ABSTRACT
In 1943 the Department of War launched a secret radiological weapons program in tandem with the atomic bomb project, and military officials recruited scientists with expertise and access to institutional resources for the project. In return the men gained professional status and had membership for life in an elite fraternity of military scientists. Public health was a legitimate defense concern and established a plausible argument as to why the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) might engage in some aspects of military research. Deceit was a central component of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, along with the strategic targeting of persons of color who were poor and disenfranchised, for experimental and exploitative purposes that brought absolutely no benefit to the men. Circumstantial evidence indicates that the Fernald experiments were part of the Department of Defense's (DOD) RW project involving injection and ingestion experiments.
