The Human Plutonium Injection Experiments

The Human Plutonium Injection Experiments

214

Los Alamos Science Number 23  1995

Did the patients who were injected with

plutonium in 1945 and 1946 give any

form of consent?  This is a question that

probably cannot be answered unequivo-

cally.  None of the people directly in-

volved in the experiments are living now,

and documents that would shed light one

way or another on this question are scat-

tered and incomplete.  Here, we review

some of the evidence that has come to

light coupled with a few speculative

thoughts.  

One fact is almost certain—the patients

were not told that they were being inject-

ed with plutonium.  Up until the end of

the war, the word plutonium was a se-

cret.  Even in the classified documents of

the time, plutonium was referred to with

the code words “49” and “product.”

Were the patients told they were being

injected with a radioactive substance?

Possibly not.  Although research with ra-

dioactive tracers was publicized before

the war, reference to radioactive materi-

als in the context of the Manhattan Pro-

ject may have been considered a security

risk as well.  But we do not know this for

sure.

Is informed consent still possible if the

patients are 

not told that the material

under study is radioactive plutonium?

Many experts feel the answer is yes, be-

cause these two words, especially in the

forties, would not have done anything to

help the patient assess the risk.  More-

over, it would be possible to give the pa-

tient a practical understanding of the risk

and benefits of the study without men-

tioning radioactivity or plutonium.  The

medical personnel in charge would em-

phasize that the patient would be in-

volved in a research study important to

the war effort, their participation was vol-

untary, and there was some personal

risk, which the researchers, to the best of

their knowledge, felt was small.  The na-

ture of the experiment could have been

described as follows:  

Each of you will be injected with a

material that will circulate through

your body and then be slowly excret-

ed.  Blood and other clinical tests will

be done and all your excreta will be

collected for a period of time.  Most

of the material will remain in your

body, making it a long-term risk, but

at a level close to what is considered

safe for people now working with the

material.  Previous experiments on

animals have given us an idea of the

acute toxicity of the material, and

what you receive will be hundreds of

times lower.  The purpose of the

study is to learn the fraction of mate-

rial excreted as a function of time so

we can tell when a worker is getting

too much in his body.

Would the investigators have told the pa-

tients something along these lines?

Quite possibly.  Participants were re-

quired to collect their urine and feces for

a month or more, as well as to submit to

clinical examinations, blood tests, dietary

regulations, and so forth.  Something

surely was said about the necessity for

these indignities, and what better way to

motivate them than to emphasize that the

study was important to the security of a

nation at war.  Because of the collection

period required for the study, patients

that would benefit from a stay in a hospi-

tal ward were more suitable than normal

subjects, such as workers or wives.

The Polonium studies. Along these

lines, we have some evidence of what

was told to patients at the Rochester site

in 1944 when the earlier human injection

study on polonium was done.  An article

in 

Biological Studies with Polonium, Radi-

um, and Plutonium, published in 1950

after the war, states:

The general problem was outlined to

a number of hospital patients with no

previous or probable future contact

with polonium.  Of the group who

volunteered as subjects, four men

and one woman were selected for

the excretion studies . . .

Taking these statements at face value

establishes a precedent for the manner in

which patients at Rochester were treated.

There is no reason why the investigators

could not have continued the same prac-

tice with the plutonium injectees.

Whether they did or not is not clear.

A 1946 memo. We now turn to evi-

dence that supports the possibility that no

consent was given.  About five months

after the last Rochester patient had been

injected, authority was being transferred

from the Manhattan Project to the new

Atomic Energy Commission, and re-

search programs involving human injec-

tions with radioactive tracers were being

scrutinized.  T. S. Chapman, Chief, Oper-

ations Branch, Research Division, in a

December 30, 1946, memo to the Area

Engineer in Berkeley, California, refers to

a proposal for research at the University

of California Hospital in San Francisco

and states that “preparations were being

made for injection in humans by Drs.

[Robert] Stone and [Earl] Miller [Stone

came to San Francisco after the war].”

The second paragraph continues:

These doctors state that the injec-

tions would probably be made

without the knowledge of the pa-

tient and that the physicians as-

sumed full responsibility.  Such in-

jections were not divergent from

the normal experimental method

in the hospital and the patient

signed no release.  A release was

held to be invalid.

The memo also states that the Medical

Division of the District Office had referred

reports on the project “to Colonel Cooney

[the new Medical Director of the Manhat-

tan Project] for review and approval is

withheld pending his opinion.”  In fact, six

days earlier, Colonel Nichols of the Man-

hattan Project, after discussions with

Consent in the Human Plutonium Injection Experiments

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