Clarence Madison Dally was a glassblower born in 1865, which hardly makes him a likely candidate for a guest spot in this column. However, the glass he made filled a critical role in developing Thomas Edison’s fluoroscope, one of the earliest instruments to view x-rays through.
It came at a terrible cost. From working with x-rays, Dally developed lesions on his hands by the turn of the century. He became the first person to die from radiation related complications, succumbing to mediastinal cancer in 1904.
One death is just an anecdote though.
Today’s Moment of Science… The Human Radiation Experiments.
It’s easier to say “the glowing rock did this” about some ailments and fatalities than others. Incidents that cause acute radiation sickness (or maybe superpowers DON’T CRUSH MY DREAMS) are likely to be more obvious. But which cases of lymphoma and thyroid cancer are courtesy of ionizing radiation and which ones are genetic timebombs? Splitting the atom opened up a new universe of questions.
At some point after WWII, the US Atomic Energy Commission decided it was in the country’s best interest to find some answers directly by *checks clipboard… checks it again…* yep, it says we dosed citizens with bits of radiation. Just to make sure they didn’t get too dead, of course. Don’t worry though, they only did this to willing volunteers under informed consent who fully understoo-
Had you for a second there, eh?
They administered radioactive iron supplements to impoverished pregnant women in Tennessee.
A eugenicist superintendent at a school in Massachusetts approved feeding lightly radioactive oatmeal to his mentally disabled students. But they took the kids to some Red Sox games, so.
They administered radioactive iodine to premature and full-term infants. You know, just to see.
Then there was the story of Ebb Cade. A construction worker, he arrived at the hospital sporting a smattering of broken bones from a traffic accident. But it was 1945, and he was a Black man. So rather than do the doctor thing and fix his bones and send him on his way, they declared him “suitable for experimentation,” and labeled him HP-12 (Human Product #12). It was several weeks of not setting his bones before they got to the actual experiment: dosing him with plutonium-239.
Cade’s bones set incorrectly. No worries- when operating to reset them, this afforded surgeons the chance to take biopsies. Fifteen of his teeth were removed. Though it was written in his chart that he had cavities, those teeth just happened to be valuable for plutonium analysis.
He was the first person injected with plutonium-239.
Cade was one of eighteen patients injected with plutonium without their knowledge for this experiment. Though most were given doses in the 4.6-6.5 microgram range, a couple of terminal patients were dosed with 95 micrograms. While it doesn’t seem like any of the people subjected to these injections suffered a hastened death as a result of them, it doesn’t make it any less ethically fucked up. It’s also not exactly clear what was gained.
One of the scientists in charge of the project was none other than J. Robert Oppenheimer.
(But we’ll talk more about him on Monday, after I go to the movies.).
A hefty 1986 congressional report found there were “31 experiments during which about 695 persons were exposed to radiation which provided little or no medical benefit to the subjects.” I’m sure with each and every project, the scientists involved could have told you what their experimental design and hypothesis was. I have less faith that, given the benefit of hindsight, any of the researchers could answer the question “what the fuck?”
This has been your Moment of Science, bracing for the “other countries did human experiments too” comments, and planning to address them by… going to the movies.
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