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The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War

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As a physicist, I learned early on in my education about the dangers of radioactive materials -- sadly, at the time I did not know that the information we had was gained through these heinous human experiments. This book, meticulously researched and believably written, is a convincing expose of the US Army's and the Federal Government's callous attitudes towards the people these two serve and are financially supported by -- the citizens of the US. It is also a history of atomic development. The author delves into the Manhattan Project and into the founding of Los Alamos. The entire book is written in an easy to understand style, with excellent explanations where explanations are needed, so that anyone could read this comfortably. The discomfort is in what was done to the victims, and the continuing publicity and attitude that the American government is the only MORAL government on earth. It is a very sad thing when the Federal Government shows itself to be dangerous to its citizens, but these experiments add to a growing mound of evidence. The author has done a thorough, dedicated, and compassionate job of investigating and documenting. We should be stirred into anger and action by the book, but it is a sad thing too that the American people can't be roused -- it is as if we are more interested in the fictional lives we see on our favorite TV shows than in our own, and our children's, lives. In a way, too, anyone downwind of the above ground nuclear tests (just about all of us, even the unborn and the unconceived) were guinea pigs of airborne radiation, and we are to this day from fallout. This book is about specific people who were directly injected or who ingested radioactive materials, but it is actually about all of us. Chilling things -- the horrible deterioration of the women who used liquid radium to paint the dials on watches and who licked the brushes, the fate of those who died during experimentation, and the coldness of the scientists and physicians (those meant to heal, not kill). This is the history of a horrible, unethical time in our country, and one cannot help wonder what other similar experiments are going on today, under the aegis of the military or of industry, all with the blessing of the government. One cannot help wondering, too, about the scientific community and its blind ambition for knowledge or its competition for the Nobel Prize at all costs. Anyone with any moral conscience should be shocked and wary after reading this book -- but please do read it. If the subject interests you, also check into The River, about the HIV epidemic and the scientists developing the polio vaccine for sub-Saharan Africa, which is another well-researched book exposing the threats posed by the scientific community.

Its not often that a book just explodes your safe old comfortable ways of thinking. To write such a book took enormous enormous courage. I am surprised it was published and not suppressed. Most authors just write books; some write books that may change the world. This is such a book. Bravo and thank you Ms Welsome. They say the truth is out there - well, its in here!

One of the first emotions this book elicits from readers is indignation and shock that physicians and government agencies could let the kind of experiments described in this book occur, and the treatment the patients received. This book will no doubt attract significant attention because of the radiation experiments described, but the book seems be more about the prevailing attitudes of physicians and scientists towards patients and research at the time. The activities that take place in the book occur during a time when science and medical research came first, and the patient second, and when physicians seemed as gods to their patients. As with other stories of "medical guinea pigs", emphasis is placed on those scientists and physicians for whom the patients just happens to be a convenient vessel to carry out experiments on. It ultimately boils down to a question of whether or not the means justifies the ends. Some of the experiments performed did provide useful information about the effects of radiation on humans, which produced significant advances in diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy and has helped to save and prolong the lives of countless others. Other experiments described sound poorly designed, and seem like they were performed just for the sake of seeing what would happen.

The book starts out with a descriptive history of the atomic weapons program and the Manhatten project, both on the weapons side and the medical side. Focus shifts to the human experiments conducted in the earliest days of atomic weapon research up until the 1970s. The author manages to provide a fascinating insight on the attitudes of the researchers as well as providing a description of the patients experimented on. Read the book and decide for yourself. Those were different times, different attitudes.

The release of Eileen Welsome's book "THE PLUTONIUM FILES- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War" in paperback will hopefully make this important book more accessible to the general public.

Detailing the effort of the US government to test the effects of Plutonium and other radioactive substances on people, the book outlines first the creation and evolution of the nuclear program that created the need for such testing, and then the US government's attempt to conduct such testing on its own citizens without their knowledge or informed consent. On strictly a superficial level there is much here which will attract the "x-files" crowd: Super-secret installations, eccentric scientists and far-fetched experiments on unsuspecting citizens. The kind of information that makes conspiracy theorists sit back from their computers in darkened little rooms, pump their fist in the air and utter that now-hackneyed phrase: "The truth is out there"

Fortunately for the reader, Welsome assiduously avoids such sensationalism and instead draws a largely compassionate picture of the US government's program and of the people who perpetrated it and who participated in it. Welsome's well structured and organized account of the growth of the plutonium testing programs involving critically ill persons across America during the Cold War years teems with information and insight, yet it manages to treat victim and perpetrator alike with a measure of respect and empathy that places this book well above the level of the standard "Shocking Expose". To her great credit Welsome goes beyond merely packaging the results of her extensive research and alarming discoveries in a "tell-all" book.

Certainly, THE PLUTONIUM FILES introduces information which, by its nature is bound to shock and disturb many, but the book also addresses the too-often forgotten issue of context: Was what happened acceptable by the standards of the time in which it occurred? In addressing this question Welsome probes more deeply into her subject, examining the duality, the moral dichotomy, inherent in the decision to implement this program. In a time when the world was still dealing with the results of a devastating world war and the possibility of another seemed likely the need for answers had an immediacy which could be ignored only at the world's peril. Hard decisions had to be made and extraordinary measures taken; Welsome is clearly cognizant of this as she assess each program and as she examines and balances the need against the action and its end result, the author treats the reader to some of her best analysis.

The Plutonium Files- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is certainly an important book; one which adds a significant chapter to the recorded history of the growth of atomic science. Despite its scientific topic and exhaustive sourcing the books narrative is direct and engaging, its organization straightforward and its conclusions informed and objective. A book that is well worth its price, Welsome's book would be a great Christmas present for everyone from an avid historian to the omni-present x-files fan; who will find much in here to confirm their most exotic fears. Overall an excellent book for which the author has received two much deserved awards.

Ms. Welsom has done an excellent job of presenting the available information on the use of human testing with radiation and radioactive materials. This book contains an excellent review of the early investigations on radiation and radioactivity as well as the development of the atomic bomb. At the core of this book, is the issue of ethics and scientific investigation. It is amazing to compare our present day attitude towards human rights with the Cold War era policy of secrecy. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in science and the responsibility of the government.

The research is thorough and the facts accurate as Eileen Welsome unearths the secrets of United States Government sponsored human medical experimentation. Doctors had no regard for ethics when they injected, fed, and otherwise exposed unwitting men, women, and children various known and suspected highly toxic substances. The family of CAL-3 (Elmer Allen), who was INJECTED with PLUTONIUM and whose left LEG was AMPUTATED and taken to 'radiological research,' is grateful to Ms. Welsome for lifting the cover of this deep dark secret. The truth, buried for too long by the scientific community and our United States Government, is now on display.

Ms. Welsome is to be congratulated on her perspicacity and persistance in uncovering the radiation experiments; however this is only the tip of the ice-berg. The Department of Defense and its secretary through the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board demanded and funded research utilizing enlisted military personnel, usually recruits, as subjects for epidemiological studies, particularly in the area of acute respiratory infections and their sequelae. Thousands of recruits were involved wihout their knowledge or permission and officer personnel were pointedly excluded.These studies were conducted by military physicians under the direction of some of the most prominent academicians from the most prestigious medical schools. The vast majority were not injured by their participation although some were undoubtedly crippled by subsequent heart disease. To my knowledge, there has never been an attempt to determine the extent of the damage to those individuals. Such a study would be interesting.

Don't wait as long as I did to read this very important book. Every thinking person needs to know what can happen when the apparatchiks get out of control. Secret experiments are done in hospitals. People are lied to and lured into treatments they don't need. Some are killed by the state without trial. And its all for the good of the state, not the people who are "treated." Russian, American and allied troops fought World War II to see that these things did not happen ever again. The Nuremberg Trials resulted in the Nuremberg Medical Code. The Code forbids medical experimentation on non-consenting citizens. In today's Russia the kind of activity talked about in Eileen Welsome's book would be outside the pale of what is now considered civilized behavior.

So where did all the nefarious activity Ms. Welsome uncovered take place? The United States. Who were the culprits, the Dr. Frankensteins? They were doctors in some of America's most prestigious teaching hospitals. Whose government covered up the scandals for 50 years? Ours. Read this book right now and never let the government lie to us like this again. Our government lied to us, our doctors lied to us, our hospitals lied to us. All three experimented on our fellow citizens. This book tells us to take care. It tells us to watch our decision-makers carefully.

Ms. Welsome's book The Plutonium Files reminds us once again that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty (and so it would seem are health and longevity)." She deserves all the accolades she has received and our thanks.

I have been reading books about human experimentation due to my work in the Deaf community and medical school. Since I am Deaf and many of us who are 'disabled' are concerned about attitudes of others which consider us less than human or unable to make a worthwhile contribution to the human race...we often discuss the impact that disability, chronic illness, and limited education has on the ability to make informed consent, and also the attitudes of doctors towards us who may be less than whole. Ms. Welsome totally supported mine and others with disabilities and illnesses fears that there are those in the military and in the medical fields who feel we are fair game for any 'experiment' they feel interest in pursuing. It isn't just the wackos like Kervorkian we have to watch out for, but the government and the established medical community who in spite of the Nuremburg Code went ahead and performed and supported experiments which had no firm basis in medical alleviation of pain or possible exposure. Ms. Welsome is an exquisite writer and more than deserved the Pulitzer prize. This book should be required reading for all medical students in medical ethics classes, and I am certainly recommending it to those in the Disability rights community so that we can protect our communities from these fanatics and prevent the Disabled Holocaust from happening again in the United States. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh, klsst23@pitt.edu

What makes criminals worse than violent serial rapists and mass murderers? What can pale the war crimes committed by armies of all sides of wars? It is when self-important humans, who were convinced by God knows whom, that they in their majesty can play God to all others. These malformed humans have been educated beyond their capabilities to think rationally. These special criminals, American scientists, "The Good Guys.", experimented not only on human guinea pigs, but also with the genes of their descendants. And to show their disdain for their laboratory rats, these Igor-like experimenters often didn't even bother to follow thru with their nighmarish whimsies. They must have been bored and went on to something else. What a yawn it must have been. Never mind how they tortured countless individuals. These brilliant scientists have not only poisoned the chromosomes of untold families, cities, and possibly the whole world, but they have very possibly given our Mother Earth a cancer from which we humans shall suffer, and are suffering. But not to worry. The Earth's disease has a half-life of only 24,000 years. The publishing of Eileen Welsome's book is like a miracle. I can't believe the book was allowed to come to light. One of the best books I've ever read. I hope she comes out with more. I can't believe that our great nation hasn't graduated to better things.