Secret programs

1. 1945April 10, 1945Health, Food & Regulators

   First plutonium injection, Ebb Cade, Oak Ridge

   Eighteen patients in all, none told.

   Source: Human Radiation ExperimentsRead the full story →
2. 19481946 to 1948Health, Food & Regulators

   U.S. Public Health Service doctors deliberately infect 1,308 people in Guatemala with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid

   Only 678 of those exposed were documented as treated; at least 83 subjects died.

   Source: Ethically Impossible: STD Research in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948Read the full story →
3. 1950September 20, 1950Health, Food & Regulators

   Navy sprays bacteria over San Francisco for a week

   Eleven hospitalized, one dead; 239 such tests by 1969.

   Source: Operation Sea-SprayRead the full story →
4. 19511951 to 1962Health, Food & Regulators

   Nearly 100 atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada

   Fallout over every county; 49,000 thyroid cancers by the government's central estimate.

   Source: Exposure of the American People to Iodine-131 from Nevada Nuclear-Bomb Tests: Review of the National Cancer Institute Report and Public Health Implications, Executive SummaryRead the full story →
5. 19621962 to 1971Health, Food & Regulators

   19 million gallons of herbicide sprayed over Vietnam

   11 million of it Agent Orange.

   Source: Veterans Exposed to Agent Orange: Legislative History, Litigation, and Current Issues (R43790)Read the full story →
6. 1972July 25, 1972Health, Food & Regulators

   Associated Press exposes the Tuskegee study

   Settled for $10 million; apologized for in 1997.

   Source: The Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee TimelineRead the full story →

Stories (1)

• 1932 to 1995Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Human Radiation Injections, and US Army Bacteria Tests on American CitiesFor forty years the Public Health Service watched 399 Black men in Alabama die of syphilis it could have cured, so it could study the disease. Between 1944 and 1974 federal agencies sponsored nearly 4,000 radiation experiments on people, including plutonium injected into 18 hospital patients who were not told, and radioactive iron and calcium fed to boys at a state school in their breakfast. Between 1949 and 1969 the Army sprayed bacteria over American cities 239 times to see how far they would spread; one test over San Francisco put eleven people in the hospital with the same bacteria, and one of them died. Each program was secret until a reporter, a hearing, or a committee found it.Health, Food & Regulators