CENSORED IN 1995: 1947 AEC HUMAN RADIATION EXPERIMENTS MEMO

CENSORED IN 1995:

As the secrecy ban is finally lifted, the unethical, immoral, and illegal Cold War radiation experiments on unsuspecting humans by the Department of Defense are illuminated by a most remarkable document that has emerged virtually unnoticed.

Dated April 17, 1947, an Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) memorandum, stamped SECRET and addressed to the attention of a Dr. Fidler, at the AEC in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, reads in part as follows: “Subject: MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS ON HUMANS

“1. It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such work field should be classified `secret’.”

The memorandum was issued over the name of O.G. Haywood, Jr., Colonel, Corps of Engineers. Apparently it was effective, for it was not until November 15, 1993, when The Albuquerque Tribune (circulation: 35,000) broke the story which was then catapulted into the national headlines by the forthright admissions and initiatives of Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary. Eileen Welsome’s three-part investigative series for the Tribune later won her a Pulitzer Prize.

Sources for this story were Secrecy & Government Bulletin, March 1994, and Columbia Journalism Review, March/April 1994. The revelation of the 1947 AEC memo was cited as the #6 censored story of 1995.

REPORTED IN 2011:

The Associated Press reported on 2/27/11 that “Shocking as it may seem, U.S. Government doctors one thought it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates. Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital.

“Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission. The meeting was triggered by the government’s apology last fall for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.

“U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in the United States — studies that often involved making healthy people sick. …”

Those who cannot remember the past