillary system to see if there were some way to protect it from radiation injury. No information was again available on the number of participants or research results.

In a 1954, study done at Indiana University Medical Center, Indianapolis, Indiana, 23 presumably normal individuals without signs or symptoms of venous disorder, were along with ninety-two patients with signs and symptoms of venous stasis, unexplained edema, or lymphatic blockade experimented on. They had injections of a radiopaque material into their
femoral veins in the groin, into the popliteal vein and into a superficial vein in the thigh, leg or foot; and then had studies done before and after exercise of the dependent limb. X-rays were taken to see the distribution of radiopaque material.

Studies Using Radioactive Vitamin B12 were conducted in the early 1960s. In a collaborative effort between the Oak Ridge Institute of Nuclear Studies, the Long Island Jewish Hospital (Jamaica, NY), South Nassau Communities Hospital (Oceanside, NY), and Brookhaven National Laboratory, a series of
experiments was conducted to study the plasma clearance of vitamin B12 labeled with cobalt-57. These studies sought to determine why the serum and plasma levels of vitamin B12 were elevated in patients with chronic myelocytic leukemia. In one of these studies, three patients in remission were intravenously administered vitamin B12 labeled with cobalt-57. The procedure was repeated twice in the same patients, after administration of loading doses of stable vitamin B12. In another study, 10 patients with various degrees of chronic myelocytic leukemia and 5 healthy individuals each received three or more intravenous injections of cobalt-57 labeled B12.
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Morton Sklar, Director of the World Organization Against Torture USA says, “In addition to the tightening of experimentation guidelines, the U.S. government has attempted to address the issue of human radiation testing by establishing three major programs to provide compensation to those persons who may have been harmed. However, these programs deal with only a small segment of the radiation experiments that took place and affect only a small fraction of the victims.”

Sklar continues by saying, “The Department of Veterans’ Affairs administers a program designed for veterans who were exposed to radiation,
with special provisions for those exposed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and in atomic weapons tests. This program is administered under the Veterans Dioxin and Radiation Compensation Act of 1988.” However, of over 15,000 claims for compensation filed under this Act, only 1,401 have been approved; despite the fact that it is estimated that 200,000 soldiers were exposed to nuclear bomb tests between 1946 and 1963.

The second program is the Nuclear Claims Trust Fund that was established under a 1986 agreement between the United States and the Marshall Islands to compensate inhabitants of the islands exposed to radiation from U.S. weapons testing of 67 nuclear explosions between 1946 and 1958. In 1947, 145 people were relocated from their homes on Enewetok Atoll-which consists of about 40 islands-to Ujelang Atoll, a cluster of coral rubble one-fourth the size of Enewetok. They were told they would be gone no more than five years. In 1976, the U.S. Department of Interior said the group suffered grave privations, including periods of near starvation. They received little education and poor health care. It wasn’t until 1980 that they were allowed to return to find that some of their land had been vaporized by the blasts, while the rest was pockmarked by explosions or contaminated radiation.

In May of 2000, twenty years after their return, The Marshall Island Nuclear
Claims Tribunal awarded $341 million to compensate the survivors and descendants for the damage to them and their once tropical homeland. Unfortunately, they may not be able to collect it as the United States only earmarked $150 million for compensation and only $4.5 million is left.
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The third program is the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990, established to provide compensation to uranium miners, persons living downwind from the Nevada Test Site, and veterans and civilians who received radiation at the site of atmospheric weapons tests in Nevada and the Pacific.

Groups of uranium miners, test-site personnel, and civilians affected near test sites also have filed claims in federal courts seeking compensation. All these claims have been rejected, however, on the grounds that there is no legal authority to hold the government responsible. In some of these cases the court recognized that the claimants had indeed been harmed by the government’s actions, and called on Congress to provide a legislative remedy in the absence of judicial remedy. The passage of legislation acknowledging the government’s complicity in these events and compensating those who have been harmed is the first step that must be taken to achieve this result. The overall assessment of compensation programs that have been established is that they are far too restrictive and place too low a ceiling on the amount of compensation awarded.

In Morton Sklar’s report
Involuntary Human Scientific Experimentation
, he ends by saying, “Similar concerns also are being raised about involuntary human experimentation involving new forms of classified research and testing of high technology military weaponry, including microwave and laser equipment. Groups working on these issues cite a White House inter-governmental memorandum dated March 27, 1997, establishing stronger guidelines prohibiting non-consensual testing for classified research; but suggesting by implication, that this type of human subject research may, in fact, be taking place. Because of the classified nature of these activities, it is
very difficult to confirm or disprove that they are taking place.
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Given the serious negative impacts on non-consensual human subjects that classified research of this type is capable of producing, and given the past history of secret experimentation by the government; these allegations of continuing improprieties involving secret government sponsored human testing should not be dismissed without more thorough, impartial investigation.”

Cooper Brown from the National Committee for Radiation Victims summed up his feelings to the Task Force by saying, “If you want to ensure that what happened during the Cold War years does not happen in the future, then you have to start talking about fundamental institutional change. That is the only way you are going to get around it. You hear people talking about criminal sanctions, that should be looked at not only in terms of retribution to those who it was done to before; but you have got to look at in terms of if you don’t impose criminal sanctions, where criminal sanctions are clearly warranted. And you know, the Advisory Committee notes at least two incidents where they think people were killed as a result of the experimentation and says but there has to be further investigation. If you don’t respond to that, you are sending absolutely the wrong message to people who decide to do experimentation in the future.”

Biological and Chemical Experiments
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Dr. Cornelius Rhoads undertook the Puerto Rican Cancer Experiment in 1931. Under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, Rhoads purposely infected his subjects with cancer cells. Thirteen of the subjects died. Rhoads went on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama, even though he wrote a most appalling statement after the experiment was uncovered. He said, “What the island needs is not public health work, but a tidal wave or something to totally exterminate the population.”
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He later was named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and was at the heart of the radiation experiments on prisoners, hospital patients, and soldiers.
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In 1943 the United States began research into the use of biological agents for offensive purposes. Approximately 146,000 tons of chemical agents were produced by the United States between 1940 and 1945. The government says this work was started in response to a perceived threat of German biological warfare. The United States conducted this research at Camp Detrick and produced agents at other sites until 1969, when President Nixon stopped all offensive biological and toxin weapon research and production.

The Chemical Corps Research and Development Command issued a memo on May 2, 1956 that speaks for itself. An Lt Colonel from Sloan-Kettering was to be given the following ‘Problem assignment’. “The problem is how can we develop and standardize BW and CW agents when higher authority requires human dose-response data, yet these agents are considered by medical authorities to be too dangerous for human experimentation? A ‘Fresh look’ at this problem might bring out new and fruitful approaches.”

In 1993 a report published by the Institute of Medicine stated approximately 60,000 military personnel were used as human subjects in the 194O’s to test two chemical agents, mustard gas and lewisite. Most of these subjects were not informed of the nature of the experiments and never received medical follow-up after their participation in the research. Some of these human subjects were threatened with imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth if they discussed these experiments with anyone, including their wives, parents, and family doctors.
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The study found a relationship between exposure and the subsequent development of certain diseases.

During the Second World War, The San Jose Project was conducted on San Jose Island, Panama. This project was to determine if chemical weapons would be effective under tropical conditions and could be used against the Japanese military during the Second World War. It involved 130 tests of an estimated 31,000 mustard gas bombs and other chemical weapons conducted by the U.S., Canada, and Britain between 1944 and 1947. The U.S. also conducted experiments to determine whether there was a difference in how white and non-white races reacted to mustard gas, according to documents released under the U.S. government’s Freedom of Information Act. The Americans exposed Puerto Rican American soldiers and white American soldiers to the gas, but found there was no difference in how the chemical affected the men. Both groups of human guinea pigs broke out in large blisters, had their skin and lungs severely burned, and several had to be hospitalized. The Ottawa Citizen reported on April 22, 2001, that The Panamanian government sent a team of scientists and bomb disposal experts to San Jose Island in February 2001 to determine whether any of the bombs or chemical weapons were still intact thereby posing a current threat. A Pentagon spokesman said that U.S. chemical weapons on San Jose were either exploded or “disposed of consistent with the common practices at the time.” The article states it was common during that period to either dump unused chemical weapons at sea or bury them on land.
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There is no central roster of World War II participants in either the laboratory or field tests. The Army conducted tests on Army personnel in the laboratory and in the field. The test sites included Edgewood Arsenal, Md.; Camp Sibert, Ala.; Bushnell, Fla.; Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; and San Jose Island, Panama Canal Zone. Military personnel from the U.S. Navy Training Center, Bainbridge, Maryland also were sent to the Naval Research Lab in Washington, D.C. to participate in tests. Gas testing facilities also were located at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Illinois and Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Based on findings from the National Academy of Sciences, the Department of Veterans Affairs recently published a final rule to compensate veterans for disabilities or deaths resulting from the long- term effects of in service exposure to mustard gas and other agents which blister the skin (these are called vesicants).
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The final rule expands coverage to veterans exposed to mustard gas under battlefield conditions in World War I (WWI), those present at the German air raid on the harbor of Bari, Italy (WWII), and those engaged in manufacturing and handling vesicant agents during their military service. Thus, for the first time, VA will compensate certain veterans for illnesses, which may have been caused by their exposure to vesicants over a century ago.

VA policies generally authorize service-connection and compensation payments to veterans who were exposed to mustard gas and/or Lewisite and who suffer from a number of diseases or conditions: