It is understandable that reports about radiation experiments in the United States following World War II have generated concern among many Americans about the use of radiation (“A shameful legacy of the Cold War,” Editorial, Dec. 30).
Was there a callous disregard for the rights of people who were studied? Who ordered the experiments and why?
From my perspective, as a physician who practices nuclear medicine and uses radiation to treat and diagnose patients, the dominant issue is whether people who administered the experiments provided full disclosure to the people who were studied and then got their consent.
It would be tragic if events that took place years ago were to confuse and frighten people to the point that medical care and other beneficial applications of radiation are curtailed. Nuclear medicine is now an essential feature of every large hospital. I hope no patient would delay or avoid necessary testing or treatment with radioactive materials based on studies that were carried out a generation ago.
In judging the early experiments with radiation, it should be remembered that without radioactive tracer techniques of the kind that were used in studies at a number of university hospitals over the years, the diagnosis and treatment of disease would not have evolved to anywhere near their present state of development.
