Reply #27: Eileen Welsome is a real reporter, a good journalist...

[Octafish]

...a patriot in the truest sense of the word.

Welsome is the author of "The Plutonium Files," published by the Dial Press, Random House, Inc. NY 1999 ISBN 0-385-31402-7. From a source online:

Plutonium Files

EXCERPT...

p. 346, 347

"Often the patients were moved to a private room after irradiation so that their mental state could be better evaluated. What's more, the doctors told their military funders, "there are no other patients receiving radiation therapy with whom the patient can exchange experiences." These psychological studies were another important component of the experiment and became more elaborate as the years went on. Tests were administered to measure the patients' depression, hope, denial, and pessimism. Brief interviews were conducted before and after irradiation and then "scored" for cognitive dysfunction. Many of the patients were so sick after they were irradiated that they could not complete all the testing. Herb Varin remembers his mother Nina Cline, complaining about the constant barrage of questioning. "I tell them I'm feeling terrible but they just want to talk to me," Varin recalled his mother saying. The psychological research was pertinent to the military, the Cincinnati doctors wrote, because of the way TBI affected thought processes:

Following exposure to acute whole or partial body radiation it is possible that there will be significant impairment of the decision making capability of key personnel who have major command responsibilities. This concern has become more important in recent years since the findings that complex electronic systems can be rendered inoperative by very high doses of radiation. Thus it is necessary to maintain dependence on the human being. It is quite possible that even moderately high doses or dose rates could produce impairment of cognitive processes either of an obvious or of a subtle nature which in moments of stress would impair or defeat a military operation. In order to gain understanding of such possible changes it is necessary to seek changes in cognitive processes and decrease in the capability to perform highly technical processes."

SNIP... pp.481-486

For five decades the public remained largely ignorant of the systematic nature of human radiation experiments. Secrecy, compounded by the insular, inbred nature of the atomic establishment, helped keep the experiments from becoming known. But the fact is, the Manhattan Project veterans and their proteges controlled virtually all the information. They sat on the boards that set radiation standards, consulted at meetings where further human experimentation was discussed, investigated nuclear accidents, and served as expert witnesses in radiation injury cases. The Manhattan Project researchers also worked in a professional world that remained remarkably stable. Once the project itself had been disbanded, the scientists got jobs in the weapons laboratories and at universities, many of which had contracts with the Atomic Energy Commission, and they remained in these jobs for the rest of their lives.

The experiments conducted after the war generally were not secret. But the results were published in obscure journals or laboratory health reports that were inaccessible to the public. Furthermore, many of the policy discussions surrounding the purpose of the experiments were kept secret."

CONTINUED w/very interesting links...

http://www.raven1.net/pluton.htm