During the 1940s, several cancer patients, mostly civilians, were injected with radioactive iodine in a range of doses, without their consent or knowledge. The purpose of these experiments were conducted in U.S. hospitals to better understand the health effects of radioactive fallout. Most of patients who were injected with the radioisotope died within 18 months from malignancies and other related tumors, however, approximately 10 percent of the participants survived.
Twenty years later, a longitudinal study of the survivors by both federal health officials and top ranking university researchers enlisted the survivors to determine the long-term effects of radioactive exposures in the human body. The study included a cohort of survivors and controls who had no exposure to the iodine. As expected, the research team found significantly higher number of cancers and malignancies than the control group. The participants were not informed about their injections because it was believed that nothing could be done in addition to monitoring them (supportive therapy). The researchers also were concerned about needlessly alarming this small sample of patients. The physicians who examined the surviving participants were informed about the radiation exposures.
For this discussion, consider the following questions:
Whose interests were served by the decision not to tell the participants they had been injected with radioactive iodine?
Should the participants have been informed of their radiation exposure even though they might have been alarmed by this disclosure (and thus possibly compromising subsequent quality of life)?
Is research on people without their informed consent ever permissible, even in the interests of national security or in times of war?
Should the U.S. government that sponsored the experiments be expected to make financial reparations to the survivors or their next of kin?