During World War II, the Manhattan Project set out to research and develop nuclear weapons for the U.S. government. However, the personnel faced many issues working with newly discovered elements with unknown effects.
Scientists became aware that they would need to understand better the effects of the radioactive materials on the human body. To answer this mystery, they conducted Human Plutonium Injection Experiments.
Secret Human Experimentation
Since the beginning, the experiments under the Manhattan Project were performed under a high level of secrecy. The nature of the research was highly controversial, even among scientists who worked on the project.
Throughout the country, scientists worked against the clock to find out how workers could be protected against the dangers of the Manhattan Project. They took data from physical examinations, instruments, and blood and urine samples. Radiation experiments were also conducted on animals, but medical experts argued that these were not enough to determine the radiation guidelines for workers.
By 1944, the medical team of the Manhattan Project led by Stafford Warren proposed that a controlled experiment on humans must be carried out. They agreed with a plan to inject radioactive elements, such as uranium, plutonium, and polonium, into civilian patients around the country. Between April 1945 and July 1947, 18 subjects were injected with plutonium, 6 with uranium, 5 with polonium, and at least one with americium.
Most likely, the experimental subjects were not informed of the nature of the injections given to them. Records show that only one of the plutonium recipients signed a consent form, which did not fully explain the experiments' methodologies or risks. For other test subjects, no documentation of consent was ever found.
From Misdiagnosis to Radiation Exposure
In May 1945, house painter Albert Stevens was misdiagnosed with stomach cancer and was told that he only had six months to live. A year prior, experts had been recommending a program to trace the course of plutonium in the human body.
Unfortunately for Stevens, the researchers became aware of him and his terminal cancer while they were searching for patients for the first human trials. Not long after, Stevens became one of the participants who enrolled in the experiments. He was assigned the codename Patient CAL-1, which means that he is the first patient from California to be injected with plutonium.
The Californian painter received the highest radiation dose of anyone in the experiments. He was given a mixture of 0.75 micrograms of plutonium-239 and 0.2 micrograms of plutonium-238. Plutonium was selected because its high activity can easily be traced and analyzed.
After a year without cancer progression, doctors believed that Patient CAL-1 had a benign gastric ulcer. This means that they had given a healthy man the highest accumulated dose of radiation that any human can ever receive. The dose given to him was many times the fatal dose of plutonium.
Stevens was not properly informed of what had happened to him. Aside from being unethical, the lack of information caused another problem when he demanded to move away from the area. To continuously monitor the radiation levels in his body, the doctors agreed to pay him $50 a month to stay in the area and continue providing stool samples.
Stevens managed to survive for another 21 years despite receiving plutonium, which is 446 times the average lifetime exposure. After dying of heart disease at the age of 79, his cremated remains were shipped to the Center for Human Radiobiology in 1975. It was relocated to advance medical and scientific research and education.
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