Having worked nearly four decades in American medical scientific research, I've tangentially (sometimes directly) worked in the medical areas Eileen Welsome attempts to examine in her THE PLUTONIUM FILES. When I bought this book, I was hoping to read something more in depth about the influence of the some 300-400 Nazi doctors (indictable for war crimes!) on American medical research. In 1992, prize winning author and investigative reporter Linda Hunt had already written in her SECRET AGENDA that yes indeed there were many breaches of medical ethics and even illegal medical experiments carried out in the name of national security. Too bad Ms Welsom didn't write about them.

Mixing apples and oranges, Welsom cites the boron-neutron capture experiments (by Dr. William Sweet) and confuses them with radiation experiments conducted on convicted criminal prisoners. The boron-neutron experiments were ethical, informed consent experiments on terminally ill patients with invariably fatal brain gliomas. However, the experiments on prsioners [and some of the hospital experiments on unwitting African-American patients] were crimes against humanity; according to the standards of the 1947 Nuremberg Code. But it does not serve the inerests for which the Freedom of Information Act was adopted by the United States Congress in 1976 to confuse government sanctioned illegal medical experiments with legitimate ones.

I was hoping to read much more about indeed unethical and illegal experiments, secretly sponsored by the United States government during the Cold War era. Wading through THE PLUTONIUM FILES left me disappointed. There is a story to tell about a sinister Nazi medical influence on military experiments in the United States and medical crimes against American citizens serving in the U.S. military. Alas, Welsom neglects to tell it.

One of the first emotions this book elicits from readers is indignation and shock that physicians and government agencies could let the kind of experiments described in this book occur, and the treatment the patients received. This book will no doubt attract significant attention because of the radiation experiments described, but the book seems be more about the prevailing attitudes of physicians and scientists towards patients and research at the time. The activities that take place in the book occur during a time when science and medical research came first, and the patient second, and when physicians seemed as gods to their patients. As with other stories of "medical guinea pigs", emphasis is placed on those scientists and physicians for whom the patients just happens to be a convenient vessel to carry out experiments on. It ultimately boils down to a question of whether or not the means justifies the ends. Some of the experiments performed did provide useful information about the effects of radiation on humans, which produced significant advances in diagnostic imaging and radiation therapy and has helped to save and prolong the lives of countless others. Other experiments described sound poorly designed, and seem like they were performed just for the sake of seeing what would happen.

The book starts out with a descriptive history of the atomic weapons program and the Manhatten project, both on the weapons side and the medical side. Focus shifts to the human experiments conducted in the earliest days of atomic weapon research up until the 1970s. The author manages to provide a fascinating insight on the attitudes of the researchers as well as providing a description of the patients experimented on. Read the book and decide for yourself. Those were different times, different attitudes.

The release of Eileen Welsome's book "THE PLUTONIUM FILES- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War" in paperback will hopefully make this important book more accessible to the general public.

Detailing the effort of the US government to test the effects of Plutonium and other radioactive substances on people, the book outlines first the creation and evolution of the nuclear program that created the need for such testing, and then the US government's attempt to conduct such testing on its own citizens without their knowledge or informed consent. On strictly a superficial level there is much here which will attract the "x-files" crowd: Super-secret installations, eccentric scientists and far-fetched experiments on unsuspecting citizens. The kind of information that makes conspiracy theorists sit back from their computers in darkened little rooms, pump their fist in the air and utter that now-hackneyed phrase: "The truth is out there"

Fortunately for the reader, Welsome assiduously avoids such sensationalism and instead draws a largely compassionate picture of the US government's program and of the people who perpetrated it and who participated in it. Welsome's well structured and organized account of the growth of the plutonium testing programs involving critically ill persons across America during the Cold War years teems with information and insight, yet it manages to treat victim and perpetrator alike with a measure of respect and empathy that places this book well above the level of the standard "Shocking Expose". To her great credit Welsome goes beyond merely packaging the results of her extensive research and alarming discoveries in a "tell-all" book.

Certainly, THE PLUTONIUM FILES introduces information which, by its nature is bound to shock and disturb many, but the book also addresses the too-often forgotten issue of context: Was what happened acceptable by the standards of the time in which it occurred? In addressing this question Welsome probes more deeply into her subject, examining the duality, the moral dichotomy, inherent in the decision to implement this program. In a time when the world was still dealing with the results of a devastating world war and the possibility of another seemed likely the need for answers had an immediacy which could be ignored only at the world's peril. Hard decisions had to be made and extraordinary measures taken; Welsome is clearly cognizant of this as she assess each program and as she examines and balances the need against the action and its end result, the author treats the reader to some of her best analysis.

The Plutonium Files- America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is certainly an important book; one which adds a significant chapter to the recorded history of the growth of atomic science. Despite its scientific topic and exhaustive sourcing the books narrative is direct and engaging, its organization straightforward and its conclusions informed and objective. A book that is well worth its price, Welsome's book would be a great Christmas present for everyone from an avid historian to the omni-present x-files fan; who will find much in here to confirm their most exotic fears. Overall an excellent book for which the author has received two much deserved awards.