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Contaminated Nation - Inhunman Radiation Experiments - Adele Edisen - 14-04-2013
CounterPunch
Weekend Edition April 12-14, 2013
http://us.mg204.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.partner=sbc&.gx=1&.rand=44u76vlljoc5b
Contaminated Nation
Inhuman Radiation Experiments
by JOHN LaFORGE
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the declassification of top secret studies, done over a period of 60 years, in which the US conducted 2,000 radiation experiments on as many as 20,000 vulnerable US citizens.[i]
Victims included civilians, prison inmates, federal workers, hospital patients, pregnant women, infants, developmentally disabled children and military personnel most of them powerless, poor, sick, elderly or terminally ill. Eileen Welsome's 1999 exposé The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War details "the unspeakable scientific trials that reduced thousands of men, women, and even children to nameless specimens."[ii]
The program employed industry and academic scientists who used their hapless patients or wards to see the immediate and short-term effects of radioactive contamination with everything from plutonium to radioactive arsenic.[iii] The human subjects were mostly poisoned without their knowledge or consent.
An April 17, 1947 memo by Col. O.G. Haywood of the Army Corps of Engineers explained why the studies were classified. "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."[iv]
In one Vanderbilt U. study, 829 pregnant women were unknowingly fed radioactive iron. In another, 188 children were given radioactive iron-laced lemonade. From 1963 to 1971, 67 inmates in Oregon and 64 prisoners in Washington had their testicles targeted with X-rays to see what doses made them sterile.[v]
At the Fernald State School, mentally retarded boys were fed radioactive iron and calcium but consent forms sent to parents didn't mention radiation. Elsewhere psychiatric patients and infants were injected with radioactive iodine.[vi]
In a rare public condemnation, Clinton Administration Energy Sec. Hazel O'Leary confessed being aghast at the conduct of the scientists. She told Newsweek in 1994: "I said, Who were these people and why did this happen?' The only thing I could think of was Nazi Germany."[vii] None of the victims were provided follow-on medical care.
Scientists knew from the beginning of the 20th century that radiation can cause genetic and cell damage, cell death, radiation sickness and even death. A Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was established in 1993 to investigate charges of unethical or criminal action by the experimenters. Its findings were published by Oxford U. Press in 1996 as The Human Radiation Experiments.
The abuse of X-radiation "therapy" was also conducted throughout the '40s and '50s. Everything from ringworm to tonsillitis was "treated" with X-radiation because the long-term risks were unknown or considered tolerable.
Children were routinely exposed to alarmingly high doses of radiation from devices like "fluoroscopes" to measure foot size in shoe stores.[viii]
Nasal radium capsules inserted in nostrils, used to attack hearing loss, are now thought to be the cause of cancers, thyroid and dental problems, immune dysfunction and more.[ix]
Experiments Spread Cancer Risks Far and Wide
In large scale experiments as late as 1985, the Energy Department deliberately produced reactor meltdowns which spewed radiation across Idaho and beyond.[x] The Air Force conducted at least eight deliberate meltdowns in the Utah desert, dispersing 14 times the radiation released by the partial meltdown of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania in 1979.[xi]
The military even dumped radiation from planes and spread it across wide areas around and downwind of Oak Ridge, Tenn., Los Alamos, New Mexico, and Dugway, Utah. This "systematic radiation warfare program," conducted between 1944 and 1961, was kept secret for 40 years.[xii]
"Radiation bombs" thrown from USAF planes intentionally spread radiation "unknown distances" endangering the young and old alike. One such experiment doused Utah with 60 times more radiation than escaped the Three Mile Island accident, according to Sen. John Glen, D-Ohio who released a report on the program 20 years ago.[xiii]
The Pentagon's 235 above-ground nuclear bomb tests, and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are not officially listed as radiation experiments. Yet between 250,000 and 500,000 U.S. military personnel were contaminated during their compulsory participation in the bomb tests and the post-war occupation of Japan. [xiv]
Documents uncovered by the Advisory Committee show that the military knew there were serious radioactive fallout risks from its Nevada Test Site bomb blasts. The generals decided not to use a safer site in Florida, where fallout would have blown out to sea. "The officials determined it was probably not safe, but went ahead anyway," said Pat Fitzgerald a scientist on the committee staff.[xv]
Dr. Gioacchino Failla, a Columbia University scientist who worked for the AEC, said at the time, "We should take some risk… we are faced with a war in which atomic weapons will undoubtedly be used, and we have to have some information about these things."[xvi]
With the National Cancer Institute's 1997 finding that all 160,000 million US citizens (in the country at the time of the bomb tests) were contaminated with fallout, it's clear we did face war with atomic weapons our own.
John LaForge works for the nuclear watchdog group Nukewatch in Wisconsin and edits its Quarterly newsletter.
Adele
Contaminated Nation - Inhunman Radiation Experiments - Jan Klimkowski - 14-04-2013
In the mid-90s I worked with some of the victims who testified to the Presidential Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.
Some of the perpetrators also worked in "MK-ULTRA type" programmes for other agencies, often military.
The purpose of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, stuffed as it was with MK-ULTRA perpetrators, was to discredit and suppress the testimony of many of those individuals who had been experimented on by spook doctors from Tulane to Rochester.
Contaminated Nation - Inhunman Radiation Experiments - Adele Edisen - 16-04-2013
Jan,
Why can't certain people have any kind of moral base?
Adele
Contaminated Nation - Inhunman Radiation Experiments - Adele Edisen - 16-04-2013
Mon, April 15, 2013 6:39:08 AM
Helen Caldicott: Obama Approves Raising Permissible Levels of Nuclear Radiation in Drinking Water. Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket
From: Global Research E-Newsletter <newsletter@globalresearch.ca>
Obama Approves Raising Permissible Levels of Nuclear Radiation in Drinking Water. Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket
By Helen Caldicott
Global Research, April 14, 2013
Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/obama-approves-raising-permissible-levels-of-nuclear-radiation-in-drinking-water-civilian-cancer-deaths-expected-to-skyrocket/5331224
Civilian Cancer Deaths Expected to Skyrocket Following Radiological Incidents
The White House has given final approval for dramatically raising permissible radioactive levels in drinking water and soil following "radiological incidents," such as nuclear power-plant accidents and dirty bombs. The final version, slated for Federal Register publication as soon as today, is a win for the nuclear industry which seeks what its proponents call a "new normal" for radiation exposure among the U.S population, according Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
Issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the radiation guides (called Protective Action Guides or PAGs) allow cleanup many times more lax than anything EPA has ever before accepted. These guides govern evacuations, shelter-in-place orders, food restrictions and other actions following a wide range of "radiological emergencies." The Obama administration blocked a version of these PAGs from going into effect during its first days in office. The version given approval late last Friday is substantially similar to those proposed under Bush but duck some of the most controversial aspects:
In soil, the PAGs allow long-term public exposure to radiation in amounts as high as 2,000 millirems. This would, in effect, increase a longstanding 1 in 10,000 person cancer rate to a rate of 1 in 23 persons exposed over a 30-year period;
In water, the PAGs punt on an exact new standard and EPA "continues to seek input on this." But the thrust of the PAGs is to give on-site authorities much greater "flexibility" in setting aside established limits; and
Resolves an internal fight inside EPA between nuclear versus public health specialists in favor of the former. The PAGs are the product of Gina McCarthy, the assistant administrator for air and radiation whose nomination to serve as EPA Administrator is taken up this week by the Senate.
Despite the years-long internal fight, this is the first public official display of these guides. This takes place as Japan grapples with these same issues in the two years following its Fukushima nuclear disaster.
"This is a public health policy only Dr. Strangelove could embrace. If this typifies the environmental leadership we can expect from Ms. McCarthy, then EPA is in for a long, dirty slog," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the EPA package lacks a cogent rationale, is largely impenetrable and hinges on a series of euphemistic "weasel words."
"No compelling justification is offered for increasing the cancer deaths of Americans innocently exposed to corporate miscalculations several hundred-fold."
Reportedly, the PAGs had been approved last fall but their publication was held until after the presidential election. The rationale for timing their release right before McCarthy's confirmation hearing is unclear.
Since the PAGs guide agency decision-making and do not formally set standards or repeal statutory requirements, such as the Safe Drinking Water Act and Superfund, they will go into full effect following a short public comment period. Nonetheless, the PAGs will likely determine what actions take place on the ground in the days, weeks, months and, in some cases, years following a radiological emergency.
Copyright © 2013 Global Research
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GLOBAL RESEARCH | PO Box 55019 | 11 Notre-Dame Ouest | Montreal | QC | H2Y 4A7 | Canada
Contaminated Nation - Inhunman Radiation Experiments - Magda Hassan - 16-04-2013
The French have been doing this for ages as well. Redefining what is 'normal' and 'acceptable' exposure to radiation. Always redefining it upwards....
Contaminated Nation - Inhunman Radiation Experiments - Jan Klimkowski - 16-04-2013
Adele Edisen Wrote:Jan,
Why can't certain people have any kind of moral base?
Adele
Adele - a hugely important question, worthy of reams and reams in response.
When we lose our moral compass, we lose everything.
As shorthand, I think much of it comes down to a huge, unchecked, unaccountable ego and a catastrophic lack of empathy.
Or, as in the case of a Nazi or fundamentalist philosophy, an empathy which applies to "your people", or "your class", or "your blood", combined with the belief that everyone else is inferior and therefore not worthy of empathy.
Power and hypocrisy.
Contaminated Nation - Inhunman Radiation Experiments - Adele Edisen - 16-04-2013
Jan and Magda,
I think your answers are the best. The lack of ability to identify with other people (lack of empathy) must arise in some early childhood experience such as physical and emotional abuse, isolation from others, and other traumas too heavy for a child's mind to handle or understand. This is not an excuse for such lacks, but an attempt to understand how it might arise in some people.
There was a case here recently of a young man who attacked a number of people with a knife. It turned out that he claimed to have wanted to kill people at the age of eight. Something, or someone, may have harmed him in some way prior to his developing such an idea. Of course, it might also be possible that he saw actors on television 'killing' others, but the intensity of his emotions, which remained until early adulthood, has to have some kind of explanation to induce him to attack others who perhaps symbolized for him his earlier harm. I'm not a psychologist, but a student of the nervous system, and I can understand that some memories have an enormous persistence in the mind, conscious or subconscious. So many people grow up and become adults who never reflect on their own thinkingor feelings, but accept whatever ego defenses arise for them. It is habitual and usual to not question oneself and one's own feelings and reactions to events, other people, or even ideas. For some people it could mean death of one's own sense of self, the ego, in such a conflict.
I might add, too, that social norms and influences play a large role as well. Here in the US we have so many people owning guns, and this is permissible according to the law, even. If there were no guns or knives or any other lethal weapons available, perhaps we would have a much lower murder rate. More arguments, maybe, but far fewer deaths.
We, as individuals, cannot correct the social, cultural, and econmic problems of our societies, but understanding them and their causes could go some distance toward solving them - I hope. It would take a lot of people to understand these issues, and a lot more to eventually resolve them - a massive series of changes are required. Sorry to sound so pessimistic at times.
Adele