In the early 1970s, the major industrial states were preparing to shift to nuclear fission as their principal source of electrical power. But that change has not occurred. In part, this is due to a growing public recognition that techniques and institutions for management of spent nuclear fuel, separated plutonium, and long-lived radioactive wastes are not yet fully developed. The consequent pressures for resolution have spurred a series of often ill-defined and sometimes contradictory attempts to promote international cooperation and (...) control of hazardous activities. How are these varied suggestions to be compared and evaluated? By what criteria can plans be selected that are likely to be both effective and negotiable? In this study, Gene I. Rochlin, physicist and social scientist, explores the technical, political, and institutional aspects of international nuclear export and fuel cycle policies. He categorizes existing proposals and suggests way to develop new ones that better promote both national and international goals. Dr. Rochlin argues neither for nor against the use of nuclear power or plutonium fuels. Instead, he addresses the question of how international arrangements could be reached that might jointly satisfy the objective of the several key nations, yet not be too difficult to negotiate. He concludes that a major fault has been the tendency to improvise arrangements for specific technical or industrial operations. As a result, overall social and political goals have become the bargaining points for compromise. Yet attempts to simultaneously resolve all problems are unlikely to prove fruitful. Dr. Rochlin suggests instead the formation of institutions organized around more limited social, political, and technical objectives, even at the expense of excluding some nations or omitting some aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. Only by so doing, he argues, can immediate agreements be reached that preserve the potential for more comprehensive future arrangements without sacrificing industrial, environmental, or nonproliferation goals. This important book will be of interest to scientists, social scientists, government officials, and others concerned with the problems of plutonium management and nuclear wastes. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Fehlinterpretierte Dokumente und ignorierte physikalische Fakten: Die Geschichte von,Hitlers Atombombe‘ muss korrigiert werden. Warum haben die deutschen Physiker während des Zweiten Weltkriegs keine Atombombe entwickelt? Seit mehr als 25 Jahren sind sich die Historiker einig, dass die deutschen Physiker wussten, wie eine Atombombe gebaut werden muss, dass aber ein Programm wie das amerikanische Manhattan‐Projekt zu ihrer Realisierung in Deutschland, erst recht während des Krieges, unmöglich war. Eine genaue Analyse aller erhaltenen Original‐Dokumente über die Arbeit an der Atombombe während des,Dritten (...) Reichs‘ zeigt jedoch erhebliche Fehler der Autoren durch unvollständige Analyse der Dokumente, falsches Verständnis naturwissenschaftlicher Erläuterungen und Ignorieren physikalischer Fakten. Es wird nachgewiesen, dass die deutschen Physiker bis zum Ende des Krieges nicht bemerkt hatten, dass eine Atombombe nur mit schnellen Neutronen realisiert werden kann. Nur Heisenberg hatte das richtige Prinzip spät erkannt, es aber nicht eindeutig kommuniziert und auch in keiner Weise physikalisch vertieft. Die physikalisch korrekte Interpretation der Dokumente zeigt, dass die deutschen Physiker während des Krieges erfolglos versuchten, einen Reaktor zu entwickeln, der auch eine Voraussetzung für den Bau einer Plutonium‐Bombe gewesen wäre. Aber sie wussten nicht, wie eine Bombe realisiert werden kann, weil sie nie an einer realistischen Theorie der Atombombe gearbeitet hatten. Summary: Misinterpreted Documents and Ignored Physical Facts: The History of ‘Hitler's Atomic Bomb’ needs to be corrected. Why have the German physicists not developed an atomic bomb during World War II? For more than 25 years, the historians agree that they knew how to build the bomb, but that a bomb‐development programme of the size of the US‐Manhattan‐Project would not have been possible in wartime Germany. A detailed analysis of all preserved documents on the German atomic bomb research during the ‘Third Reich’, however, reveals considerable mistakes by the authors due to incomplete analysis of documents, misinterpretations of scientific explanations and ignoring of physical facts. It is shown that until the end of the war the German physicists did not know that an atomic bomb can only be made with fast neutrons, except Heisenberg, who, however, discovered it rather late, did not communicate it clearly and did not study any bomb physics. The physically correct interpretation of the documents reveals that the German physicists worked unsuccessfully on a reactor, which would have been a prerequisite for a plutonium bomb. But they did not know how to build a bomb because they never worked on a realistic bomb theory. (shrink)

This paper approaches the choice between the open and closed nuclear fuel cycles as a matter of intergenerational justice, by revealing the value conflicts in the production of nuclear energy. The closed fuel cycle improve sustainability in terms of the supply certainty of uranium and involves less long-term radiological risks and proliferation concerns. However, it compromises short-term public health and safety and security, due to the separation of plutonium. The trade-offs in nuclear energy are reducible to a chief trade-off (...) between the present and the future. To what extent should we take care of our produced nuclear waste and to what extent should we accept additional risks to the present generation, in order to diminish the exposure of future generation to those risks? The advocates of the open fuel cycle should explain why they are willing to transfer all the risks for a very long period of time (200,000 years) to future generations. In addition, supporters of the closed fuel cycle should underpin their acceptance of additional risks to the present generation and make the actual reduction of risk to the future plausible. (shrink)

Zusammenfassung: Fehlinterpretierte Dokumente und ignorierte physikalische Fakten: Die Geschichte von,Hitlers Atombombe‘ muss korrigiert werden. Warum haben die deutschen Physiker während des Zweiten Weltkriegs keine Atombombe entwickelt? Seit mehr als 25 Jahren sind sich die Historiker einig, dass die deutschen Physiker wussten, wie eine Atombombe gebaut werden muss, dass aber ein Programm wie das amerikanische Manhattan‐Projekt zu ihrer Realisierung in Deutschland, erst recht während des Krieges, unmöglich war. Eine genaue Analyse aller erhaltenen Original‐Dokumente über die Arbeit an der Atombombe während des,Dritten (...) Reichs‘ zeigt jedoch erhebliche Fehler der Autoren durch unvollständige Analyse der Dokumente, falsches Verständnis naturwissenschaftlicher Erläuterungen und Ignorieren physikalischer Fakten. Es wird nachgewiesen, dass die deutschen Physiker bis zum Ende des Krieges nicht bemerkt hatten, dass eine Atombombe nur mit schnellen Neutronen realisiert werden kann. Nur Heisenberg hatte das richtige Prinzip spät erkannt, es aber nicht eindeutig kommuniziert und auch in keiner Weise physikalisch vertieft. Die physikalisch korrekte Interpretation der Dokumente zeigt, dass die deutschen Physiker während des Krieges erfolglos versuchten, einen Reaktor zu entwickeln, der auch eine Voraussetzung für den Bau einer Plutonium‐Bombe gewesen wäre. Aber sie wussten nicht, wie eine Bombe realisiert werden kann, weil sie nie an einer realistischen Theorie der Atombombe gearbeitet hatten. Summary: Misinterpreted Documents and Ignored Physical Facts: The History of ‘Hitler's Atomic Bomb’ needs to be corrected. Why have the German physicists not developed an atomic bomb during World War II? For more than 25 years, the historians agree that they knew how to build the bomb, but that a bomb‐development programme of the size of the US‐Manhattan‐Project would not have been possible in wartime Germany. A detailed analysis of all preserved documents on the German atomic bomb research during the ‘Third Reich’, however, reveals considerable mistakes by the authors due to incomplete analysis of documents, misinterpretations of scientific explanations and ignoring of physical facts. It is shown that until the end of the war the German physicists did not know that an atomic bomb can only be made with fast neutrons, except Heisenberg, who, however, discovered it rather late, did not communicate it clearly and did not study any bomb physics. The physically correct interpretation of the documents reveals that the German physicists worked unsuccessfully on a reactor, which would have been a prerequisite for a plutonium bomb. But they did not know how to build a bomb because they never worked on a realistic bomb theory. (shrink)

Between 1942 and the late 1950s, atomic piles (nuclear chain-reactors) were industrialized, initially to generate plutonium for the first atomic weapons and later to serve as copious sources of neutrons, radioisotopes and electrical power. These facilities entrained a new breed of engineering specialist adept at designing, operating and maintaining them. From the beginning, large companies supplied the engineering labor for this new technology, and played an important role in defining the nature of their nuclear expertise. In the USA, the (...) most influential company of the period was DuPont, which assumed responsibility for the first plutonium production reactors at Oak Ridge TN and Hanford WA between 1942-6, and of the postwar production facilities at Savannah River SC 1950-87. This paper explores the transition of authority from so-called “atomic scientists” to nuclear engineers at these sites, and the role played by DuPont in consolidating this new technical profession. (shrink)

For the past two years, I have taught a seminar on medical research scandals. The syllabus looks like a highlight reel of exploitation and abuse: children fed plutonium-laced breakfast cereal, prisoners dosed with the active ingredient in Agent Orange, mental patients given psychedelic drugs and massive electroconvulsive therapy before being sent into curare-induced paralysis and a coma. I designed the seminar to crush the idealism of future physicians by illuminating the dark patterns that research scandals typically follow. The most (...) recent scandal we examined happened to be one of the most lurid. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Research Ethics after World War II: The Insular Culture of BiomedicineAllan M. Brandt (bio) and Lara Freidenfelds (bio)Human subjects research in the United States has only recently emerged as an important area of historical investigation. Over the last quarter century, scholars have begun the process of grounding within an historical context both the complex relationship between researchers and subjects and the processes by which biomedical knowledge is produced. Their (...) studies examine topics ranging from the impact of the anti-vivisectionist movement on human experimentation in the early twentieth century (Lederer 1995) to the development of the discipline of bioethics in the 1960s and 1970s (Rothman 1991) and the emergence of the legal concept of informed consent for human research (Katz, Glass, and Capron 1972). Many of the discussions focus on isolated incidents of scandal, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Jones 1993; Brandt 1978) and the Willowbrook School hepatitis study (Rothman and Rothman 1984). In doing so, they attempt to explain how such clearly unethical research could have been initiated and what consequences have resulted from public knowledge of such research.Nonetheless, the broader historical contexts and implications of human subjects research have yet to be fully delineated. This project will be of crucial importance, not only for historians, but also for those concerned with research policy and medical ethics. The historical examination of human subjects research will provide further insight into the details of research methods, the construction of protocols, and the historically specific interest in certain diseases. In addition, scholars will better understand the relationships of power and authority between researcher and subject, as well as the social and scientific mechanisms for the production of new biomedical knowledge. The process of enlisting research subjects illuminates the significance of class, gender, ethnicity, and race in science, in biomedicine, and in society. The fact that, historically, much research has employed research subjects from vulnerable populations, who participated in coercive contexts, has exposed powerful social assumptions embedded in the research enterprise. [End Page 239]The revelation of new documents indicating past abuses has sparked much of the investigation into human subjects research and the recent investigation of human radiation experiments during the Cold War era. One of the most important achievements of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was the uncovering of thousands of documents, a remarkable mine of archival data, that had been previously inaccessible to researchers. Jonathan Moreno and Susan Lederer’s article on the history of Cold War research ethics in this issue of the Kennedy Institute ofEthics Journal represents the first attempt since the publication of the Committee’s Final Report to analyze the Committee’s findings in a serious historical context.Historical accounts of the emergence of bioethics traditionally have left a great void in their discussions of human experimentation, generally ignoring the period between the writing of the Nuremberg Code in 1947 and the publication of Henry Beecher’s 1966 New England Journal ofMedicine article condemning systematic, unethical practices in human experimentation (Rothman 1991). The period from 1946 to 1966, however, was a time of vigorous research characterized by a fragmented community of medical researchers who applied inconsistent ethical standards and employed highly variable research practices. Both military and civilian medical researchers were intensely interested in radiation and thus conducted human subjects research along those lines, including examinations of the effects of plutonium injections and of total body irradiation, the use of trace radioisotopes to study various body processes, and observations of the effects of radiation intentionally released into the environment. The U.S. Government sponsored several thousand such studies (ACHRE 1995 [GPO, pp. 227–31; Oxford, pp. 135–38]), some of which were conducted on hospital patients, institutionalized children, military personnel, and prisoners. The Cold War scientific culture that produced this research must be examined from an historical ethical perspective.A central aspect of the culture of biomedical science after World War II was its insularity. Increasingly high standards of admission and challenging training had come to ensure that only a select group of individuals was admitted to the professions of medicine and research science. In this culture of experts, trustworthiness and ethical judgment were considered to be dependent upon expertise... (shrink)

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, emerging advances in the biomedical sciences raised insufficiently noticed ethical issues, prompting science reporters to serve as a sort of Early Warning System. As awareness of bioethical issues increased rapidly everywhere, and bioethics itself arrived as a recognized discipline, the need for this early-warning press role has clearly diminished. A secondary but important role for the science journalist is that of investigative reporter/whistleblower, as in the Tuskegee syphilis trials and the government's secret (...) class='Hi'>plutonium experiments. Because the general public gets most of its information from the popular media, ways are suggested for journalists and bioethicists to work together. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Informed Consent and Clinical ResearchRuth Faden (bio)Informed consent is a powerful symbol of the commitment and impact of the new, interdisciplinary field of biomedical ethics that the Kennedy Institute has been so instrumental in developing. In the early years of biomedical ethics, there was considerable discussion about the nature of the doctor-patient relationship, about how it ought to be structured, and about how competing values within that relationship ought (...) to be accommodated. By the 1970s and 1980s, the answer was for all practical purposes in. Biomedical ethics was engaged in a clearly reformist project, in step with the values of the times, to right a wrongful imbalance of power and control between physicians and patients.The agenda was clear—to establish the moral authority of the patient to participate in medical decision making by placing respect for the autonomy of patients on the moral map of the medical community. The chief strategy that biomedical ethics adopted to accomplish this agenda was, of course, informed consent. Theories of autonomous action as well as informed consent were intentionally crafted to advance this reformist agenda.In this paper, I examine how the theory of informed consent has fared in one particular realm of “the clinic” where, arguably, there has been considerable success. This is the realm of clinical research; research at the bedside where the patient is also the subject.I rely heavily on the work of President Clinton’s Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, which I chaired. The Advisory Committee was established in response to exposés in the press about alleged secret experiments during World War II and the Cold War in which patients had been injected with plutonium without their apparent knowledge or consent. As part of its work, the Advisory Committee undertook an oral history project in which we interviewed eminent physicians about the norms and practices of human research in the 1940s and 1950s.Drawing on these interviews, I argue here for two seemingly inconsistent conclusions. First, that the ethical standards for clinical research have changed dramatically in the last 50 years—particularly with respect to informed consent. Second, that despite these important changes, the human dynamics of clinical research in many respects remain unchanged.How the World of Clinical Research Has ChangedDuring the forties and fifties, duties to obtain informed consent, whether for treatment or for research, were simply not part of the doctor-patient experience. [End Page 356]As one physician told us:In 1945, ‘50, the doctor... was king or queen. It never occurred to a doctor to ask for consent for anything. Doctors weren’t in the habit of telling the patients anything (either). They were in charge and nobody questioned their authority.(Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments 1996, p. 83)This unquestioned authority extended to all decisions about the management of the patient, including whether patients were to receive experimental therapies or otherwise become the subjects of research or experimentation. Physicians were trained to be concerned with risk, and harm, and benefit, in keeping with the Hippocratic tradition. But in most institutions, the permission to try something new and to take unknown risks came, not from the patient, but from the chairman of the department.In part, this broad license reflected the very newness of scientifically grounded medical practice. In the forties and fifties, many potentially therapeutic interventions were newly discovered and in this sense considered experimental, or at least innovative. The level of uncertainty about whether a treatment would work was generally high, whether the treatment was part of a research project or not. Moreover, the formalizing of medical science at the bedside was itself still in its infancy—it was not until 1948 that the first modern clinical trial in which patients were randomized to different treatment and control groups was reported in the literature. Much of the research of this period was informal and unsystematic.Thus, it is not surprising that the physician’s authority to make treatment decisions extended to treatments that were innovative or experimental, regardless of whether these innovative treatments were the subject of formal scientific investigation. What is perhaps more surprising is that physicians often acted the same way—that... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:IntroductionAnna Mastroianni (bio) and Jeffrey Kahn (bio)In this issue of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, we subject the work of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments to examination from many angles. Nearly one year has passed since the release of the Committee’s final report and recommendations, and it seems an appropriate time to invite discourse and reflection on the influence and impact of the Committee and its (...) efforts. Our intent is to advance understanding of the Committee and its work, its place in the evolution of bioethics and public policy, as well as the broader legacy of restoring trust in the conduct of human subjects research.In 1993, President Clinton and Secretary of Energy Hazel O’Leary initiated an investigation of America’s involvement in radiation experiments on its citizens during the Cold War. The investigation resulted in the appointment of the Committee in January 1994. Some issues raised by these radiation experiments were brought to the attention of the nation by revelations contained in a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of newspaper stories about plutonium injections carried out by the government on allegedly unsuspecting subjects during the Cold War. The Committee faced a broad mandate, which included piecing together the history of Cold War radiation experiments and human subjects research, as well as recommending remedies for past wrongs and mechanisms to ensure that such wrongs could not be repeated in the future.This issue of the Journal consists of articles and accompanying commentaries on historical, philosophical, policy, and political aspects of the Committee’s work that are important to bioethics. This collection of articles, authored by Committee members, staff, and leading scholars, is designed to paint a picture of the breadth and complexity of the Committee’s efforts and to provide context and to stimulate discussion of significant issues.In the first article, Ruth Faden provides her unique perspective as chair of the Committee. She goes beyond the necessary overview and background of the Committee to reflect on the impact and meaning of the Committee’s work to bioethics and public policy.Much of the Committee’s effort was directed at gathering and uncovering information about the history of Cold War radiation experiments, an endeavor fairly foreign to bioethics but critically important to understanding the context in which to make moral judgments about the past. Jonathan Moreno and Susan Lederer discuss how the Committee’s work changed some of the traditional views of the history of research ethics. The commentary by Allan Brandt and Lara Freidenfelds further illuminates the value of understanding this recovered history. [End Page ix]In making moral judgments about the past, the Committee confronted complex questions about how to assess wrongdoing and the culpability of the government and its agents. Allen Buchanan explains why this was such a difficult but crucial task and how the Committee worked through some of the answers to these questions. His discussion illustrates the challenges to consensus in the committee decision-making process described in Ruth Macklin’s article in this issue on committees and consensus. Tom Beauchamp analyzes the frameworks for making retrospective moral judgments developed by two committees, the Advisory Committee and the University of California at San Francisco Ad Hoc Fact Finding Committee on World War II Human Radiation Experiments, and critiques their applications of the frameworks in the case of the plutonium injection experiments.The Committee recognized that in order to prevent wrongs seen in the past from occurring in the future, it would be necessary to understand the human subjects protections now in place. Nancy Kass and Jeremy Sugarman discuss the results of the Committee’s attempts to measure the operation and effectiveness of the current system for protection of human subjects. Paul Appelbaum comments on the relevance and value of the Committee’s empirical projects to contemporary human subjects research.The Committee’s work, and the products of any commission’s work, must be viewed partly in light of the place of commissions in bioethics scholarship and policymaking. Appointed commissions can have significant impacts on scholarly and public thinking, policymaking, and future direction, and bring high visibility to issues. It is important to realize that the conclusions of the Committee... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Fallout from Government-Sponsored Radiation ResearchCarol Mason Spicer (bio)On December 28, 1993, Energy Secretary Hazel R. O'Leary publicly appealed to both the executive and legislative branches of the United States Government to consider compensation for individuals who were harmed by their exposure to ionizing radiation while enrolled in government-sponsored studies conducted between 1940 and the early 1970s.1 The call for compensation was issued three weeks after Secretary O'Leary disclosed that (...) radiation experiments involving humans, sometimes without their consent, had occurred under the auspices of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), a forerunner of the Department of Energy (DOE). Secretary O'Leary directed her department to investigate the nature and extent of the experiments, report on their medical and ethical acceptability, and locate the research subjects or their families.Background to the Federal Advisory CommitteeDespite the fact that the existence of many government-sponsored radiation experiments was not a secret—much of the research was reported at the time in scientific journals, and in 1986, Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA) conducted congressional hearings on such radiation research—Secretary O'Leary's disclosure of the AEC experiments and her call for compensation made the experiments common knowledge and sparked a swift and complex governmental response involving both the executive and legislative branches.It is curious that the "radiation experiments" have garnered so much attention now, since they were virtually ignored in the wake of the 1986 hearings. Secretary O'Leary's disclosure of the radiation studies grew out of a general reassessment of secrecy in government. In April 1993, the Clinton administration set out to review the system of government secrecy that evolved during the Cold War, and in May 1993, DOE began reviewing and declassifying files pertaining to nuclear weapons research. When Dan Reicher, a top aide to Secretary O'Leary, informed her in November of the impending publication of an Albuquerque Tribune investigative report (Welsome 1993) on an experiment conducted between 1945 and 1947 in which 18 subjects were injected with plutonium, [End Page 147] the topic of questionable research involving the exposure of human subjects to radiation was added to the DOE list of information to be disclosed. At the time, it was thought to be but one small part of a massive quantity of DOE information to be made public.As part of its effort to investigate the radiation experiments, DOE established a toll-free telephone hot line for individuals who thought they might have been the subjects of radiation exposure experiments. The hot line, originally staffed by three people to handle the anticipated few dozen calls per day, received more than 2,000 calls in the first week. By early January the hot line was flooded with 6,000 to 10,000 calls daily, and its staff had increased more than ten-fold. Although many of the calls were deemed not to be candidates for further investigation, the extent of the radiation-related experiments, sponsored not only by AEC, but also by the military and other government departments and agencies, took officials by surprise.On December 30, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration all announced that they were initiating thorough reviews of their files to determine the extent and nature of any radiation experiments conducted under their auspices.2 In January, the CIA and the Department of Health and Human Services, including the National Institutes of Health, followed suit.The White House publicly entered the arena in late December announcing that it would hold a meeting on January 3, 1994, to help coordinate the government's investigative effort. At the same time, Senator Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA) called for a mid-January congressional hearing to investigate experiments conducted between 1946 and 1956 in which mentally retarded boys at the Fernald State School in Massachusetts were fed radioactive iron supplements or milk containing radioactive calcium to enable researchers to trace the absorption of those nutrients. Senator Kennedy's hearing, conducted by the Subcommittee on Health of the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources, was the first of a number of congressional hearings held earlier this year to investigate the... (shrink)

Physics, History, and the German Atomic Bomb. This paper examines the German concept of a nuclear weapon during National Socialism and the Second World War. Zusammenfassung: Physik, Geschichte und die deutsche Atombombe. Dieser Aufsatz untersucht die deutsche Vorstellung einer nuklearen Waffe während des Nationalsozialismus und des Zweiten Weltkrieges.