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RESPONSE TO QUERY ON PLUTONIUM INJECTION STUDY - MANHATTAN DISTRICT The Atomic Energy Commission is conducting a staff + ga-tion into the circumstances surrounding a biological research experiment involving human patients which was carried out under the World War I1 Manhattan Project and into the early years of the Atomic Energy Commission. Between 1945 and 1947, 18 patients in four hospitals were injected with soluble plutonium, a man-made radioactive material. The last injection was given in 1947 shortly after the AEC came into being. Four of the 18 patients are still alive. The hospitals were located in Massachusetts, Tennessee, Illinois and California. The amounts of plutonium ranged from about sewen body burdens up t 5 body burde A bo-dY burden is At the time of the injections thousands of workers in the defense industry were involved in handling plutonium. The experimental injections were considered essential to establish certain basic information on the distribution of plutonium in the various organs of the body and the rate at which it i s
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excreted from the body preparatory to establishing standards for protecting those workers. The information from the study still forms the basis of much of what is known on the subject today. Follow-up examinations were conducted by AEC contractors through 1952. In 1972, Dr. Patricia W. Durbin of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory contributed a chapter to the book "Radiobiology of Plutonium," in which she reviewed the essential clinical information on the patients and presented data of the In December, 1972, the accumulated records of the study were transferred from Berkeley to the Director of the Center for Human Radiobiology (CHR) at the AEC's Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago. Subsequently, he arranged for clinical examinations for three of the four surviving patients. The examinations took place between January and June, 1973. In addition, in late 1973, permission was obtained for exhumation of the body of one It was during the 1973 follow-up that questions arose about the circumstances of the original study, specifically, whether all of the 18 patients or their next of kin was fully informed as to the nature and purpose of the injections. Because of the secrecy surrounding plutonium at that time, it is uncertain how much information the patients were given. Preliminary queries
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by the AEC staff led to the more detailed in now underway. While it is known that at least one patient was fully informed, it appears that others may not have been. that proves to be the case, AEC will see that the surviving patients and/or their next of kin are promptly told. It should be noted that at the time the study was performed there were no formal or standardized guidelines such as there are now for-)- humans in medical research. Preliminary investigation indicates certain criteria were set for choosing patients for the study. However, in several cases, the criteria were not observed. Patients were to be 4 5 years old, but at least five were less than that and one was because of an existing disease. However, four patients are alive 2 8 years later. Life expectancy was to be less than 10 years 4-7 c The names of the 1 8 patients are not available. AEC will not&w-! m, release the names without the consent of the patients or their A series of papers resulting from the follow-up data will be presented in July at the International Congress for Radiation Research to be held in Seattle, Washington. Of the 18 patients, 1 3 were male; 5 were female: 1 3 were 4 5 ,h years or older; 2 were between 3 5 and 4 5 ; 2 were--- and 1 was four years old; 15 were white and 3 were black.
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The results of the AEC staff investigation will be available to the public.