Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments

Administration of William J. Clinton, 1995 Remarks on Accepting the Report of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments October 3, 1995 P. 1351 "Thousands of Government-sponsored experiments did take place at hospitals, universities, and military bases around our Nation. The goal was to understand the effects of radiation exposure on the human body. While most of the tests were ethical by any standards, some were unethical, not only by today's standards but by the standards of the time in which they were conducted. They failed both the test of our national values and the test of humanity. In one experience, scientists—experiment— scientists injected plutonium into 18 patients without their knowledge. In another, doctors exposed indigent cancer patients to excessive doses of radiation, a treatment from which it is virtually impossible that they could ever benefit....Informed consent means your doctor tells you the risk of the treatment you are about to undergo. In too many cases, informed consent was withheld. Americans were kept in the dark about the effects of what was being done to them. http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=1530&dbname=1995_public_papers_vol2_misc