Final report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments.
- United States. Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
- Date:
- 1996
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Final report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![ments such as loyalty oaths and noncommunist affidavits, Chairman Lilienthal declared, would have a chilling effect on scientific discussion and could damage the AEC’s ability to recruit a new generation of scientists.*4 The reach of the law, the Advisory Committee for Biology and Medi- cine agreed, was like a “blighting hand; for thoughtful men now know how political domi- nation can distort free inquiry into a malignant servant of expediency and authoritarian abstrac- tion.”4° Nonetheless, the AEC accepted the con- gressional conditions for its fellowship program and determined to seek the program’s expansion.*° The AEC’s direct promotional efforts were multiplied by the success of Aebersold and his colleagues in carrying the message to other gov- ernment agencies, as well as to industry and pri- vate researchers. This success led, in turn, to new programs. In August 1947, General Groves urged Ma- jor General Paul Hawley, the director of the medical programs of the Veterans Administra- tion, to address medical problems related to the military’s use of atomic energy. Soon thereafter, Hawley appointed an advisory committee, manned by Stafford Warren and other medical researchers. [he advisers recommended that the VA create both a “publicized” program to pro- mote the use of radioisotopes in research and a “confidential” program to deal with potential liability claims from veterans exposed to radia- tion hazards.*” The “publicized” program soon mushroomed, with Stafford Warren, Shields Warren, and Hymer Friedell among the key advisers. By 1974, according to VA reports, more than 2,000 human radiation experiments would be performed at VA facilities,#4 many of which would work in tandem with neighboring medical schools, such as the relationship between the UCLA medical school, where Stafford War- ren was now dean, and the Wadsworth (West Los Angeles) VA Hospital. While the AEC’s weapons-related work would continue to be cloaked in secrecy, the isotope program was used by researchers in all corners of the land to achieve new scientific understand- ing and help create new diagnostic and therapeu- tic tools. It was, however, only a small part of an enormous institution. By 1951 the AEC would employ 60,000 people, all but 5,000 through contractors. Its land would encompass 2,800 square miles, an area equal to Rhode Is- land and Delaware combined. In addition to research centers throughout the United States, its operations “extend[ed] from the ore fields of the Belgian Congo and the Arctic region of Canada to the weapons proving ground at Enewetak Atoll in the Pacific and the medical projects studying the after-effects of atomic bombing in. . . Japan.”#? The Isotope Division, however, would employ only about fifty people and, when reactor production time was ac- counted for, occupy only a fraction of its bud- get and resources.”? THE TRANSFORMATION IN GOVERNMENT- SPONSORED RESEARCH The AEC’s decision to proceed with a biomedi- cal research program was part of an even greater transformation, in which government continued and expanded wartime support for research in industry and at universities. Before World War II, biomedical research was a small enterprise in which the federal government played a minor role. During the war, however, large numbers of American biomedical researchers were mobilized by the armed forces. These researchers played an important role in advancing military medicine in a wide range of areas, including blood substi- tutes, antimalarial drugs and, as noted above, in nurturing the infant science of nuclear medicine. As the war was drawing to a close, President Roosevelt asked for advice from his Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) on how to convert the nation’s military research effort to a peacetime footing, and whether the government should take an activist role in pro- moting research. The OSRD, under Vannevar Bush, responded in July 1945, after Roosevelt’s death, with a report called “Science, the Endless Frontier.” Bush and his colleagues recom- mended among other things the establishment of a National Science Foundation (NSF) to sup- port basic research in all areas including the bio- medical sciences. While the principle that the federal government should fund medical re- search came to seem self-evident, this was hardly](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b32220558_0046.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
