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when allied troops liberated the first nazi concentration camps in 1945
they uncovered horrors beyond imagination over the 12 years of the third reichs existed the
regime had arrested and imprisoned millions of jews romani poles homosexuals communists and
other so-called undesirables across germany and occupied europe some were used as slave labor in
service of german industry while others were sent directly to death camps like auschwitz-birkenau
and trablinka for extermination by gas chamber still others were subjected to cruel inhuman
experiments such as being frozen in ice baths to study hypothermia given infected wounds to
develop better battlefield treatments or injected with caustic chemicals to sterilize their sexual
organs to prevent such horrors from ever being repeated in 1947 an american tribunal laid out
the nuremberg code a set of ethical guidelines for conducting scientific research on human
subjects among the codes ten core principles are that voluntary informed consent must always be
obtained from the subjects and that the experiment should yield results which are useful to society
and unobtainable by other means and that the degree of risk to the subject should never
exceed the humanitarian benefit expected from the results of the treatment but the demands of war
so often override such high-minded principles and as the second world war gave way to the cold war
the united states began conducting its own series of highly unethical human experiments
and among the most secret and insidious of these projects involved injecting unwitting civilians
with radioactive plutonium when the manhattan project was launched in early 1942 scientists
knew of only one material which could be used to build an atomic bomb the fissile isotope
uranium-235 comprising only 0.72 percent of natural uranium u-235 had to be separated from the
more common but non-fissile isotope u-238 in order to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel this was a
slow painstaking process and despite running three massive enrichment facilities round the clock at
top secret site y in oak ridge tennessee manhattan project scientists doubted they could produce
enough u-235 to build even a single bomb before january 1945. thankfully there was an alternative
plutonium discovered in february 1941 by chemist glenn seborg at uc berkeley plutonium does not
occur in nature and is produced by bombarding u238 with neutrons this allows it to be bred in nuclear
reactors far more efficiently than u-235 can be enriched construction thus began in february 1943
on the pilot-scale x-10 plutonium production reactor at oak ridge which served as the testbed
for the larger industrial scale bd and f reactors at site w in hanford washington but as oak ridge
and hanford geared up for full-scale plutonium production the manhattan project directors faced
a looming crisis up until this point plutonium had only ever been produced in minuscule quantities
using cyclotron particle accelerators and little was known about the health risks this exotic new
material would pose to the hundreds of workers who would soon be handling it every day not only
was plutonium potentially toxic but as an alpha particle emitter even a small quantity absorbed
into the body could expose workers to dangerous amounts of radiation and long-term health risks
like cancer in order to quantify this risk and develop procedures to protect workers in july 1942
four project health sections were established a chicago section under robert stone a los alamos
section under louis hempelman a berkeley section under joseph hamilton and a rochester section
under wright langham the health secretary's first order of business was to establish
safety procedures and exposure limits for workers handling plutonium laboratory floors were coated
in linoleum to facilitate dust management workers were made to wear rubber gloves and respirators
and eating in the labs was banned to prevent plutonium from being absorbed through the skin
lungs or digestive tract lacking empirical data on exposure limits the medical section
researchers based their initial assumptions on the behavior of better known metals like radium
and uranium radium which was once widely used to make luminous paint for clock and watch dials
mimics the element calcium and is deposited mainly in the bones where it can irradiate the marrow
resulting in cancers like leukemia and for more on this please do check out our previous video
glowing in the dark the radium girls and does anything radioactive actually glow bright green
based on this existing data robert stone at the chicago section estimated that 20 to 30 micrograms
of plutonium constituted a lethal dose and set the maximum exposure limit for workers at 5 micrograms
still many questions remained as to how exactly plutonium entered the body where in the body it
was deposited and how much was excreted versus retained by the body there was also the problem
of monitoring work as plutonium absorption while radium exposure could be monitored
by measuring the amount of radioactive radon gas expelled by the lungs this was not possible with
plutonium it was also not possible to simply run a radiation detector over a worker's body as the
alpha radiation emitted by plutonium was almost all absorbed by the surrounding tissues this left
only three available monitoring methods nose swabs which estimated the amount of plutonium absorbed
by the lungs blood analysis and urine analysis but the researchers still needed empirical data
on how plutonium levels in the nose blood and urine correlated to levels in the body itself
so in january 1944 the first precious micrograms of reactive bred plutonium from oak ridge were
shipped to berkeley and chicago for use in animal experiments these studies involved administering
small doses of plutonium to rats mice rabbits and dogs via inhalation ingestion and intravenous
intramuscular and subcutaneous injection are measuring the plutonium content of their urine
and feces over a period of several days these experiments yielded a number of surprising results
for example it was discovered that very little plutonium is absorbed by the digestive system or
through the skin conversely around 20 of inhaled plutonium was absorbed into the body while 25
was retained in the lungs themselves the only other major absorption route was wound
contamination such as in the hypothetical case of a flask of plutonium solution shattering
in a worker's hand and puncturing the skin tests also revealed that unlike radium 99 percent of
which is absorbed through the bones only around 50 of plutonium is bone seeking the rest being
deposited largely in the liver and kidneys and while the acute radiation toxicity of plutonium
was found to be less severe than anticipated the acute lethal dose being between 400 and 4000
micrograms per kilogram of body mass the metal was significantly more persistent in the body than
other radioactive metals like radium whereas around 20 of absorbed radium is excreted by
the body within one day the initial excretion rate of plutonium was found to be less than 10
per day quickly dropping to barely 0.01 this persistence made plutonium a significantly
greater health hazard than the manhattan project directors had initially suspected but there was
a bigger problem the volatile ratio between plutonium in the urine and plutonium in the
blood was found to vary widely between different species of laboratory animals making these results
difficult to apply to humans furthermore there seemed to be no correlation between
plutonium levels in nose swabs and in blood and urine tests throwing the utility of the former
test into question the health section researchers quickly realized that animal experiments were not
enough if they were to develop acute human models for plutonium absorption and excretion they would
have to experiment on actual humans but there was a catch at the time the very existence of
plutonium was such a closely guarded secret that even in highly classified documents it was only
ever referred to as products or by the code number 49. test subjects could therefore not be told what
they were being injected with or the purpose of the experiment making informed consent impossible
consequently in a march 1945 meeting between lewis hempelman and lieutenant colonel heimer friedl of
the manhattan project medical section the decision was made to conduct the experiments on civilian
hospital patients with terminal conditions such that the subjects were likely to die long before
the effects of plutonium became apparent thus began one of the darkest chapters in the history
of american medical science the first unwitting participant in the plutonium experiment was ebb
cade a 55 year old black man working as a cement mixer at oak ridge on march 23 1945 cade sustained
severe leg and arm fractures in an automobile accident and was admitted to oak ridge hospital
there medical section researcher harold hodge judged that as a well-developed well-nourished
colored male kade was an ideal test subject and assigned him the code number hp12 h standing for
human product on april the 10th cade was injected with 4.7 micrograms of plutonium and over the next
42 days doctors collected samples of his blood urine and feces which was sent to los alamos
for analysis the doctors also refused to set his broken bones for 10 days so bones arms could be
taken and extracted 15 of his perfectly healthy teeth kade must have known something nefarious
was going on for he eventually fled his hospital room in the middle of the night and never returned
he died of heart failure in april 1953 at the age of 63. the next test subject was a 68 year old
male patient at billings hospital in chicago with advanced metastatic cancer who was only
suspected to live another 160 days known only by his experimental designation of chi-1 the patient
was injected on april 26 1945 with 6.5 milligrams of plutonium as before urine and fecal samples
were collected daily until his death whereupon his body was autopsied and bone and tissue
samples were collected for analysis the third test subject was albert stephens a 58 year old
california house painter who in may 1945 was diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer
and given six months to live on may the 14th stevens who was given the experimental designation
cal1 was admitted to the university of california hospital in san francisco and injected with one
microgram of plutonium-238 an isotope 276 times more radioactive than the plutonium-239 used in
nuclear weapons but when stevens underwent surgery to remove some of his tumors it was
discovered that his doctors had made a huge mistake stevens did not in fact have cancer
but rather a benign stomach ulcer nevertheless manhattan project scientists continued to monitor
his urine plutonium levels calling him back to the hospital several times a year under the pretense
of monitoring his non-existent cancer amazingly despite the dangerous amounts of plutonium in his
body stevens appeared to suffer no ill effects and died of heart disease in 1966 at the age of 79.
over the intervening 21 years stevens is estimated to have absorbed some 64 sieverts of radiation the
highest dose known to have been survived by any human and for more on how radiation exposure works
please do check out our previous video how much radiation can the human body take their grossly
unethical nature aside the results of these first three experiments proved extremely valuable
as the animal studies had suggested the excretion rate for plutonium was extremely low compared to
other metals like radium and up to six times lower in humans than in animals this meant that nearly
all the plutonium absorbed by the human body was retained for decades with joseph hamilton of the
berkeley group estimating its metabolic half-life that is the time for half the plutonium to be
excreted to be nearly 50 years based on these results hamilton recommended that the maximum
exposure of plutonium workers be lowered from 5 micrograms to 1 microgram but the experimental
results weren't perfect with hamilton noting that the test subjects exhibited certain physiological
abnormalities for example ebcd and chi-1 exhibited unusually low urination rates and abnormal kidney
function likely the result of chronic gonorrhea and old age respectively as these subjects did
not accurately represent the young healthy manhattan project workers who were regularly
handling plutonium in october 1945 it was decided to proceed with another round of human experiments
this time the study would be far more controlled with subjects carefully selected to ensure their
kidneys liver and bone marrow were functioning normally these subjects would be monitored for
10 days prior to injecting them with plutonium to determine the baseline level of radioactivity
in their bodies and placed on a standard diet in order to eliminate as many variables as possible
as before however few were informed that they were participating in potentially dangerous research
and those who were were only given the vagus idea of the nature and risks of the experiment over the
next year a further 15 patients were secretly injected with plutonium 11 in rochester two in
chicago and two at berkeley orbit two were over 45 years of age and suffered from chronic or terminal
conditions like cancer als cushing's syndrome and addison's disease criteria specifically chosen so
the radiological effects of the plutonium would not become apparent until the end of their natural
lives unlike in the first trial these subjects were injected with multiple regular doses of
plutonium until they died with one of the chicago subjects a young man with hodgkin's lymphoma
receiving a whopping total of 95 micrograms but it is the case of simeon shaw one of the
two remaining subjects which perhaps epitomizes the cruel and cynical nature of the whole project
on february 6 1946 1946 four-year-old shaw a resident of the town of double australia
fell out of his hammock and struck his right knee ten days later his mother frieda noticed
a large rapidly growing mass on the inside of his right thigh which was eventually diagnosed
as the rare and aggressive bone cancer osteogenic sarcoma with no treatment available in australia
frieda shaw attempted to bring her son to the united states only to find that no commercial
flights were available fortuitously the red cross intervened and secured a seat for the shores
aboard a u.s army air force transport bound for san francisco simeon and his mother arrived in the
united states on april 26 and were driven by red cross ambulance to the university of california
hospital there simian was subjected to a series of injections and bone and tissue biopsies as part of
his cancer treatment or so frieda shaw was told as you might have guessed simeon code named cal2
by manhattan project researchers had actually been injected with 2.7 micrograms of plutonium and
once his urine analysis was completed seven days later he was discharged from hospital
without any further treatment or follow-up the boy and his mother returned to australia where simeon
died a month later on january the 6th 1947. the plutonium injection experiments finally came to an
end in late 1946 when control of the united states nuclear arsenal was transferred from the army
to the civilian atomic energy commission now the department of energy as the aec's greater burden
of transparency and the potential to expose the plutonium experiments to public scrutiny in april
of 1947 the commission issued a memo recommending that all human experimentation remain top secret
as a result no follow-ups were conducted on the surviving 11 test subjects who lived
out the rest of their lives unaware that they had been injected with a dangerous radioactive
substance in 1950 joseph hamilton wrote an additional memo to the aec recommending that
all further human experiments be discontinued as well quipping darkly that the proposed studies a
little of the buchenwald touch but hamilton's plea was ignored and over the following decades the
united states government would conduct dozens of secret radiation experiments on its own citizens
in boston 11 hospital patients were injected with uranium in chicago 102 people received injections
of radioactive strontium and cesium in nashville hundreds of pregnant women were given various
radioactive mixtures to gauge their effect on their unborn children and at the fernand state
school in massachusetts 74 developmentally delayed boys were fed oatmeal laced with radioactive
traces as part of a study sponsored by mit and the quaker oats company in no case was informed
consent properly obtained from the subjects of these experiments while the raw data of the 1940s
plutonium injection experiment was eventually made available to the scientific community
thanks to the aec's policy of secrecy the names of the subjects and many of the details of the
experiments remained classified for decades then in 1993 investigative journalist eileen wilson
published a pulitzer prize-winning series of articles in the albuquerque tribune exposing
the long forgotten experiments and revealing the identities of five of the test subjects
the articles which later formed the basis for the 1999 book the plutonium files caused a public
uproar prompting u.s president bill clinton to form the advisory committee on human radiation
experiments headed by secretary of energy hazel o'leary the committee made thousands of previously
classified documents available to the public and launched a full investigation into the past deeds
of the doe the committee's report released in 1995 determined that even according to the standards of
the time the plutonium injection studies failed entirely to obtain proper informed consent from
the subjects concluding the egregiousness of the disrespectful way in which the subject
of the injection experiments and their families were treated it heightened by the fact that the
subjects were hospitalized patients their being ill and institutionalized left them vulnerable
to exploitation these facts will force historians to rewrite part of the history of the dawn of the
atomic age the report failed to make much mention of a public impact having the misfortune of being
released on the same day as the o.j simpson trial verdict however as a result of its findings the
families of many of the test subjects were awarded financial compensation by the government and in
1997 federal laws were passed prohibiting secret scientific experimentation on humans and upholding
the principles of the nuremberg code regarding informed consent yeah while the plutonium
injection experiments have become a classic example of unethical cold war science they do have
their modern day defenders these include patricia durbin a physicist at lawrence livermore national
laboratory who in the 1970s was among the first scientists to re-examine the original experimental
data durbin argued that safaris can be determined the experiments did no actual harm to the test
subjects all 18 died from causes unrelated to the injected plutonium with eight living
at least twice as long as the minimum four-year interval for the development of radiation-induced
cancer indeed several subjects are known to have actually benefited from the experiments including
hp6 a woman with addison's disease who through her experiment-related hospital stays was able to
receive proper hormone treatments and hp3 a woman suffering for severe weight loss who thanks to the
experiments was diagnosed with severe depression treated and went on to live another 37 years
as for the issue of informed consent durbin argued that the subjects were told as much as possible
given the extreme secrecy surrounding the use of plutonium and justified the experiment as a whole
on the basis of the valuable medical information obtained saying quote they were always conducted
on somebody who had some kind of terminal disease who was going to undergo an amputation
these things were not done to plague people or make them sick and miserable they were done not
to kill people they were done to gain potentially valuable information the fact that they were
injected and provided this valuable data should almost be a sort of memorial rather than something
to be ashamed of it doesn't bother me to talk about the plutonium injectees because of the value
of the information they provided so i really hope you found that video interesting if you
did please do hit that thumbs up button below do not forget to subscribe and thank you for watching