U.S. Radiation Experiments

I applaud the action of Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary in demanding a report on acts of atrocity on human beings committed by the Atomic Energy Commission between 1944 and 1974. I also agree with the general content of your July 28 editorial, “Coming Clean After Decades of Dirty Science.” However, I am disturbed by the statement that says: “Doctors at the University of Cincinnati exposed indigent cancer patients to radiation 10 times higher than considered safe, and several died as a result.” Then you go on to say: “It is perhaps unfair to judge those responsible by today’s more refined standards of medical ethics.”

I am reminded by all this of the experiments performed by the Nazis in the extermination camps, and particularly of Dr. Josef Mengele. If we apply your reasoning, then it would be unfair to judge Mengele. As a doctor of medicine, I must stress my belief that any physician engaged in similar acts should be condemned regardless of the times. This ought to include the participation of a doctor in any “legal” termination of life, as in a death sentence.

I am perturbed by your attempt at apology just because those vicious acts in question were committed by physicians employed by the American government. The Nazi atrocities were condemned by a tribunal in Nuremberg and many of the perpetrators were punished. Nothing has happened here.

GUILLERMO McEWAN MD

Whittier

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* After applauding O’Leary and the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments for the truthfulness and recommendations for redress to offended survivors, you disappoint by excusing and softening the description of those offenses.

The real message from all of this is that the arrogance of power continues and always needs the free press to expose and condemn such actions. The left lost faith in government because of infiltration and persecution of the anti-war and civil rights movements.

DAVID BRUNK

Gardena

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* Your editorial on U.S. government radiation experiments on American citizens was well-said until your exculpatory statement that it would be going too far to compare it to the Nazi experiments.

When our government conducted radiation experiments on Americans as human guinea pigs, usually without their consent or knowledge, where is the essential difference in principle between such experiments and those of the Nazis? The inescapable fact is that both governments treated human beings as mere objects for their own perverted ends.

HARRY S. HALL

Arcadia