Final report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.

  • United States. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
Date:
1996
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Final report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    We walked along and sprinkled the driveway. This was after dark. .. . The next thing, we went out and sprayed a considerable part of the field. . . . It was sprayed and then after a while sprayed again, so there was a second and third application. We were all in rubber, so we didn’t get wet with the stuff. . . then Staff [Warren] said that one of the things we needed was to see what would be the effect on the inside of a wooden building. So we took the end of the parking garage, and we sprinkled that up about as high as our shoulders, and somebody went inside and made mea- surements, and we sprinkled it again. Then we wanted to know about the inside of a brick building, and so we sprinkled the side of the animal house. . . . I had no idea what the readings were. . . | hadn’t the foggi- est idea of what we were doing, except that obviously it was something radioactive.*! Outdoor releases would put at risk unsuspect- ing citizens, even communities, as well as work- ers. [here were no clear policies and no history of practice to guide how these releases should be conducted. As we explore in chapter 11, this would be worked out by experts and officials in secret, on behalf of the workers and citizens who might be affected. THE ATOMIC ENERGY COMMISSION AND POSTWAR BIOMEDICAL RADIATION RESEARCH On August 6, 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the most sensitive of secrets became a symbol for the ages. A week later, the bomb was the subject of a government report that revealed to the public the uses of plutonium and uranium.” Immediately, debate began over the future of atomic energy. Could it be controlled at the international level? Should it remain entirely under control of the military? What role would industry have in developing its potential? Although American policymakers failed to establish international control of the bomb, they succeeded in creating a national agency with responsibility for the domestic con- trol of atomic energy. The most divisive question in the creation of the new agency that would hold sway over the atom was the role of the military. Following con- gressional hearings,the Atomic Energy Com- mission was established by the 1946 McMahon Act, to be headed by five civilian commission- ers. President Truman appointed David Lilien- thal, former head of the Tennessee Valley Authority, as the first chairman of the AEC, which took over responsibilities of the Manhat- tan Engineer District in January 1947. Also in 1947, under the National Security Act, the armed services were put under the au- thority of the newly created National Military Establishment (NME), to be headed by the sec- retary of defense. In 1949 the National Security Act was amended, and the NME was trans- formed into an executive department—the De- partment of Defense.*? The Armed Forces Special Weapons Project, which would coordi- nate the Defense Department’s responsibilities in the area of nuclear weapons, became the mili- tary heir to the Manhattan Engineer District. The Military Liaison Committee was also estab- lished as an intermediary between the Atomic Energy Commission and the Defense Depart- ment; it was also to help set military require- ments for the number and type of nuclear weap- ons needed by the armed services. _ Even before the AEC officially assumed respon- sibility for the bomb from the Manhattan Project, the Interim Medical Advisory Committee, chaired by former Manhattan Project medical director Stafford Warren, began meeting to map out an ambitious postwar biomedical research program. Former Manhattan Project contractors proposed to resume the research that had been interrupted by the war and to continue wartime radiation effects studies upon human subjects.*4 In May 1947, Lilienthal commissioned a blue-ribbon panel, the Medical Board of Review, that reported the following month on the agency s biomedical program. In strongly rec- ommending a broad research and training pro- gram, the board found the need for research “both urgent and extensive.” The need was “ur- gent because of the extraordinary danger of ex- posing living creatures to radioactivity. It is ur- gent because effective defensive measures (in the military sense) against radiant energy are not yet known.” The board, pointing to the AEC’s “ab- solute monopoly of new and important tools for research and important knowledge,” noted the commensurate responsibilities—both to em-