Radiation Experiments

Between 1960 and 1972 the University of Cincinnati was the site of federal Department of Defense-funded full-body human radiation experiments to investigate how radiation impacts human beings. The founder of the nuclear medicine program at UC, Dr. Eugene Saenger, was responsible for these experiments and used means of finding subjects and collecting data considered unethical today. Examples of these unethical means include coaxing and manipulating patients into participation and leading them into believing that the radiation treatments were intended to treat their cancer. Test subjects and their families were deliberately left uninformed of the real goal of the study. The majority of the experiment’s subjects were Black low-income cancer patients. These subjects were exposed to a potentially lethal amount of radiation which resulted in the death of all but one of the 90 subjects. Not only did adults endure these painful radiation experiments, but children as young as nine were also test subjects. After a legal settlement with the families of survivors in the 1990s, UC erected a plaque listing the names of study victims, yet the location of this memorial is problematic. Located behind a parking garage, next to a dumpster the plaque is difficult to locate and view. If one can find this plaque, they will find only a list of names with little information about the experiments or the harm they caused.