Deseret News
Thursday, April 21, 1994

DID U.S. DO THOUSANDS OF EXPERIMENTS?

Cabinet secretaries unsure how many of the tests on humans may have been unethical or unsafe.
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By Lee Davidson, Washington Correspondent

A parade of Cabinet secretaries said Thursday they have found evidence of possibly thousands of government radiation experiments involving humans but are unsure how many may have been unethical or unsafe.

That came as the new Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was sworn in and began business. It will attempt to answer how ethical the experiments were, whether participants were fully informed and what should be done for them.

President Clinton has specifically ordered the committee to include a review of six experiments at Dugway Proving Ground in the 1940s and 1950s that used cluster bombs to spread radioactive metal. They were uncovered in December by the U.S. General Accounting Office, a research arm of Congress.

Earlier this month, the Deseret News uncovered another 27 radiation experiments at Dugway - and documents suggested that up to 600 more may have occurred.

They included dropping radioactive pellets from high-altitude aircraft, spreading radioactive specks with dust generators and exploding different shapes of radioactive metal to see which spread more contamination.

Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary - who created much of the recent controversy on radiation experiments by ordering documents on them released - said review by the group of doctors, scientists and ethics experts is needed to restore trust.

"I created a furor I did not expect," she said. "You are called on to make that right. . . . Someone had to stand between the government - untrusted on these topics - and the people."

She said too much of the media coverage on the topic has been sensational and overlooks the good that came from radiation experiments. She noted her husband - who died of cancer - had his life lengthened four years because of radiation research.

The secretaries of energy, veterans' affairs and health and human services, the attorney general and other officials at the Defense Department, CIA and NASA outlined what a four-month search of their records ordered by Clinton has found, including:
 

- The Defense Department said it has identified 1,760 possible human radiation experiments, but said the vast majority were clinical research conducted since 1974 in accordance "with established, non-experimental diagnostic procedures." It vowed to open all records without censorship to the committee.

- The Energy Department said it has found 2,500 records of human radiation experiments and placed them in public reading rooms. It also has found 270,000 records on nuclear testing and 7,000 records on human experiments that may or may not involve radiation.

That department has also fielded 21,000 calls from people who suspect they were victims of radiation experiments or who want more information about them, and letters from another 4,600.

- The Veteran's Affairs Department said it found that 49 VA hospitals may have conducted some radioisotopic research. It has fielded calls from 8,117 people concerned they were exposed to radiation while on active duty or at a VA hospital.

- Health and Human Services Department said it has contacted 27,000 institutions that conducted research for it, asking them not to destroy records on any radiation research.

- NASA said it found 50 scientific articles on radiation research it may have conducted that it is studying. It also participated in a study on 3,000 people from 45 institutions who were exposed to whole body radiation for medical treatment, or who were accidentally exposed.

It also participated in two other studies involving low levels of whole body radiation and another where "investigators put their own heads in high-energy particle beams to observe visual light flashes like those experienced by astronauts."

CIA said it had conducted no radiation experiments involving humans, although it may have been authorized to do so.

President Clinton also issued a statement saying the first meeting of the group "is another step by the administration to have an honest and open approach to its investigation of the Cold War-era experiments."

He added that the group must determine "whether the U.S. government treated its own citizens wrongfully through human experimentation . . . Only by dealing honestly with the past can we hope to build a better future."