RE: What do you know today that you didn't know yesterday?
September 4, 2023 at 3:52 am
(This post was last modified: September 4, 2023 at 3:57 am by Anomalocaris.)
Albert Stevens is the most radioactive human being ever. During the last 20 years of his life, radioactive plutonium injected into his body emitted approximately 60 times the current allowable life time radiation dose of a radiation worker.
Albert Stevens was a 58 year old house painter when he checked into University of California at San Francisco hospital with a stomach complaint in 1945. He was misdiagnosed as having terminal stomach cancer. Since he was suppose to die anyway, the hospital, in collaboration with Los Alamos National lab decided to inject him, without his knowledge or consent, with a lethal doze of 1 micro gram of plutonium to see what happens.
At the time plutonium was recently discovered, but already used in the core of the atomic bomb soon to be dropped in Nagasaki. During the development of plutonium bomb core a number of mishaps had occurred and plutonium contamination had become a major problem both inside Los Alamos National lab and in nearby civilian communities. Volunteer subjects for research into the effect of chemical and radiation exposure to plutonium contamination was difficult to find. So it was decided to experiment on terminally ill patients without their knowledge and Consent.
As it turns out, Albert Stevens’ ailment was misdiagnosed. Even though his alledged stomach cancer was thought to be incurable, it was decided to use a false pretext to operate on him anyway in order to obtain biopsy of his internal organs for the radiation experiment. Unfortunately the biopsy also showed what he had was an ordinary stomach ulcer with large inflammation, not incurable stomach cancer. So the university hospital and the National lab decided to sew him back up again and not tell him what had actually happened. In the interest of continuing the radiation experiment on the patient whose days seems somewhat less numbered than before, his supposed caretakers invented the story that his incurable stomach cancer had miraculously undergone spontaneous remission that is quite worthy of research, And the research required that he continue to provide stool, urine and tissue samples. So for the rest of his life he was visited at home weekly by a nurse and intern to collect the samples. He was never told about his misdiagnosis, nor the plutonium injection, nor what the samples were used for.
During the remainder of his life, he never developed cancer, but experienced abnormal tissue degeneration in his spine. He died in 1966. In 1975 his ashes were taken from the chapel where it had resided without his family’s knowledge and transferee to Argonne National laboratory.
His identity, along with those of a number of other patients also involuntarily subjected to radiation experiments involving plutonium, was not revealed until 1993.
Albert Stevens was a 58 year old house painter when he checked into University of California at San Francisco hospital with a stomach complaint in 1945. He was misdiagnosed as having terminal stomach cancer. Since he was suppose to die anyway, the hospital, in collaboration with Los Alamos National lab decided to inject him, without his knowledge or consent, with a lethal doze of 1 micro gram of plutonium to see what happens.
At the time plutonium was recently discovered, but already used in the core of the atomic bomb soon to be dropped in Nagasaki. During the development of plutonium bomb core a number of mishaps had occurred and plutonium contamination had become a major problem both inside Los Alamos National lab and in nearby civilian communities. Volunteer subjects for research into the effect of chemical and radiation exposure to plutonium contamination was difficult to find. So it was decided to experiment on terminally ill patients without their knowledge and Consent.
As it turns out, Albert Stevens’ ailment was misdiagnosed. Even though his alledged stomach cancer was thought to be incurable, it was decided to use a false pretext to operate on him anyway in order to obtain biopsy of his internal organs for the radiation experiment. Unfortunately the biopsy also showed what he had was an ordinary stomach ulcer with large inflammation, not incurable stomach cancer. So the university hospital and the National lab decided to sew him back up again and not tell him what had actually happened. In the interest of continuing the radiation experiment on the patient whose days seems somewhat less numbered than before, his supposed caretakers invented the story that his incurable stomach cancer had miraculously undergone spontaneous remission that is quite worthy of research, And the research required that he continue to provide stool, urine and tissue samples. So for the rest of his life he was visited at home weekly by a nurse and intern to collect the samples. He was never told about his misdiagnosis, nor the plutonium injection, nor what the samples were used for.
During the remainder of his life, he never developed cancer, but experienced abnormal tissue degeneration in his spine. He died in 1966. In 1975 his ashes were taken from the chapel where it had resided without his family’s knowledge and transferee to Argonne National laboratory.
His identity, along with those of a number of other patients also involuntarily subjected to radiation experiments involving plutonium, was not revealed until 1993.
