PRIVACY ACT MATERIAL REMOVED
ELEMENTS AND EXPERIMENTS
plans for experiments on humansusing the following radioactive elements:
Plutonium (aka Product; experiment knownasthe Project)
Yttrium
Cerium
Zirconium
Strontium
Thorium
Americium
Curium
Phosphorus
Iodide
Sodium
Arsenic
(The following do not necessarily pertain to Hamilton)
types of people experimented on:
prisoners
hospital patients, most commonly those thought to be terminal
elderly
mentally incapacitated
children
types of experiments:
whole-bodyirradiation
testes (Oregon, Washington prison inmates, 1963)
thyroid (traces in milk led to exp. of dose of iodine absorbed by children)
liver, kidneys, muscles, and skeleton (plutonium)
BREAKTHROUGHS
we have copies of Hamilton's notes (from Pat Durbin's files) which suggest that CAL-II
was
and was injected with plutonium AND twoother substances, yttrium
and cerium.
June 1945:
"A patient suffering from carcinoma of the stomach,received, by
intravenousinjection, approximately 5 ugms of plutonium as PUC2(NO3)2,enriched
with Pu238 so that the activity was equivalent to 50 ugmsof Pu239. Four dayslater, as a
result of surgery, specimensof bone, spleen, tumor, ementum,and skin were obtained.
The distribution patterns of these tissues were very similar to that observed in rats.” (p. 1,
moredetails pp. 2 and 4)
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory
Archives and Records Office
Human Radiation Experiments Search and Retrieval Project
Anna Berge Research Notes
Electronic Document Title: Plutonium
Apmil 4, 1994
,
PRIVACY ACT MATERIAL REMOVED
pecBEE ta
May 1945:
"difficulty in extrapolation from rat to man makesit desirable that some
human studies be undertaken with a representative short-lived stand in for the various
types of plutonium aerosols.” (p. 3 text)
aboutrats: "Prolonged excretion studies have shownthat the elimination
of product from this body is very slow, even whenthe animalsare subject to the type of
treatment usually employed in lead and radium poisoning. After intramuscular injection,
a large part of the absorbed material becomesfixed in the skeleton.” (p. 4 text)
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NOTES FROM MONTHLY REPORTS ON PROJECT 48A