1. Human Experimentation Continues at the University of California
DOE Openness: Human Radiation Experiments: Roadmap to the Project
ACHRE Report

2. By the summer of 1947, human experimentation had resumed at the University of California under AEC contract. In June, "CAL-A," a teenage Asian-American bone cancer patient at Chinese Hospital in San Francisco, was injected with americium. An instruction in the patient's file by one of Hamilton's assistants specifies that "we will use the same procedure as with Mr. S,” evidently a reference to Albert Stevens. Dr. Durbin, Hamilton's associate, believes that CAL-A's guardian was informed of the procedure followed in that case.

3. Elmer Allen
A thirty-six-year-old African-American railroad porter named Elmer Allen, code-named CAL-3, was believed to be suffering from bone cancer and was injected with plutonium at the University of California in July His left leg was amputated shortly thereafter. There is a note in his medical chart signed by two physicians, stating that the experimental nature was "explained to the patient, who agreed to the procedure" and that "the patient was in fully oriented and in sane mind."

4. It is likely that this note was intended to fulfill one of the April 1947 conditions for human experimentation, which allowed for such a procedure as documentation of having obtained the patient-subject's consent. It is not clear from the note, however, whether in explaining about the experimental nature of the procedure the physicians told the patient about the potential effects of the injection, as required by the Wilson letter, or that the injection was not intended to be of medical benefit to the patient. On this second point, the injection was in violation of the Wilson letter, which also required that there be an "expectation that it may have therapeutic effect.” As acknowledged by the February 1995 UCSF report, there was never any expectation on the part of the experimenters that the injection would be of therapeutic benefit to Mr. Allen.

5. Mr. Allen lived until According to UCSF's 1995 review of patient-subjects' medical charts, upon biopsy of his tumor a pathologic diagnosis was made of chondrosarcoma, a type of malignant bone tumor. UCSF reported that patients with this type of tumor "frequently surviv[e] many years beyond diagnosis if there is complete excision of the primary tumor.” This pathology finding suggests that Mr. Allen was a long-term cancer survivor. A note in his patient chart recorded that the tumor was "malignant but slow growing and late to metastasize. Prognosis therefore moderately good."

6. On March 15, 1995, Elmerine Whitfield Bell, the daughter of Elmer Allen, told the Advisory Committee in Washington, D.C., that she:
continue[s] to be appalled by the apparent attempts at cover-ups, the inferences that the nature of the times, the 1940s, allowed scientists to conduct experiments without getting a patient's consent or without mentioning risks. We contend that my father was not an informed participant in the plutonium experiment.
He was asked to sign his name several times while a patient at the University of California hospital in San Francisco. Why was he not asked to sign his name permitting scientists to inject him with plutonium? Why was his wife, who was college trained, not consulted in this matter?

7. Why did the University of California do this?
There was a valid contract with the Atomic Energy Commission to learn about the effects of plutonium.
The faculty in charge were responding to the lack of knowledge of the effects of plutonium in order to increase worker safety.
It is indefensible

8. It is clear that Dr. Hamilton was both authorized and requested by the U.S. government to conduct experiments on human beings in order to advance understanding of the effects of plutonium which Professor Smythe said in 1945 was lacking. Does that make the actions by Dr. Hamilton moral? ?
Yes No
I’m thinking

9. Was it moral for the University of California to allow this to occur on a government contract for which it was responsible?
Yes No
I’m thinking

10. Was a moral offense committed against Elmer Allen and his family?
Yes No
I’m thinking