The leader of the Third Reich met his fate on April 30, 1945
In the wake of the infamous Manhattan Project's discovery of nuclear energy's potential as a weapon, thousands of studies, tests, and experiments on the destructive power, immediate effects, and long-term side effects of nuclear radiation were conducted in order to better understand this new and revolutionary phenomenon. It can be argued that the heyday of these tests began on July 16, 1945 with the Trinity test. The Trinity test was the first-ever detonation of a nuclear bomb, deep in the desert of New Mexico, far from any human settlements.
The primary government organization that funded and oversaw these studies was the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), signed into effect by then-president Harry S. Truman in 1946. Dr. Joseph Hamilton (pictured) was in charge of all human radiation experiments conducted by the AEC.
While the Trinity test was conducted as humanely as possible, with nominal effects on any humans, the studies conducted afterwards focused more and more on radiation's effects on people. Almost all of these thousands of experiments were organized and funded by the United States federal government, and without the knowledge of their test subjects.
The first person to be injected with plutonium, an African-American construction worker named Ebb Cade, was given 4.7 micrograms of plutonium after being admitted to a Tennessee hospital for serious injuries sustained in a car accident. The participating doctors, affiliated with the Manhattan Project, refused to treat Cade's serious wounds and fractures until the plutonium experiment was well underway, and took no less than 15 of his teeth in order to trace the progress of the plutonium within his body. Cade died in 1953 at the age of 63 from heart failure caused by an arrhythmia, most likely brought on by the intense doses of radiation he had received as a young man.
The most notorious of these experiments, made famous by Ellen Welsome's 1993 investigative reporting, was the Manhattan Project's plutonium injections carried out upon unwitting members of the public.
Funded by a subagency within the Department of Defense (DOD), with the cooperation of radiologists at the University of Cincinnati Hospital, the experiments were conducted without the knowledge or consent of the patients. The DOD conducted the experiment in order to get a sense of intense radiation's long-term effects on humans, so that they would be better educated in the event of sending military personnel into nuclear battlegrounds. Most of the experiments' subjects died unnecessarily painful deaths.
The women studied were not made aware of the dangerous radioactive material entering their bodies, that is until many of the children born to their irradiated mothers showed severe physical and psychological defects.
The medical branch of Nashville's Vanderbilt University conducted a harmful and expansive study throughout the late 1940s that involved giving radioactive iron supplements to nearly 800 pregnant women, mostly poor and uneducated, who visited the school's prenatal clinic.
The participating professionals gave iodine-131 to the unwitting mothers-to-be in order to deliberately cause miscarriages. The aborted fetuses and embryos were then studied to see how quickly it took the dangerous radioactive substance to breach the womb's placental barrier and begin affecting the embryos inside.
In 1971, 88 people with advanced stages of cancer, mostly from impoverished communities, were subjected to a dangerous and outdated therapy technique known as full-body irradiation. Full-body irradiation, by then, had already been proven to indiscriminately kill cells within one's body, and not just cancer cells.
In 1953, the AEC conducted further radiation experiments on pregnant women, this time at the University of Iowa. Here, the women were administered a large and unnecessary dose of iodine-131, the chemical largely to blame for the long-term health issues associated with nuclear meltdowns.
Albert Stevens was once an ordinary house painter in California, but today he is known as the most radioactive man in the world. Stevens 'earned' this title by receiving more accumulative injections of radioactive substances than any other individual on Earth. All, of course, without his knowledge or consent.
The Walter E. Fernald School in Massachusetts, more of an asylum for children with disabilities than a school, was the site of many atrocities against the most vulnerable members of the nation. One of the worst cases occurred between 1946 and 1952, and was funded by the United States government.
Virginia researchers, in collaboration with the AEC and the US Army, ran experiments on the predominantly African-American group of test subjects ranging from experimental antibiotics, even more (and this time deliberate) burning, and injections of radioactive phosphorus that were reportedly 50 times greater than the safe dose for a healthy person. Many of the subjects died agonizing deaths, when they otherwise most likely could have been saved.
Back in California, the AEC conducted another experiment with full-body irradiation with the help of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center.
In San Francisco, just as in Cincinnati, these tests were conducted to help gather data and information for the US military. The victims this time, however, weren't patients suffering from advanced cancer, but 29 individuals, some of whom were suffering from arthritis, but were otherwise healthy.
The AEC teamed up with the popular Quaker Oats brand of oatmeal in order to feed no less than 73 developmentally disabled children radioactive oatmeal, filled with dangerous radioisotopes. The children chosen for the experiment were told they were picked to join a "science club," and were not told of the incredibly dangerous materials they were ingesting.
Being a patient in a hospital's burn unit is already quite painful enough, but a number of burn victims admitted to the Medical College of Virginia were forced through an exceptionally traumatizing experience.
In 1957, 29 nuclear bombs were tested at the isolated Nevada Test Site under the name Operation Plumbbob. While no civilians were directly affected by the explosions, some 18,000 members of the US military were exposed to intense radiation over the course of the operation.
Prisons in the United States and around the world have historically been some of researchers and scientists' favorite places to conduct dangerous, painful, and otherwise unethical experiments on humans.
The Desert Rock exercises, which took place under the umbrella of Operation Plumbbob, were conducted in order to test and observe the behavior of military personnel in the event of a nuclear explosion. Reflexes, obedience, immediate harm, and psychological effects were all studied.
For six years between 1948 and 1954, physicians at Johns Hopkins placed small radium rods into the noses of no less than 582 Maryland schoolchildren as an alternative to a traditional adenoidectomy—a surgery performed to alleviate symptoms of sleep apnea. It was many years until most of the children, now grown up, started to show severe signs of radiation damage.
Despite being considered one of the most important medical institutions in the United States, Johns Hopkins Hospital is no stranger to horrific and unethical practices.
In the early 1960s, in the Utah State Prison, 10 incarcerated men had their blood drawn without much of an explanation as to why. Shortly afterwards, after their blood had been mixed with unknown radioactive materials, the inmates had their blood reinjected into their bodies. Years after their confusing experience, at least two of the prisoners were horrified to witness the severe birth defects of their children conceived after the experiment, caused by the radiation in their blood.
A tragically common experiment conducted on incarcerated men in multiple prisons around the United States was testicular radiation. Joseph Hamilton himself, the man in charge of all human experimentation carried out by the AEC, claimed that these particular experiments "had a little of the Buchenwald touch," alluding to the horrific human experiments conducted by the Nazis in the Buchenwald concentration camp.
In one test carried out in prisons across the Pacific Northwest, numerous men were subjected to testicular irradiation, studied for some time, and then sterilized in order to prevent a generation of "radiation-induced mutants" (in the words of one surgeon). In another test, in Washington state, 232 men were given the same 'treatment,' but were not sterilized. Some of these men went on to father children with severe and painful birth defects.
Sources: (Atomic Heritage Foundation) (AP News) (Pennsylvania State University)
See also: What to do if a worst-case nuclear scenario actually happens
In May 1945, Albert Stevens was first admitted to UC San Francisco's hospital for the removal of non-cancerous gastric ulcers. Stevens was summarily misdiagnosed with advanced cancer, making him a perfect candidate for the Manhattan Project's plutonium experiments. On the orders of Joseph Hamilton, Stevens was injected with "many times the so-called lethal textbook dose of plutonium," according to a witness. Stevens was never told that he didn't actually have cancer, and lived until the age of 78. His 'cancer treatment' continued until his death in 1966, with the total amount of plutonium administered throughout his lifetime totaling 60 times more the legally allowed limit for a human.
Few events in modern history are able to hold a candle to the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the United States Air Force dropped the first (and still only) atomic bombs ever used in warfare on these two doomed cities in Japan, the faces of war and humanity changed forever. No single weapon had ever showcased such incredible killing power, and it became immediately clear that the Cold War that followed the end of World War II would not only be a war of ideologies, but also a race to nuclear supremacy.
With maximum nuclear capability and knowledge becoming priority number one for the United States, government officials, researchers, and scientists all silently agreed to use any means necessary to grasp the astonishing power of nuclear energy and radiation as soon as possible. In this quest for nuclear supremacy, countless civilians, from children to inmates, from cancer patients to expecting mothers, were exploited, harmed, and sometimes killed in the name of scientific progress. The decades following the end of World War II, rife with secretive and dangerous radiation experiments, make for one of the darkest eras of the history of the United States.
Read on to find out more about the numerous ways US citizens were used in the study of radiation.
The history of government radiation experiments on US citizens
The dark story of the Atomic Energy Commission's exploitation of everyday people
LIFESTYLE History
Few events in modern history are able to hold a candle to the nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When the United States Air Force dropped the first (and still only) atomic bombs ever used in warfare on these two doomed cities in Japan, the faces of war and humanity changed forever. No single weapon had ever showcased such incredible killing power, and it became immediately clear that the Cold War that followed the end of World War II would not only be a war of ideologies, but also a race to nuclear supremacy.
With maximum nuclear capability and knowledge becoming priority number one for the United States, government officials, researchers, and scientists all silently agreed to use any means necessary to grasp the astonishing power of nuclear energy and radiation as soon as possible. In this quest for nuclear supremacy, countless civilians, from children to inmates, from cancer patients to expecting mothers, were exploited, harmed, and sometimes killed in the name of scientific progress. The decades following the end of World War II, rife with secretive and dangerous radiation experiments, make for one of the darkest eras of the history of the United States.
Read on to find out more about the numerous ways US citizens were used in the study of radiation.