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What if I told you one of the nation’s most contentious human experiments was occurring while the world was condemning Nazi medical human experiments? During World War II, the U.S. government created a secret study to learn what plutonium did to the human body. Plutonium is the radioactive metal used in nuclear weapons. What may or may not cause shock, the subjects in this experiment were NOT volunteers. They were hospital patients, all with some form of critical ailment, one of which was only 4 years old. Without any physical evidence of informed consent, 18 patients were injected with plutonium as part of a classified Manhattan Project experiment. Researchers then monitored these patients for years, collecting samples regularly to track how the plutonium moved through their bodies. Some patients died within weeks. Others lived for decades and were monitored for the rest of their lives. Years later, government investigations found no evidence that the patients had been told what they were being injected with. Family members wouldn’t find out about it until almost 50 years after. This will be a two-part episode where we will examine the plutonium experiment, the patients behind the case numbers, and how one this horror remained hidden for decades. This isn't the story of a conspiracy theory but of a documented government experiment, the people caught in it, and the ethical red flags that still remain today.
