COMMENTS FROM STREET TALK NETWORK ABOUT THIS POST-

1. Do your own research on the information provided and then come up with your own conclusions.

2. This article contains many names and other information that can be researched.

3. Trust your gut feeling on information provided as this post may contain slanted information.

The central claim in the Facebook reel is substantially true: during 1945–1947, researchers connected to the Manhattan Project deliberately injected 18 hospital patients with plutonium. The injections were experiments, not treatments. Most subjects apparently were not adequately informed and received no medical benefit from the plutonium.

The four-year-old was an Australian child named Simeon Shaw, identified in government records by the code CAL-2. He already had advanced bone cancer when researchers injected him with plutonium-239, radioactive cerium, and radioactive yttrium. He died approximately eight months later from the cancer.

One important qualification: I could not directly retrieve the Facebook reel’s audio or transcript because Facebook restricted access. This report therefore examines the identifiable historical story using the federal investigation, declassified records, and Los Alamos documentation.

What the government was trying to learn

Plutonium was a new and poorly understood element during the Manhattan Project. Workers manufacturing plutonium for atomic bombs risked inhaling or ingesting microscopic amounts.

Researchers needed to determine:

• Where
  plutonium traveled after entering the bloodstream.
• How
  much accumulated in bones and the liver.
• How
  quickly it appeared in urine and feces.
• Whether
  urine testing could estimate a worker’s total “body burden.”
• At
  what exposure level workers should be removed from plutonium work.

Instead of relying only on animals or following accidentally exposed workers, project physicians injected known amounts into hospital patients and repeatedly collected their blood, urine, feces, bone, teeth, and other tissues.

The experiments established that approximately two-thirds of intravenously injected plutonium initially deposited in the skeleton and more than one-fifth in the liver. These organs therefore became the primary concern when calculating internal plutonium exposure. Los Alamos, “The Human Plutonium Injection Experiments”

Simeon Shaw—the child designated CAL-2

His background

Simeon was an Australian boy suffering from osteogenic sarcoma, an aggressive bone cancer. Historical accounts report that he was brought from Australia to San Francisco after his family was offered the possibility of specialized medical care.

The available federal table gives his age on the injection date as four years and ten months. This is why accounts variously describe him as four or five years old.

He was treated at the University of California Hospital in San Francisco, where Dr. Joseph Gilbert Hamilton’s group conducted radioactive-tracer research.

The injection

On April 26, 1946, Simeon was injected intravenously with:

• Approximately
  2.7 micrograms of plutonium-239.
• Radioactive
  cerium.
• Radioactive
  yttrium.

This was not a therapeutic dose intended to destroy his tumor. The radioactive materials served as tracers so investigators could measure how different elements accumulated in normal bone and cancerous bone.

Approximately one week later, physicians performed surgery and removed substantial bone and tissue samples. Those samples were analyzed to compare the concentration of plutonium, cerium, and yttrium in normal and malignant tissue. Los Alamos report

Was the injection presented as cancer treatment?

This is where some popular accounts become more certain than the surviving evidence permits.

The experiment may have had two scientific purposes:

1. Continuing the Manhattan Project’s work on plutonium metabolism and worker safety.

2. Supporting Dr. Hamilton’s broader investigation of radioactive elements that might someday be useful in treating bone cancer.

But the quantities injected into Simeon were not expected to treat him. Los Alamos’ retrospective account explicitly states that the radioisotopes administered in these experiments had no therapeutic value for the recipients because the quantities were too small.

The surviving records do not establish precisely what Simeon’s mother was told. The federal historical review concluded:

“Details on the degree or type of consent sought from CAL-2 remains presently unknown.”

Therefore, it is fair to say that there is no documented informed consent comparable to what would be required today. It is less certain whether his mother was told nothing, was given an incomplete description, or was led to believe the procedures were connected with treatment. National Security Archive background memorandum

Because Simeon was a small child, meaningful consent would necessarily have had to come from a parent or legal guardian. No surviving record demonstrates that his mother was told:

• That
  plutonium was being administered.
• That
  the dose would not cure him.
• That
  the principal purpose was research.
• That
  plutonium would remain in his skeleton and liver.
• That
  the information was intended partly to protect nuclear workers.

His death

Simeon died on January 6, 1947, 255 days after the injection—approximately eight and a half months. He was five years old at death.

The recorded cause was osteogenic sarcoma, the aggressive bone cancer he already had. The estimated total effective radiation dose attributable to the injected plutonium was about 13 rem, according to the later Los Alamos reconstruction.

It is inaccurate to state as proven fact that the plutonium killed him. His cancer was already considered terminal, and researchers did not find evidence that the injection caused his death eight months later. That does not make the experiment ethical: he was a vulnerable child subjected to nonbeneficial research without documented informed parental permission.

The other 17 plutonium subjects

The following information comes from the reconstructed patient table published in Los Alamos Science. Names remain unknown for most subjects, so researchers used institutional codes:

• HP: Rochester
  patients and the first Oak Ridge patient.
• CHI: Chicago
  patients.
• CAL: University of
  California patients.

Source: Los Alamos’ complete patient table and scientific reconstruction.

The extraordinarily high doses given to CHI-2 and CHI-3—approximately 95 micrograms each—were about 15–20 times the mass administered to most subjects. Investigators selected people expected to die soon, reasoning that delayed plutonium-induced cancers would not have time to develop.

Three especially revealing cases

1. Ebb Cade—HP-12

Ebb Cade, a Black cement worker at Oak Ridge, was the first known person deliberately injected.

He entered the Oak Ridge Army hospital after a March 24, 1945 automobile accident that fractured several bones. Apart from his injuries, records described him as generally healthy and well nourished.

He was injected with 4.7 micrograms of plutonium on April 10. The setting of his fractures was delayed until April 15, when researchers obtained bone specimens. Fifteen badly decayed teeth were later removed and analyzed for plutonium. The federal committee could not determine whether the teeth were removed mainly for legitimate dental reasons or scientific sampling.

An Army physician later said no consent had been obtained and that he proceeded after receiving an order from a superior. Another physician disputed who actually administered the injection. Cade eventually left the hospital and died of heart failure in 1953. ACHRE account of Ebb Cade

2. Albert Stevens—CAL-1

Albert Stevens, a San Francisco house painter, was believed to have terminal stomach cancer. On May 14, 1945, he was injected with plutonium-239 and the much more radioactive isotope plutonium-238.

Surgery subsequently showed that the diagnosis was wrong: the suspected cancer was a benign ulcer. This meant the researchers had injected a man who was not terminally ill.

Stevens lived another 20 years while plutonium remained in his body. He consequently accumulated the largest estimated radiation dose among the 18 subjects. The Los Alamos reconstruction calculated a total effective dose of approximately 6,400 rem, delivered internally and gradually over more than two decades—not as one acute whole-body exposure.

Researchers continued collecting samples from him, apparently without disclosing what had been administered. After his death, parts of his cremated remains were obtained for radiological examination. He died of heart disease in 1966, not a documented plutonium-induced cancer.

3. Elmer Allen—CAL-3

Elmer Allen was a 36-year-old African American railroad porter thought to have bone cancer in his left leg. In July 1947, plutonium-238 was injected into the muscle of that leg. The leg was then amputated, permitting researchers to analyze how the material moved through muscle, blood, and bone.

Allen survived for approximately 44 years. In the 1970s he was contacted for follow-up examinations but was reportedly not initially given a complete explanation of the original experiment. He died in 1991 from respiratory failure and pneumonia.

Were all 18 terminally ill?

No. This is an important correction to simplified accounts.

Researchers generally sought patients whom they believed would not live long enough to develop delayed radiation cancers. But:

• Ebb
  Cade was primarily an accident victim.
• Albert
  Stevens was wrongly diagnosed with terminal cancer.
• Several
  Rochester subjects had chronic conditions rather than imminent terminal
  disease.
• Six
  subjects lived more than ten years.
• Three
  survived roughly 30–44 years.

Selecting people because they were expected to die soon was itself ethically troubling. It also failed as a risk-control method because some diagnoses and life-expectancy judgments were incorrect.

Did the injections kill anyone?

The most defensible conclusion is:

• The
  injections created genuine long-term radiation risks, particularly cancer
  risk in bone and liver.
• Plutonium
  remains in the body for decades and continually irradiates nearby tissues
  with alpha particles.
• No
  acute radiation illness was expected at the amounts administered.
• The
  surviving records do not establish that plutonium caused any individual
  subject’s recorded death.
• Many
  patients died soon afterward from diseases that were already advanced.
• Because
  the group was small, medically diverse, poorly followed, and inadequately
  documented, the experiments cannot prove that nobody was physically
  harmed.

The presidential advisory committee concluded that some subjects were placed at risk of developing cancer ten or twenty years later. It also emphasized that a person can be seriously wronged even when measurable physical injury cannot ultimately be demonstrated. ACHRE’s ethical conclusions

Consent and secrecy

This is the clearest institutional wrongdoing.

With one possible exception, the historical record indicates that subjects were not told they were participating in experiments offering no expected medical benefit. Evidence concerning the Rochester patients suggests some did not even know they had received radioactive material.

A 1946 memorandum concerning California research recorded that proposed injections would probably be made without patients’ knowledge and that signed releases were not considered necessary. Government records also show deliberate concern that information about the experiments not reach patients or their families.

The experiments remained connected to classified weapons work. Although some scientific results were later published, patients’ identities and the circumstances surrounding their injections remained concealed for decades.

The official investigation ultimately found that:

• The
  injections did not offer the subjects therapeutic benefit.
• Consent
  was absent, undocumented, or seriously inadequate.
• Researchers
  used especially vulnerable patients.
• Government
  secrecy prevented subjects and families from learning what happened and
  pursuing grievances.
• The
  conduct was unethical even when direct physical injury could not be
  proven.

Between 1945 and 1947 the Manhattan Project also injected five people with polonium and six with uranium for related metabolic studies. These were separate from the 18 plutonium subjects. ACHRE Chapter 5 conclusion

How the story became public

Investigative reporter Eileen Welsome uncovered the identities and histories of several subjects in a 1993 Albuquerque Tribune series. She received the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting and later expanded the investigation into the book The Plutonium Files.

The disclosures prompted Energy Secretary Hazel O’Leary’s openness initiative and President Bill Clinton’s creation of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments in 1994.

The committee examined thousands of federally connected radiation experiments conducted from 1944 through 1975. It issued its final report in October 1995.

President Clinton publicly apologized, stating that some experiments were unethical by both contemporary standards and the standards existing when they were performed. His administration created the National Bioethics Advisory Commission and ordered agencies to strengthen protections for human research subjects. Official federal response

The government eventually settled claims with 16 families of plutonium-injection subjects who came forward. A 1997 White House briefing placed compensation for plutonium-injection cases and one uranium case at approximately $6.5 million. Federal compensation report

Final assessment of the reel’s likely claim

The reel’s central story is not an invented conspiracy. It concerns a documented federal research program supported by declassified records and a presidential commission.

The strongest historically supported conclusions are:

• Simeon
  Shaw was a real four-year-old Australian cancer patient.
• Researchers
  injected him with plutonium-239, radioactive cerium, and radioactive
  yttrium.
• The
  materials were not administered in a therapeutic dose.
• Bone
  and tissue were removed for analysis.
• He
  died 255 days later from his preexisting bone cancer.
• There
  is no surviving documentation demonstrating informed parental consent.
• He
  was one of 18 plutonium-injection subjects.
• Most
  subjects apparently were not told the true nature and purpose of the
  research.
• The
  government kept the program and its subjects’ identities secret for
  decades.
• The
  injections cannot reliably be identified as the cause of the patients’
  deaths, but the absence of provable causation does not diminish the
  profound violation of consent and medical ethics.

you forgot to add links that will open that will lead to individual sites on these individuals.

You are correct. Here are direct links for the individuals discussed. Most subjects were never publicly identified, so separate biographies do not exist for all 18; their case-number records are contained in the official government tables.

Identified subjects

Simeon Shaw — CAL-2

The four-year-old Australian boy injected with plutonium-239, radioactive cerium, and radioactive yttrium.

• Los Alamos report describing Simeon’s injection
• Federal historical record concerning CAL-2 and consent
• Colorado Nuclear Atlas profile of Simeon Shaw
• University of Rochester history of the experiments
• Scientific-history article discussing Simeon Shaw

Ebb Cade — HP-12

The Oak Ridge construction worker injected after entering the hospital following an automobile accident.

• Official federal account of Ebb Cade’s injection
• Los Alamos scientific report on HP-12
• Manhattan
  Project National Historical Park Facebook history of Ebb Cade

Albert Stevens — CAL-1

The house painter misdiagnosed with terminal stomach cancer who lived approximately 20 years after receiving plutonium.

• Albert Stevens’ individual biography
• Official federal account of CAL-1
• Atomic Heritage Foundation profile
• Los Alamos scientific report and reconstructed radiation dose

Elmer Allen — CAL-3

The African American railroad porter injected in his leg before it was amputated.

• Official federal account of Elmer Allen
• Interview with Elmer Allen’s daughter
• Los Alamos record for CAL-3

Jan Stadt — HP-8

A 41-year-old Rochester patient suffering from scleroderma and a duodenal ulcer.

• Official federal account, including testimony from Jan Stadt’s son
• Los Alamos patient table containing HP-8

Subjects who remain identified only by code number

No reliable individual biography pages are available for the following people because their names were never publicly established or were withheld to protect their families:

Additional primary and investigative sources

• Complete Advisory Committee report index
• ACHRE conclusions about the plutonium experiments
• Federal summary of the human-radiation investigation
• Government compensation recommendations
• Government report on compensation paid to families
• Interview about Eileen Welsome’s The Plutonium Files investigation
• History of how Welsome uncovered the subjects