VA Hospitals Checked for Possible Roles in Radiation Experiments

The Department of Veterans Affairs is surveying all 172 VA hospitals on any role they may have had in post-World War II radiation experiments, some of them possibly involving unwitting patients, Secretary Jesse Brown said Monday.

At least 48 VA hospitals had radioisotope laboratories licensed by 1958, 11 years after the VA established a secret atomic medicine program to augment research into the fledgling field by the Atomic Energy Commission.

Annual reports published by the Veterans Administration, which was replaced by the Department of Veterans Affairs in 1989, show that 959 radioisotope studies or research projects were carried out in 1955 and 1956 alone.

Brown said he did not know whether any of those experiments or others conducted at VA hospitals between 1947 and 1979 are among the estimated 800 radiation tests on human beings disclosed last month by Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary.

But VA documents indicate that its secret atomic medicine and more public radioisotope programs begun in 1947 were intended to complement research by the AEC, the predecessor to O’Leary’s department.

After World War II, the VA was a pioneer in the use of medical radioisotopes for diagnosing and treating a wide variety of ailments, including dysfunctional thyroid glands, brain tumors, leukemia and other cancers.