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Overview
From the courtrooms of Nuremberg to the battlefields of the Gulf War, Undue Risk exposes a variety of government policies and specific cases, includingplutonium injections to unwilling hospital patients, and even the attempted recruitment of Nazi medical scientists bythe U.S. government after World War II.
Synopsis
From the courtrooms of Nuremberg to the battlefields of the Gulf War, Undue Risk exposes a variety of government policies and specific cases, includingplutonium injections to unwilling hospital patients, and even the attempted recruitment of Nazi medical scientists bythe U.S. government after World War II.
Publishers Weekly
Between 1949 and 1969, the U.S. Army conducted over 200 "field tests" as part of its biological warfare research program, releasing infectious bacterial agents in cities across the U.S. without informing residents of the exposed areas, Moreno reveals in this chilling, meticulously documented casebook. A professor of biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia, Moreno (Arguing Euthanasia) served on a Clinton--appointed advisory committee that blew the lid off the government's secret radiation experiments from WWII through the mid-1970s, which involved the injection of unwitting human volunteers with plutonium, uranium and other radioactive substances. His disturbing new book partly overlaps with Eileen Welsome's The Plutonium Files (Forecasts, Aug. 2), though Moreno's survey extends further--from Walter Reed's turn-of-the-century yellow fever research to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study; from army and air force mind control experiments (1950--1975) involving ingestion of LSD and incapacitating chemicals by thousands of subjects, often without their consent, to the compulsory vaccination of Gulf War GIs with botulism toxin vaccine not approved by the FDA that may have contributed to "Gulf war syndrome." While Moreno duly excoriates the excesses and horrors, his overarching thesis is that human military experimentation is unavoidable, and he commends the army's current infectious-agent research program at Fort Detrick, Md., as a model for future "ethical" research. Some readers may welcome his coolly detached chronicle as a complement to Welsome's scathing, far more powerful expos . Agent, Betsy Amster; 3-city author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Between 1949 and 1969, the U.S. Army conducted over 200 "field tests" as part of its biological warfare research program, releasing infectious bacterial agents in cities across the U.S. without informing residents of the exposed areas, Moreno reveals in this chilling, meticulously documented casebook. A professor of biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia, Moreno (Arguing Euthanasia) served on a Clinton--appointed advisory committee that blew the lid off the government's secret radiation experiments from WWII through the mid-1970s, which involved the injection of unwitting human volunteers with plutonium, uranium and other radioactive substances. His disturbing new book partly overlaps with Eileen Welsome's The Plutonium Files (Forecasts, Aug. 2), though Moreno's survey extends further--from Walter Reed's turn-of-the-century yellow fever research to the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study; from army and air force mind control experiments (1950--1975) involving ingestion of LSD and incapacitating chemicals by thousands of subjects, often without their consent, to the compulsory vaccination of Gulf War GIs with botulism toxin vaccine not approved by the FDA that may have contributed to "Gulf war syndrome." While Moreno duly excoriates the excesses and horrors, his overarching thesis is that human military experimentation is unavoidable, and he commends the army's current infectious-agent research program at Fort Detrick, Md., as a model for future "ethical" research. Some readers may welcome his coolly detached chronicle as a complement to Welsome's scathing, far more powerful expos . Agent, Betsy Amster; 3-city author tour. (Oct.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Booknews
Moreno, a former staff member of president Clinton's Advisory on Human Radiation Experiments in 1994 and 1995, recounts the twentieth-century history of chemical and biological experiments on human subjects, especially those justified in terms of the national security of the United States. In so doing, he makes the case for the rights of human subject. Each chapter focuses on a particular set of experiments, with the whole work weaving these disparate events into a single narrative. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)Arhtur C. Upton
Undue Risk deals in a balanced, scholarly way with the issues involved, documenting the sources of information with appropriate references. Although the book was written for a general readership, it has a timely and important message, and should be relevant to all those, concerned with military preparedness, defense and the ethics of human experimentation.—Nature Magazine