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Ethic in Cold War

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Submitted By hadeelhashim
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The story: the human experiments on radiation mark a dark spot on the United States’ history of clinical research. in preparation for a possible nuclear attack during the Cold War. From 1944-1974 the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) with the help of several other government agencies, including the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health, conducted over 4,000 secret and classified radiation experiments and releases on millions of unknowing US citizens.
In order to assess how the human body metabolizes radioactive material, people unknowingly participating in the experiments were exposed to nuclear fallout from testing of more than 200 atmospheric and underground nuclear offense weapons as well as a hundred more secret releases of radiation into the environment.
The tested people:
Orphanages provided children food containing radioactive material, hospital patients received plutonium injections during routine stays, and deceased bodies previously exposed to radiation were exhumed without familial consent for examination.
The most affected area: Residents of Nevada, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico were affected most, living in environments containing radioactive contaminated food and water sources. The investigation effort:
On January 15, 1994, President Clinton appointed the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments. The President created the Committee to investigate reports of possibly unethical experiments funded by the government decades ago.

Member of committee:
The members of the Advisory Committee were 14 private citizens from around the country: a representative of the general public and 13 experts in bioethics, radiation oncology and biology, nuclear medicine, epidemiology and biostatistics, public health, history of science and medicine, and law.
The finding:
The majority of human radiation experiments identified by the Advisory Committee involved radioactive tracers administered in amounts that are likely to be similar to those used in research today.

Most of these tracer studies involved adult subjects and are unlikely to have caused physical harm. However, in some nontherapeutic tracer studies involving children, radioisotope exposures were associated with increases in the potential lifetime risk for developing thyroid cancer that would be considered unacceptable today.

It was common during the 1940s and 1950s for physicians to use patients as subjects of research without their awareness or consent.

The recommendation:
Apologies and Compensation the government should deliver a personal, individualized apology and provide financial compensation to those subjects of human radiation experiments, or their next of kin.
Uranium Miners
The Interagency Working Group, together with Congress, should give serious consideration to adjust the exposure of the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act of 1990 relating to uranium miners in order to provide compensation to all miners who develop lung cancer after some minimal duration of employment. underground (such as one year), without requiring a specific level of exposure.
Improved Protection for Human Subjects human radiation research and other areas of research with respect to human subject’s issues, either in the past or the present

the expectation of the benefit of certain medical treatment among serious illness and medical benefit from participating in research need of immediate attention by the government and the biomedical research community

consent form should be distributed to the participant to explain the impact of research procedures on quality of life.

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