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Title: The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War by Eileen Welsome ISBN: 0-385-31954-1 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 10 October, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Well, she doesn't need any help from me!
Comment: I have been reading books about human experimentation due to my work in the Deaf community and medical school. Since I am Deaf and many of us who are 'disabled' are concerned about attitudes of others which consider us less than human or unable to make a worthwhile contribution to the human race...we often discuss the impact that disability, chronic illness, and limited education has on the ability to make informed consent, and also the attitudes of doctors towards us who may be less than whole. Ms. Welsome totally supported mine and others with disabilities and illnesses fears that there are those in the military and in the medical fields who feel we are fair game for any 'experiment' they feel interest in pursuing. It isn't just the wackos like Kervorkian we have to watch out for, but the government and the established medical community who in spite of the Nuremburg Code went ahead and performed and supported experiments which had no firm basis in medical alleviation of pain or possible exposure. Ms. Welsome is an exquisite writer and more than deserved the Pulitzer prize. This book should be required reading for all medical students in medical ethics classes, and I am certainly recommending it to those in the Disability rights community so that we can protect our communities from these fanatics and prevent the Disabled Holocaust from happening again in the United States. Karen Sadler, Science Education, University of Pittsburgh, [email protected]
Rating: 4
Summary: Plutonium Files (not x-files)
Comment: The release of Eileen Welsome's book "THE PLUTONIUM FILES- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War" in paperback will hopefully make this important book more accessible to the general public.
Detailing the effort of the US government to test the effects of Plutonium and other radioactive substances on people, the book outlines first the creation and evolution of the nuclear program that created the need for such testing, and then the US government's attempt to conduct such testing on its own citizens without their knowledge or informed consent. On strictly a superficial level there is much here which will attract the "x-files" crowd: Super-secret installations, eccentric scientists and far-fetched experiments on unsuspecting citizens. The kind of information that makes conspiracy theorists sit back from their computers in darkened little rooms, pump their fist in the air and utter that now-hackneyed phrase: "The truth is out there"
Fortunately for the reader, Welsome assiduously avoids such sensationalism and instead draws a largely compassionate picture of the US government's program and of the people who perpetrated it and who participated in it. Welsome's well structured and organized account of the growth of the plutonium testing programs involving critically ill persons across America during the Cold War years teems with information and insight, yet it manages to treat victim and perpetrator alike with a measure of respect and empathy that places this book well above the level of the standard "Shocking Expose". To her great credit Welsome goes beyond merely packaging the results of her extensive research and alarming discoveries in a "tell-all" book.
Certainly, THE PLUTONIUM FILES introduces information which, by its nature is bound to shock and disturb many, but the book also addresses the too-often forgotten issue of context: Was what happened acceptable by the standards of the time in which it occurred? In addressing this question Welsome probes more deeply into her subject, examining the duality, the moral dichotomy, inherent in the decision to implement this program. In a time when the world was still dealing with the results of a devastating world war and the possibility of another seemed likely the need for answers had an immediacy which could be ignored only at the world's peril. Hard decisions had to be made and extraordinary measures taken; Welsome is clearly cognizant of this as she assess each program and as she examines and balances the need against the action and its end result, the author treats the reader to some of her best analysis.
The Plutonium Files- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is certainly an important book; one which adds a significant chapter to the recorded history of the growth of atomic science. Despite its scientific topic and exhaustive sourcing the books narrative is direct and engaging, its organization straightforward and its conclusions informed and objective. A book that is well worth its price, Welsome's book would be a great Christmas present for everyone from an avid historian to the omni-present x-files fan; who will find much in here to confirm their most exotic fears. Overall an excellent book for which the author has received two much deserved awards.
Rating: 2
Summary: MIXING SENSATIONALISM WITH INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING
Comment: Having worked nearly four decades in American medical scientific research, I've tangentially (sometimes directly) worked in the medical areas Eileen Welsome attempts to examine in her THE PLUTONIUM FILES. When I bought this book, I was hoping to read something more in depth about the influence of the some 300-400 Nazi doctors (indictable for war crimes!) on American medical research. In 1992, prize winning author and investigative reporter Linda Hunt had already written in her SECRET AGENDA that yes indeed there were many breaches of medical ethics and even illegal medical experiments carried out in the name of national security. Too bad Ms Welsom didn't write about them.
Mixing apples and oranges, Welsom cites the boron-neutron capture experiments (by Dr. William Sweet) and confuses them with radiation experiments conducted on convicted criminal prisoners. The boron-neutron experiments were ethical, informed consent experiments on terminally ill patients with invariably fatal brain gliomas. However, the experiments on prsioners [and some of the hospital experiments on unwitting African-American patients] were crimes against humanity; according to the standards of the 1947 Nuremberg Code. But it does not serve the inerests for which the Freedom of Information Act was adopted by the United States Congress in 1976 to confuse government sanctioned illegal medical experiments with legitimate ones.
I was hoping to read much more about indeed unethical and illegal experiments, secretly sponsored by the United States government during the Cold War era. Wading through THE PLUTONIUM FILES left me disappointed. There is a story to tell about a sinister Nazi medical influence on military experiments in the United States and medical crimes against American citizens serving in the U.S. military. Alas, Welsom neglects to tell it.
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Title: Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans by Jonathan D. Moreno, Azzedine Haddour, Steve Brewe, Terence McWilliams ISBN: 0415928354 Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group Pub. Date: 15 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Making a Real Killing : Rocky Flats and the Nuclear West by Len Ackland ISBN: 0826327982 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: 01 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: In the Name of Science: A History of Secret Programs, Medical Research, and Human Experimentation by Andrew Goliszek ISBN: 0312303564 Publisher: St. Martin's Press Pub. Date: 15 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $27.95 |
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Title: The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media that Love Them by Amy Goodman, David Goodman ISBN: 1401301312 Publisher: Hyperion Pub. Date: April, 2004 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Manifesto for a New World Order by George Monbiot ISBN: 1565849086 Publisher: New Press Pub. Date: April, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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