NAZI DOCTORS Directed by Government, Medicine and Academia, by Gary Null I made the following transcript from a tape recording of a broadcast by Pacifica Radio Network station: WBAI-FM (99.5) 505 Eighth Ave., 19th Fl. New York, NY 10018 (212) 279-0707 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * GARY NULL: On today's program, we'll be continuing with the ongoing series entitled, "Hidden Agendas." In this series, we are focusing on a lot of different issues that, generally speaking, are kept from the Public. In other words, we are told one thing .... whether it be that our genetically-altered crops are safe, and therefore, require no inspection and no labeling; or we're told that the latest in vaccines for different diseases, including AIDS, are and should be supported by all of our tax dollars, and not to challenge the institutions that are doing the research -- that they're objective, fair and honest. Likewise, we've been told that the best medical care in the world is available right here; that we are the healthiest people in the world, the longest-lived people in the world; that we have it all. Now, how is it then, that we can reconcile the fact that this eight-hundred-billion-dollar-a-year industry has NOT been able to tame a SINGLE major disease? There has been no statistically significant reduction in arthritis, cancer, AIDS and any other condition that debilitates, including mental illnesses. To the contrary -- they are escalating. And yet, no one seems to be paying attention to their words not matching their deeds. As a result, we feel that there ARE agendas that should be explored. In the last two programs, I was focusing specific attention on the fact that many people have been exposed to contaminants, including low-level radiation and live cancer cell injections; these they were not informed of, and no one did follow-up studies. We do not know enough about the immune system to know whether or not a person exposed to low-level radiation or cancerous tissue, or if viruses that were in that cancerous tissue could have some long-term effect. Yet, they give us assurances that, firstly: no such [secret experimental] studies were done. Wrong! There are documents that prove otherwise. Secondly: if they were done, no harm came to people. Wrong again! We can establish that nine million people have died from low-level radiation exposure in the last forty-five years. After yesterday's program, a professor at one of the leading universities in the New York area called my office. I was just coming into the office when I heard him on my answering machine. He said: "Well, once again you have taken one isolated example of one person, and you've tried to show that this is common in the Scientific Establishment. Speaking as a researcher with a respected institution, I can assure you that these major institutions would not engage in any such kind of activity, nor have they done so in the past." Really? Today's program is devoted to this person and the institution where he has researched. He will find something out about his institution and the history of research done there. Until recently, few of us would have believed that our own Government would pay respected scientists at leading academic institutions to conduct harmful medical experiments on human subjects; few of us would have believed that the Military regularly uses American soldiers as human guinea pigs; few of us would have believed that Government officials prey on subjects who have few resources to refuse such testing: poor people, service people, the terminally ill, prisoners. It would have been even more difficult to imagine that the Government DELIBERATELY exposed the Public to open-air contaminants DESIGNED for chemical and biological warfare. However, with growing Public awareness of Government corruption, profiteering, vested interests and cover-ups, many Americans would not be too surprised to learn that experiments such as these WERE conducted throughout the forties, fifties, sixties, seventies, eighties, and are ongoing. Those like this gentleman calling yesterday -- who cynically shrug their shoulders with a we-don't- believe-it, or a what-else-is-new attitude -- may not be aware that experiments such as these are not isolated events of the past, but rather, they continue to provide the modus operandi for MOST of Science and for MOST of Medicine in this country today. Today I'd like for you to think for a moment about chemotherapy, radiation, unproven surgical techniques, programs in mass- vaccination, and ask: If you had been so open to accepting both the benefit of these and the lack of toxicity of these, have you been equally concerned about asking for the documentation -- the hard data, and then looking at the epidemiological evidence to see if it is born out by what is [the actual results]? I'm going to document, today and for the next few days, how we are routinely exposed to human experimentation by this nation's Scientific and Medical communities, and by the Government and the Military. In my personal opinion, the results of these experiments and the minds that conceived them are comparable to the human experiments conducted in dictator-controlled Third World countries and in Nazi concentration camps by people of that ilk. Dozens, hundreds of physicians, thousands of people, including scientists, have been involved in these experiments. I have interviewed many of them. Some of them revealed the weaknesses in their character and judgment. Others, to this day, still deny that they were anything but ethical, legal and moral. Because they felt that as long as something advances the body of scientific knowledge, then ALL means should be justified toward that end. I'll explore experimentation conducted by different agencies -- in particular, the Atomic Energy Commission which is now part of the Department of Energy -- as well as the more subtle forms of experimentation that pervade the practice of Medicine today. The massive skill with which these experiments were undertaken necessitated the participation of vast numbers of people in Medicine, Media, bureaucracies and the scientific institutions. Administrators, scientists, planners and academics had to be willing participants. In fact, many of this nation's most prestigious universities were, and continue to be involved, in one way or another. The basic judgment, that in the interest of science human beings are dispensable, had to be accepted unconditionally by all participants in the experiments. From the biologists examining the slides to the doctors administering the radiation to the peer reviewers who read and published the results of each experiment -- all had to be able, in absolute accord, to accept that THEIRS was the objective and ethical consideration. Otherwise, they could have deemed these studies inappropriate. Accordingly, when one looks merely at the experiments conducted over the last forty years, literally thousands of people had to have been involved. Not ONE SINGLE WORD has come from these people to take responsibility for their actions. NO major mainstream media has ever exposed these. Information about these experiments became available only with a great deal of effort on the part of myself and a few other investigative reporters for different publications: MOTHER JONES Magazine, THE VILLAGE VOICE -- over the past several years. By the way, let's make one thing very, very clear. And I hope that this message reaches the ears of the executive and on-line producers of 20/20 and SIXTY MINUTES. For these shows which make tens of millions of dollars, and Emmy Awards, and which catapult their interviewers to stardom: How many of those research pieces that they do did they go out and get all the material themselves; versus, how many of them, as has happened so frequently in the past where producers for these shows would call me and have lunch with me and say: "We'd like to look at this file and that file and that file and this file and this box and that box" .... and you give them so much of your material, and they take YEARS of work of other reporters and then go and interview your sources that you've uncovered, that you've dug up, and then make it THEIR piece, without attribution. I call that "midnight journalism." And yet, even THEY haven't done enough on the subject. A great number of these experiments were meaningless, quite simply, like most of what our Federal Government funds -- certainly, in the Military -- a colossal, intellectually dumbfounded way of doing anything. I'm ashamed at the lack of intellectual acumen of the people in bureaucracies who make policy decisions in our experimental community. You have NO idea of the stupidity that goes on every day. I can't imagine where they get these scientists. I can't imagine where these policy-makers come from. A Star Wars Program? What lunacy! Intellectually, it is not a concept that can be fathomed to work. And yet, it was sponsored. Tens of billions of dollars were spent on it. The C-5A [aircraft] Scandal, with five or six more billion [dollars squandered]. These are legion. Hundreds of projects -- hundreds of billions of dollars wasted! And not a single wimper from the American Community at large. And in science, even more experiments and wasted money. Sixty or seventy times, people would do the same experiment because they knew that they could get money for it. Doing new things in nutrititon, health, science is hard to get funding on. Our very peer review system is flawed. We would not be willing to pardon over-zealous researchers for unethical conduct, but we could, at least, understand their motives if the results of their work truly contribute to improving the quality of life and health of all people, with minimum negative results. But this has not been the case. The results of MOST of the studies in science, in the projects I'm mentioning, were published in scientific journals and couched in technical jargon. But they led to nothing beneficial. A trend that continues today is the prevalence of scientific studies that serve no definable purpose, except to keep research grants alive, promote connections with Government agencies that allot the funds, and secure the tenure of the individuals supervising the studies. Scientific literature is replete with useless studies. The vast majority is useless or repetitive. I recently did a study conducting a literature search of every abstract on anti-oxidants. I found sixty percent to be absolutely worthless and duplicitous. But they were still published. And someone funded them. And peer-reviewers had to approve them. Even the Government's own Office of Technology Assessment reveals that ninety percent of the studies supported by the Government are seriously flawed. Ninety percent! Because science is guided, not by one, but by all three of this country's most powerful entitites: the Government, Defense and Medicine, parts of these articles, that we now see in the literature, overlap. For instance, the radiation experiments may be justified as medical therapy, when, in fact, these experiments are funded by Government agencies and the Military to further warfare technology. The same holds true with studies in chemotherapy, since these substances were originally derived from chemical weapons during World War Two. Let me share something very specific with you. This comes from documents that were obtained from the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee. Now, I will only share with you thirty-one of what I would call "human guinea pig experiments," to give you an idea of what the Public is NOT aware of. These involved over seven hundred people over thirty years. And this is a frequent and systematic use of human beings as guinea pigs. For example, from 1945 to 1947, as part of the Manhattan Project -- a project that you never have read about, that you have never seen depicted in any film, including the one with Paul Newman on the Manhattan Project or any other film -- eighteen patients, believed to have limited life spans, were injected with plutonium. That's correct. They were dispensable, so our Government injected them, secretly, with plutonium. Needless to say, they all died. That report was never made public. It was kept secret. >From 1961 to 1965, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, twenty elderly subjects were injected or fed radium or thorium, without consent. During 1946 and 1947, at the University of Rochester, six patients with GOOD kidney functions were injected with uranium salts to determine the concentration that would produce kidney disease. Again: six people, who had completely perfect kidneys, had their kidneys destroyed, just to see how much it would take to do it -- all in the name of science. >From 1953 to 1957, at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, approximately twelve brain tumor patients were injected with uranium to determine the dose at which kidney damage began to occur. >From 1963 to 1971, sixty-seven inmates at Oregon State Prison and sixty-four inmates at Washington State Prison received X-rays to their testicles to determine the effects of radiation on fertility and testicular function. >From 1963 to 1965, at the Atomic Energy Commission's National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho, radioactive iodine was PURPOSELY released on seven separate occasions. In one, seven human subjects purposely drank [were purposely given] milk from cows that had grazed on iodine-contaminated land. At the University of Chicago and at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois, one hundred-and-two human subjects were fed REAL radioactive fallout from the Nevada test site -- radioactive simulated fallout particles or solutions of radioactive cesium and strontium -- to see what it would do to them. At Columbia University Hospital, Presbyterian Hospital and Montefiore Hospital in New York [City], during the late 50s, twelve cancer patients were injected with radioactive calcium and strontium -- to see what it would do. These experiments and others -- many others -- have to raise some questions. Did Government agencies fund or sponsor programs which cross the line that no scientific researcher can ever be permitted to traverse? Did American scientists mimic the kind of demented human experiments conducted by the Nazis? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. But nothing will happen to them -- then or today. The nuclear medical experiments fell into two general categories. In the first group, human subjects were injected or fed radioactive material in order that its passage through the body could be monitored. The major objective of these experiments was to compare the physiological reactions with computer-generated mathematical models that estimate the effect of various doses of radiation on the body. Now, although these experiments did provide information on the retention and absorption of radioactive material by the human body, the experiments were nonetheless repugnant because human subjects were essentially used as guinea pigs and as calibration devices. In the second group of experiments, radioactive material was actually INTENDED to cause damage to the human body, and the experimenters sought to correlate the amount of damage done with the dose received. In many of these experiments, the human subjects were captive populations or a group of individuals whom experimenters might frighten by having considered them expendable: the elderly and the hospital patients. In other experiments, the subjects were volunteers. But they were unaware of what they were doing. They were not given full information. For most, informed consent was absent. Also, according to a Government report: "The Government covered up the nature of the experiments and deceived the families of dead victims as to what had transpired." There's a chilling lack of humanity in the Department of Energy documents reporting these experiments. For example, if you were to look at the actual document that I have in my possession, here's how it reads; and this shows you the impersonality of it: "Category 1.001, Number 1: Subjects were diagnosed as within ten years of death. One subject was a child. No evidence of informed consent. Potential doses of radiation much greater than occupational limits." Now what does that say beyond what it says. First, it's just "Category 1.001, Number 1". And it talks about a child, but there were many subjects, one of which was a child. And they're estimating that the child has ten years to live? There's no way that any human being on Earth can tell you that you have ten years to live. Therefore, they didn't have any informed consent -- and they INTENTIONALLY exposed this child to FAR greater doses of radiation than what would be considered occupational limits which, in itself, was considered high. And, of course, a child's body is not that of an adult; and the occupational limit is based upon an adult threshold. A child's threshold is much, much smaller. So, for the child, they were giving, in effect, lethal doses of radiation. They KILLED the child ! But, again -- anything you do in the United States Government, in the name of security or science, is forgiven. You will not and cannot, by law, be held accountable. You're indemnified. "Category 1.003, Number 119: Subjects were hospital patients. Some doses of radiation produced kidney damage." "Category 11.001, Number 173: Radioactive iodine was INTENTIONALLY released into the environment." Mind you -- these are SECRET Government reports that I managed to get from the different agencies, and I have independently verified them. Here they're admitting that they INTENTIONALLY released radiation into the environment -- to see what happens. Now, the details beyond the "Category and Number" classifications are even less reassuring. Just what does "Category 1.001, Number 1" mean? In the body of the text, we read, under the heading "Plutonium Injections Into Humans", that during a two-year period, eighteen patients were injected with plutonium. Now these experiments were carried out under the "Manhattan Project", a consortium of American scientists, military and Government officials who gave us the atomic bomb. A number of well-known hospitals were involved, including Strong-Moore[sp] Hospital in Rochester, New York, Billings Hospital, the University of Chicago, University Hospital, University of California, San Francisco. So, as you see -- and to the gentleman who called yesterday -- your hospital was one! You wouldn't have known that. But I'm showing you what the actual documents say. The rationale for these experiments was that accurate information was supposedly needed on the retention and excretion of "internally-deposited plutonium" so that the researchers could set some standards. The information was supposedly needed because workers at the "Manhattan Project" handled plutonium and, therefore, they wanted to know what amount would affect them. Animal experiments had produced conflicting data, and they felt that they needed to have humans to have the right data. Alright. If you're going to conduct experiments on humans, then who do you choose to inject with deadly, radioactive plutonium? Now, the original criteria -- according to the documents that I've obtained -- specify that subjects "should be older, with relatively shorter life expectancies." Well, who determines that? There's no way of determining that. Yet, all subjects chosen were diagnosed as having diseases that gave them an expected survival rate of at least ten years. Most of the subjects were over forty-five, but one was only five-years-old. I found another subject in here who was eighteen-years-old. And the oldest subject was sixty-eight. So if, on the one hand, they're saying that their criteria is to select old Americans, in their opinion, but then they start selecting middle-aged Americans, then they're going against their own criteria. By the way, this is accepting that it's okay to select Americans, and kill them in order to get some results so that other people can know about how much you can take of a radioactive poison before it affects you. The quantities of plutonium injected ranged to "ninety-eight times the body burden value recognized as LETHAL." And in one Atomic Energy Commission report I have, it was determined that informed consent had not been obtained from anyone. Zero. No one was told that they were being killed -- that they were being sacrificed. That's correct. Let's be very clear on what I'm saying. Scientists in our Government, under the Atomic Energy Commission and the Department of Defense, decided to sacrifice a lot of human beings without their knowledge or consent -- so that they could have some data. And they did it! And they got away with it ! The Government was unaware of the consequences of their actions, verbal games and misrepresentations. And, of course -- consistent with everything else that comes from our Government -- lies and more lies were employed in an effort to avoid unfavorable publicity. One of the first steps was to forbid the use of certain words. For instance, in one document that I have, they say "Do not use the word `plutonium'." In a memo circulated at the Argonne National Laboratory, the following instructions were spelled out. I'm reading verbatim. "Please note that, outside of the Center for Human Radiobiology, we will never use the word `plutonium' in regard to these cases. `These individuals are of interest to us because they may have received a radioactive material at some time' is the kind of statement to be made if we need to say anything at all." Obviously, if any patients were still alive when this memo was written, they were not informed that they had been injected with plutonium by their Government. At best, they might have been told that "they may have received a radioactive material at some time" in their past. Relatives of deceased patients were told that exhuming the patients' bodies was necessary to determine "the composition of the unknown mixture of injected radioactive isotopes." The families were informed that these injections were part of "experimental treatments for the patients' DISEASES." That, of course, was an out-and-out LIE ! We have the documents. I'm going to work on a screenplay of this. Since justice will not be served on any other level -- since they control it all, maybe we might raise the consciousness of the American Public by doing it as a movie. Because I don't think that people would understand or believe that so many human beings were simply used as experiments, and killed -- and then it was covered up. In another experiment with radioactive substances that took place, six patients with perfect kidney function were "injected, in increasing doses, with uranium-nitrate, enriched in uranium-234 and uranium-235." The objective of this experiment was to determine the dose of uranium salt that would produce kidney injury, and to measure the rate of excretion of uranium salts. The experiment, an Atomic Energy Commission project, was carried out at the University of Rochester in New York. A later study by the Atomic Energy Commission stated that "Human subjects received no medical benefits from these experiments, and, in fact, the treatment seemed designed to induce kidney injury in at least one patient." It was recognized at the time that uranium salts WOULD damage the kindney. The experimenters "planned to identify the concentration that would produce detectable renal injury." The subjects were chosen from a body of hospital patients. Those selected had normal kidney function. One was in the hospital because of rheumatoid arthritis. One had pneumonia. Another patient was a young woman in "fairly good physical condition, except for a mild case of under-nutrition." So when the Government later said that they had diseases that they could justify giving this uranium to them, when we look at the actual medical records, they show that these people had no disease for which they would have benefited from these injections. Persons in a hospital: a young woman, 22-years-old, who has a little bit of a vitamin B-12 and an iron deficiency. So they say: "Okay. She makes a good subject. Let's kill her kidneys. Kill her off. See how long it takes, and at what dosage." And THAT'S WHAT THEY DID! Uranium doses were successively increased with each patient. The pneumonia patient showed trace amounts of protein in his urine, a sign of kidney dysfunction, on the last day before leaving the hospital. And, like the young woman with undernutrition and the patient with arthritis, the man received NO follow-up attention. None. No one knows exactly how much damage was done to their kidneys. No one knows how the other patients fared with veins full of radioactive plutonium. In fact, according to the summary fact sheet that I have, which the Department of Energy submitted in their final report, "No follow-up on the experimental subjects was ever done." You shoot someone up with toxic amounts, deadly amounts of uranium to destroy their kidneys. You watch them for a week or two in the hospital. And then you take some notes and you send them home. No treatment. No disclosure. You don't tell them what you're giving them. You tell them they're just getting an injection. And this was done! At Oregon State Prison, sixty-four volunteers were subjected to irradiation of their testicles. Radiation doses ranged from six hundred roentgens in single exposures ..... By the way, the present recognized safe limit for exposure to reproductive organs is five roentgens per year. And they were given six hundred. And then they were given it again. That's twelve hundred roentgens. The purpose of this experiment was: "to obtain data on the effects of ionizing radiation on human fertility and on the function of testicular cells." It included examination of testicular tissues, sperm counts, and evaluation of urinary or blood steroids and hormones. According to the Energy Research and Development Administration, the successor agency to the Atomic Energy Commission: "Records suggest that the prime incentive to participate was the feeling that they were making important contributions to the state of medical knowledge." Prisoners were from 25 to 52 years-old. All the prisoners went through the same experiments. They all were given vasectomies. In a peculiar deference to religious sensibilities, there were no Catholic subjects because the radiation would, no doubt, affect the man's fertility. That the scientists considered potential participants' religious faith in performing vasectomies on all subjects is a clear indication that they knew that substantial damage would result from the administration of such massive doses of radiation. Hence, little credence can be given to apologists who say that these experiments could only have been conducted in an atmosphere of ignorance of the effects of radiation. In fact, when these experiments were conducted, almost twenty years had passed since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events which had shown that exposure to even low levels of radiation could result in cancer. I called Dr. John Goffman, M.D. Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Medical Physics at the University of California at Berkeley. He says: "We have very well documented studies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. There is no question as to what's going on there. In fact, there is evidence that low levels of radiation -- under ten rads -- have caused a major increase in cancer in those places." Most of the shocking things about these experiments -- from my perspective, at least -- is that there was no medical follow-up to check the long-term effects of irradiation on the test subjects. This failure to follow-up is prevalent in experiments of this nature, and is often used to deny any long-term effects. According to Dr. Goffman: "The issue is: How did the scientists look for effects? Had they followed them for twenty years when they say that they didn't see any effects? No! What happens is that they look at them for a few months and say, `Nothing happened.'" Military personnel have long been used as human guinea pigs without adequate follow-up. We see this today. In the VERY high incidence of illnesses -- of people coming back, who have been back now from the Persian Gulf War for over a year -- exotic illnesses that initially, and until recently, and until it was made an election issue, no agency of Government wanted to focus on it: not the Center for Disease Control, the National Cancer Institute, the Center for Allergy and Infection, the Department of Defense; no one wanted to touch it. Then again, just imagine how many military personnel over the years have been conditioned to become automated killers, but never brought back to what they were before they were conditioned. Think of the post-war trauma syndrome of HUNDREDS of thousands of people, to this day, who cannot function in a healthy way. And their dysfunction is directly related to the fact that they were never helped after coming back from Vietnam. But because these people "don't count", then they don't exist. You have to understand something. It becomes ultimately immaterial whether it's Democrat or Republican. And anyone who knows anything about the larger issues of political debate understands that. Those who don't will rally around their respective candidate and think that that will make the issue. It hasn't! It won't! Both parties are the parties of Special Interests." But any interest that does not align itself with votes becomes invisible. And when people feel that anything they've gained can be threatened by making a challenge, they make themselves invisible. So think of all the people who have suffered because of Agent Orange and dioxin because there was not a groundswell of support for them; only later. Today, we see tens of thousands of Vietnam veterans suffering from a wide range of physical disorders. The only common denominator was their exposure to Agent Orange. They settled a class-action lawsuit, of course, but the Government has NEVER acknowledged any complicity in the Agent Orange fiasco or the Los Alamos fiasco. The Government's position has always been to deny any responsibility for its actions; to cover up -- always -- and to go so far as to initiate harrassment and surveillance, by the FBI and the CIA, of any individual or any group that chooses to bring claims against the Government. If you, as an individual, or if you belong to a group, and if you take a political position opposite that of Those in Power -- watch how fast the FBI opens a file on you. Before you can hang-up the phone, they're on you! That's the way it works. That will not change. The importance of follow-up is evident by a statement made the ERDA, in which it was noted that: "There is a need for continued medical surveillance of prisoners involved in both sets of experiments. Among the health effects that should be monitored is the possibility of testicular cancer occurring after a long latentcy period of twenty to thirty years." But this follow-up never happened. Another method used to determine the effects of radiation was the release of radioactive gas into the environment. This type of experiment has been funded by the Atomic Energy Commission which INTENTIONALLY released radioactive iodine over a LARGE area designated as (quote) "hot pastures" (unquote). They did this on -- at least we know, up to this point -- SEVEN separate occassions; and just from one facility. And also, what they never told people was that human subjects were PURPOSELY exposed during three of these releases. The experiments were designed to trace radioactive iodine as it moved through the air and vegetation and the cow and the milk sequence of the human food-chain. Researchers felt that they wanted this information so that they could develop better "siting criteria". That means, where to locate a nuclear plant when building nuclear reactors. Monitors in the "pasture" determined when and how much of the radioactive iodine was deposited. A herd of cows was then led into the pasture to graze for several days. The cows were then milked and the milk was monitored for radioactive iodine. Perfectly healthy humans were PURPOSELY exposed by being given the milk to drink. And at one point, three people were placed in the pasture during the iodine release, even though radioactive iodine is known to be toxic. There was no medical follow-up, of any type, on those people. This again indicates to me that the purported objective of the experiment had little or nothing to do with the real purpose, about which we can only conjecture. This conclusion is borne out by the disregard for human safety and health apparent in the locating of nuclear reactors in densely populated areas. When reaactors are "sited" in less-populated areas, it is usually because of strong, organized community opposition, and not because of the Government's concern for public safety -- or because of experiments used to deteremine proper "siting" criteria. Now, while we're able to track down the names of the persons involved in almost all of the experiments documented in today's report .... because I've tracked them down for a year-and-a-half, and I have been reaching people at all levels, although it's not easy. But I will tell you about one person I spoke to: a professor of biology at a Texas university. At the time of the experiments, he was a young research biologist working for an organization funded by the Atomic Energy Commission. He told me -- and I have it on tape, and witnessed .... He affirms that serious ethical considerations were continuously raised about the nature of the experiments. He said -- and I am quoting him from my interview with him: "I attended several meetings where informed consent was a big issue. Supposedly, if you informed these people of what was happening to them, that made everything okay. I don't want anyone to think that ethics was not considered. But it happened that there were some people in the Atomic Energy Commission who thought that this was an important piece of work to do. And they thought that they had developed an avenue to do it. And they did it." He said that he was told to work primarily on the tissue samples that he received from the experiments, and he admits that that may have been one of the reasons he left his job. [JD: Some scientific and medical researchers may twinge at this.] "I wasn't too happy doing that -- obviously, for ethical reasons. I raised ethical questions. In fact, I really didn't care to do the work myself. But, you understand? .... somebody tells you to go in and do something -- if you want to get a pay check, you go ahead and do it. I still feel uncomfortable that I did it. At the time, I got wrapped up. I was a young Ph.D. and I had my first job, and I didn't want to lose it." He and other scientists who dare to question the ethics of their superiors are exceptions to the general rule of unconditional compliance that allows studies such as these to take place. Today, experiments like that would ethically create problems if they were publicly known. You have to get informed consent today. Has science suddenly become ethical? Ha! Hardly. Are researchers more concerned with the welfare of the Public than they were ten, twenty years ago? A recent PBS broadcast entitled "The Pentagon and the Professor" revealed that Pentagon spending for university research has increased by more than fifty percent in the past five years. Today, the Defense Department provides more than three quarters of ALL research funding available to universities. This militarization of science raises serious questions as to the independence of research at the recipient universities. This association between academia and the Pentagon is not new. It started with the Manhattan Project, and by the 1950s it was established as a fact. Many professors voiced concern that the ever increasing presence of the Government or special industries that, in effect, CONTROL the Department of Defense and other governmental agencies, are on American campuses, and it is resulting in a form of faustian bargaining. Not only do the universities need the money, but aspiring Ph.D.s need to conduct research in order to become full professors. And for their research they need grants. While the Pentagon insists that it is merely funding basic research, one professor I interviewed said: "Why is the Department of Defense funding these projects? Out of the goodness of its heart? It has a purpose in mind." Critics of the military's increased presence on campus believe that science will naturally gravitate to where the money is, and that the role of the university as an objective gatherer of knowledge is threatened when university administrators are forced to woo money from special businesses, corporations and the Pentagon. In an environment such as this, it is unlikely that scientific ethics will be any more evolved than they were years ago. In fact, the relative decrease in funding from sources other than the Pentagon STRONGLY suggests that today's scientists may be forced to make more difficult ethical decisions. Some of the experiments detailed in my discussion today were conducted solely to enable scientists to (quote) "calibrate" (unquote) instruments that measure radioactive substances in the body. Over almost a decade, subjects either inhaled argon-41 or swallowed capsules of other radioactive materials so that scientists could set their instruments. One of the most startling things about these series of radiation experiments is the relative apathy in which we, as a country, accept them, even when they are exposed. In fact, there is very little in the news about the death or harm from radiation today. The nuclear industry is on the rebound. This seems unusual in a medium that is characterized by its aggressive investigation of the sex lives of Mia Farrow and Woody Allen, or those of other people. Who cares! All that headline and all that news over domestic squabbling and emotional issues -- the family effect of a private couple, irrespective of their public personna. They still have a right to settle the issue as they see fit, in court or in hearings. But where are the headlines about investigating multiple hundreds of thousands of diseased people by the things in our environment? Where Are Those Headlines Screaming ? They are silent. People know how many pairs of shoes Imelda Marcos had. People know about Jimmy Bakker's secret sex affairs. People know about Bill Clinton's alleged mistress. But what about $125 hammers purchased by the Pentagon? Or a $13,000 coffee machine for an airplane? Why don't we hear about radiation and its risks to human health? Is it just that it's not newsworthy enough? CONSERVATIVELY, Doctor John Goffman estimates that fifty thousand people develop cancer ANNUALLY as a result of their exposure to X-rays, in excess of what is needed for good diagnostic pictures. Why Isn't That Reported ? I think that fifty thousand people getting cancer every year from unnecessary X-rays is important -- certainly as important as whether or not Tammy Bakker is happy with her eyebrows 3 inches, 4 inches or 8 inches up on her forehead. Dr. John Goffman says: "There are very, very powerful Interests who do not want that information to get out. One is the radiology profession. Another is the nuclear medicine profession. These people make their livelihoods by conducting these types of experiments. And still other even more powerful Interests are the Government and the nuclear industry. To all of these groups, the amount of harm done by radiation is acceptable. The media can count on this." "I've seen them descend on the radio commentator who was covering the story at the Chernobyl disaster. What happened was that he mentioned that there had been an explosion at the Three Mile Island [nuclear] plant. The next day, four officials from the Public Utility Commission descended on his station manager and claimed that he had falsely reported an explosion at Three Mile Island. Of course, it was documented. You just had to look at the Presidential Commmission Report which says that there were TWO explosions at Three Mile Island. But the four Public Utility Commission officials harrassed the station manager, anyway, thinking that they could con him into suppressing the information." "If you think that you're dealing with objectivity and honesty, let me tell you that you are dealing outside of the real world when you say: `Gosh. This ought to be news.' Remember, there are big vested Interests on the part of the United States Government, the nuclear industry and the medical profession's radiology branches to keep this news from surfacing. So, don't be surprised when you go to a nuclear medicine specialist and he says: `Oh, this is all nonsense about low-level doses of radiation causing cancer. We've been using these doses for years. I've been taking X-rays for a long time and I've never seen them causing cancer.'" "These people are then put ON THE AIR, written about in the newspapers with articles that say: `Radiologist Finds That Radiation Effects Have Been Overblown.' But you never see the Press doing an analysis of the real evidence." That was from Dr. John Goffman in an interview with me. Dr. Goffman says that he is so fed up with the manner in which the Press reports, or rather, fails to report on the devastating effects of radiation, which kill thousands of Americans each year, that he: "would not bother with the Media if I didn't feel it to be part of my human duty, as a physcian. There are people out there who will kill other people for a price. Murder is not restricted to the Mafia or Murder Incorporated. It's alive and well in the Medical Profession where they are killing people for a fee." The Government and the Medical Profession have not confined their crimes against the American People to radiation exposure. More on tomorrow's program when I continue to explore other ways in which hidden agendas have caused Americans to be used as human guinea pigs. And to those who would suggest that it is an isolated case here and there: You continue to suggest it is, and I'll continue to share information that it is not. Ultimately, the Public can make up its own mind. It can be completely indifferent, as 95 percent are, or it can be somewhat concerned or very concerned. It's not that we're going to change them. We won't. What we can do is we can change OUR design to be part of their experiments. WE don't have to be unwitting victims if we choose not to. That is a perceptual change. I'm Gary Null. This has been a part of our continuing series on Hidden Agendas. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * If we seriously listen to this "God within us" ["conscience", if you will], we usually find ourselves being urged to take the more difficult path, the path of more effort rather than less. .... Each and every one of us, more or less frequently, will hold back from this work. .... Like every one of our ancestors before us, we are all lazy. So original sin does exist; it is our laziness. M. Scott Peck THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED If you agree that this information is vital to the defense and the preservation of our free society, please help to disseminate it by posting it to other bulletin boards and by posting hardcopies in public places, both on and off campus. John DiNardo The episodes of this series can be retrieved via anonymous ftp from the site: red.css.itd.umich.edu Log in with name "anonymous" or "ftp" and supply your e-mail address as the password. The files are kept in the directory /poli/Essays/Conspiracy (Instructions for ftp retrieval are dependent upon what sort of system the user is on. On a UNIX machine, at the command prompt, type the following: ftp red.css.itd.umich.edu This may be different on IBMs and Vax systems.) Archivist: Paul Southworth, pauls@css.itd.umich.edu