[theoneswithoutnames] Plutonium Files: How the US secretly fed radioactivity to thousands of Americans

[Guest guest]

Milo

Wed, 05 May 2004 14:54:19 -0400

Plutonium Files: How the US secretly fed radioactivity to thousands

of Americans

 

Wednesday, May 5th, 2004

Plutonium Files: How the U.S. Secretly Fed

Radioactivity to Thousands of Americans

 

http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/05/1357230

 

Denver-based journalist Welsome reveals how as

a reporter for the tiny Albuquerque Tribune

(circulation 35,000) she uncovered one of the

country's great Cold War secrets: the U.S. government

had knowingly exposed thousands of human Guinea pigs

with radiation poisoning including 18 Americans who

had plutonium injected directly into their

bloodstream. In a Massachusetts school, seventy-three

disabled children were spoon-fed oatmeal laced with

radioactive isotopes.

 

In an upstate New York hospital, an eighteen-year-old

woman believing she was being treated for a pituitary

disorder, was injected with plutonium.

 

At a Tennessee clinic, 829 pregnant women were served

" vitamin cocktails " containing radioactive iron, as

part of their regular treatment.

 

No these are not acts of terrorism by common

criminals.

 

These are just some of the secret human radiation

experiments that the U.S. government conducted on

unsuspecting Americans for decades as part of its atom

bomb program.

 

In a gruesome plot that spanned 30 years, doctors and

scientists working with the US atomic weapons program,

exposed thousands of unwilling and unknowing Americans

to radiation poisoning to study its effects.

 

For years, the experiments by the U.S. government and

the identities of their human guinea pigs were covered

up.

 

Then after a six-year investigation, investigative

reporter Welsome uncovered the names of 18

people who were injected with plutonium in the 1940s

without their knowledge by federal government

scientists. In 1993, she published her finding in The

Albuquerque Tribune and later received the Pulitzer

Prize for her work.

 

Another six years later, Welsome published " The

Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments

in the Cold War. " The book gives a detailed account of

the unspeakable scientific trials conducted by the

U.S. government that reduced thousands of American

men, women, and even children to nameless specimens.

 

* Welsome, Pulitzer prize-winning reporter

and author of " The Plutonium Files: America's Secret

Medical Experiments in the Cold War. "

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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