Nuclear Medicine

The previous post was about the shameful and dark underside of nuclear research on human beings.  This one and the follow-ups will discuss some of the useful medical advances that our understanding of radiation have made possible.

I don't know how much the unethical human radiation experiments contributed (if any) to modern medicine.  What I do know is that entirely new methods for imaging and treating disease are now available that were not available prior to the nuclear age.  There is a lot of genius involved with using radiation to make people well.

Nuclear Medicine broadly falls into two categories;  I will be discussing each one in separate posts of their own.  Those categories are Imaging and Therapy.  Both are interesting fields - they are at the intersection of radiation and biology, only this time for the good of mankind.

Nuclear Imaging - a PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scan.

Nuclear Therapy - an early linear accelerator for radiation therapy on an inoperable cancer.

Nuclear Experiments on Humans

“It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. Documents covering such work should be classified `secret’.”

April 17, 1947 Atomic Energy Commission memo from Colonel O.G. Haywood, Jr. to Dr. Fidler at the Oak Ridge Laboratory in Tennessee

In the early days of Nuclear Energy, the US government (and by extension, the US Military), had a monopoly on man-made radioactive materials.  There was a great deal of curiousity about these new materials, and what their effect on the human body might be.