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The Plutonium Files |
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| The Plutonium Files by E  ileen WelsomeDelta Press 580 pages, 1999 ISBN 0385319541 Reviewed by Julie Failla Earhart In a quiet White House ceremony on October 3/ 1995, United States President Bill Clinton received the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments’ final report. As he lifted the heavy blue volume into the air, he said, "This report I received today is a monumental document in more ways than one. It is a very, very important piece of America’s history." The report President Clinton referred to was the documentation of the secret human radiation experiments performed on unwitting United States citizens from the end of World War II to the end of the Cold War (roughly 1945 through the 1970s). Why aren’t more Americans aware of this horrifying disclosure? Perhaps because two hours after President Clinton’s speech, a Los Angeles jury returned the verdict in the O. J. Simpson trial, the most sensational American trail of the 20th century, and the report was shuffled to the back of most journalists’ minds. In her new book The Plutonium Files, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Eileen Welsome organizes all the facts, players, and secrets into a frightening expose. Welsome organizes a staggering amount of documentation (made possible by the Freedom of Information Act) and compresses it into an understandable format that sometimes reads like a science-fiction novel. To make sure that readers can relate to individuals and not just names on a page, Welsome provides physical descriptions of the major scientists involved. In addition, she also provides photographs, especially of the experimentation victims, which makes the story undeniably real. Welsome takes us from the beginning: From the splitting of the atom, to the creation of the bomb, to Oak Ridge and Los Alamos, to the 1945 bombings in Japan, to the Nevada Test Site and the Pacific Proving Ground, to the "vitamin cocktails," to the injection of plutonium isotopes into cancer patients. From sea to shining sea, the effect radiation has on the human body was the subject of a multitude of experiments, theories, and studies. The scientists of the era went so far as to purposely expose military personnel, terminal cancer patients, and prisoners to radiation to determine its long- and short-term effects. From discussions on consent to the need for national security, scientists debated the ethics of their actions. Welsome was able to identify all but three of the human subjects in the plutonium experiments, although they were given code names for security reasons. We learn of Elmer Allen of Italy, Texas, or better known to scientists as CAL-3. One lived as few as 17 days after exposure; some lived for more than 30 years. Some died ghastly, horrid deaths while others died relatively peacefully. The Plutonium Files is the scariest book I have ever read. The radiation tests on human testes, the buildup of radioactive particles in bone marrow, and the strange health problems suffered by women who were told they were drinking a vitamin cocktail (later discovered to contain radioactive iron), and their children makes anything written by Stephen King, Dean Kootnz, or Robin Cook read like a nursery rhyme. Some of the material is overwhelming, especially when Welsome gets away from the people/subjects and just provides information. But it’s all-important and nothing could be deleted. Readers gain an overall understanding of what happened during those years, and what is still happening as a result of the atomic tests. Scary, scary stuff. Not for the faint of heart. |
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