Another episode involved experimental work with radioactive substances on human subjects who had not given “informed consent.” Some of the most ethically problematic of these involved the injection of plutonium into terminally ill patients between 1945 and 1947 without the patients’ knowledge, not because the injections would provide any therapeutic benefit, but because the scientists desired information on the rate at which plutonium was excreted by the human body in order to set occupational exposure limits in Manhattan Project and AEC facilities.
