were infected as part of the study (including orphan children). the study was sponsored by the public health service, the national institutes of health, the pan american health sanitary bureau (now the world health organization's pan american health organization) and the guatemalan government. the team was led by john charles cutler, who later participated in the tuskegee syphilis experiments. cutler chose to do the study in guatemala because he would not have been permitted to do it in the united states. in 2010 when the research was revealed, the u.s. officially apologized to guatemala for the studies. a lawsuit has been launched against johns hopkins university, bristol-myers squibb and the rockefeller foundation for alleged involvement in the study. 1950s in 1950, to conduct a simulation of a biological warfare attack, the u.s. navy sprayed large quantities of the bacteria serratia marcescens – considered harmless at the time – over the city of san francisco during a project called operation sea-spray. numerous citizens contracted pneumonia-like illnesses, and at least one person died as a result. the family of the person who died sued the government for gross negligence, but a federal judge ruled in favor of the government in 1981. serratia tests were continued until at least 1969. also in 1950, dr. joseph stokes of the university of pennsylvania deliberately infected 200 female prisoners with viral hepatitis. from the 1950s to 1972, mentally disabled children at the willowbrook state school in staten island, new york, were intentionally infected with viral hepatitis, for research whose purpose was to help discover a vaccine. from 1963 to 1966, saul krugman of new york university promised the parents of mentally disabled children that their children would be enrolled into willowbrook in exchange for signing a consent form for procedures that he claimed were "vaccinations". in reality, the procedures involved deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of patients infected with the disease. in 1952, chester m. southam, a sloan-kettering institute researcher, injected live cancer cells, known as hela cells, into prisoners at the ohio state penitentiary and cancer patients. also at sloan-kettering, 300 healthy females were injected with live cancer cells without being told. the doctors stated that they knew at the time that it might cause cancer. in 1953, dr. frank olson and several other colleagues were unknowingly dosed with lsd as part of a cia experiment, mk-ultra. olson died nine days later after falling to his death from a hotel window under suspicious circumstances. the san francisco chronicle, december 17, 1979, p. 5 reported a claim by the church of scientology that the cia conducted an open-air biological warfare experiment in 1955 near tampa, florida, and elsewhere in florida with whooping cough bacteria. it was alleged that the experiment tripled the whooping cough infections in florida to over one-thousand cases and caused whooping cough deaths in the state to increase from one to 12 over the previous year. this claim has been cited in a number of later sources, although these added no further supporting evidence. during the 1950s, the united states conducted a series of field tests using entomological weapons (ew). operation big itch, in 1954, was designed to test munitions loaded with uninfected fleas (xenopsylla cheopis). in may 1955 over 300,000 uninfected mosquitoes (aedes aegypti) were dropped over parts of the u.s. state of georgia to determine if the air-dropped mosquitoes could survive to take meals from humans. the mosquito tests were known as operation big buzz. the u.s. engaged in at least two other ew testing programs, operation drop kick and operation may day. 1960s in 1963, 22 elderly patients at the jewish chronic disease hospital in brooklyn, new york city were injected with live cancer cells by chester m. southam, who in 1952 had done the same to prisoners at the ohio state prison, to "discover the secret of how healthy bodies fight the invasion of malignant cells". the administration of the hospital attempted to cover the study up, but the new york medical licensing board ultimately placed southam on probation for one year. two years later, the american cancer society elected him as their vice president. from 1963 to 1969, as part of project shipboard hazard and defense (shad), the u.s. army performed tests which involved spraying several u.s. ships with various biological and chemical warfare agents, while thousands of u.s. military personnel were aboard the ships. the personnel were not notified of the tests, and were not given any protective clothing. chemicals tested on the u.s. military personnel included the nerve gases vx and sarin, toxic chemicals such as zinc cadmium sulfide and sulfur dioxide, and a variety of biological agents. in 1966, the u.s. army released bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the new york city subway system, as part of a field experiment called a study of the vulnerability of subway passengers in new york city to covert attack with biological agents. the chicago subway system was also subject to a similar experiment by the army. human radiation experiments researchers in the united states have performed thousands of human radiation experiments to determine the effects of atomic radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, generally on people who were poor, sick, or powerless. most of these tests were performed, funded, or supervised by the united states military, atomic energy commission, or various other u.s. federal government agencies. the experiments included a wide array of studies, involving things like feeding radioactive food to mentally disabled children or conscientious objectors, inserting radium rods into the noses of schoolchildren, deliberately releasing radioactive chemicals over u.s. and canadian cities, measuring the health effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests, injecting pregnant women and babies with radioactive chemicals, and irradiating the testicles of prison inmates, amongst other things. much information about these programs was classified and kept secret. in 1986, the united states house committee on energy and commerce released a report entitled american nuclear guinea pigs : three decades of radiation experiments on u.s. citizens. in the 1990s, eileen welsome's reports on radiation testing for the albuquerque tribune prompted the creation of the advisory committee on human radiation experiments by executive order of president bill clinton to monitor government tests; it published results in 1995. welsome later wrote a book called the plutonium files. radioactive iodine experiments in a 1949 operation called the "green run", the u.s. atomic energy commission (aec) released iodine-131 and xenon-133 into the atmosphere near the hanford site in washington, which contaminated a 500,000-acre (2,000 km2) area containing three small towns. in 1953, the aec ran several studies at the university of iowa on the health effects of radioactive iodine in newborns and pregnant women. in one study, researchers gave pregnant women between 100 and 200 microcuries (3.7 and 7.4 mbq) of iodine-131, to study the women's aborted embryos in an attempt to discover at what stage, and to what extent, radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. in another study, they gave 25 newborn babies (who were under 36 hours old and weighed from 5.5 to 8.5 pounds (2.5 to 3.9 kg)) iodine-131, either by oral administration or through an injection, so that they could measure the amount of iodine in their thyroid glands, as iodine would go to that gland. in another aec study, researchers at the university of nebraska college of medicine fed iodine-131 to 28 healthy infants through a gastric tube to test the concentration of iodine in the infants' thyroid glands. in 1953, the aec sponsored a study to discover if radioactive iodine affected premature babies differently from full-term babies. in the experiment, researchers from harper hospital in detroit orally administered iodine-131 to 65 premature and full-term infants who weighed from 2.1 to 5.5 pounds (0.95 to 2.49 kg). in alaska, starting in august 1955, the aec selected a total of 102 inuit natives and athapascan indigenous peoples who would be used to study the effects of radioactive iodine on thyroid tissue, particularly in cold environments. over a two-year span, the test subjects were given doses of i-131 and samples of saliva, urine, blood, and thyroid tissue were collected from them. the purpose and risks of the radioactive iodine dosing, along with the collection of body fluid and tissue samples was not explained to the test subjects, and the aec did not conduct any follow-up studies to monitor for long-term health effects. in an experiment in the 1960s, over 100 alaskan citizens were continually exposed to radioactive iodine. in 1962, the hanford site again released i-131, stationing test subjects along its path to record its effect on them. the aec also recruited hanford volunteers to ingest milk contaminated with i-131 during this time. uranium experiments it is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans and might have adverse effect on public opinion or result in legal suits. documents covering such work should be classified 'secret'. — april 17, 1947 atomic energy commission memo from colonel o.g. haywood, jr. to dr. fidler at the oak ridge national laboratory in tennessee between 1946 and 1947, researchers at the university of rochester injected uranium-234 and uranium-235 in dosages ranging from 6.4 to 70.7 micrograms per kilogram of body weight into six people to study how much uranium their kidneys could tolerate before becoming damaged. between 1953 and 1957, at the massachusetts general hospital, dr. william sweet injected eleven terminally ill, comatose and semi-comatose patients with uranium in an experiment to determine, among other things, its viability as a chemotherapy treatment against brain tumors, which all but one of the patients had (one being a misdiagnosis). sweet, who died in 2001, maintained that consent had been obtained from the patients and next of kin. plutonium experiments from april 10, 1945, to july 18, 1947, eighteen people were injected with plutonium as part of the manhattan project. doses administered ranged from 95 to 5,900 nanocuries. albert stevens, a man misdiagnosed with stomach cancer, received "treatment" for his "cancer" at the u.c. san francisco medical center in 1945. dr. joseph gilbert hamilton, a manhattan project doctor in charge of the human experiments in california, had stevens injected with pu-238 and pu-239 without informed consent. stevens never had cancer; a surgery to remove cancerous cells was highly successful in removing the benign tumor, and he lived for another 20 years with the injected plutonium. since stevens received the highly radioactive pu-238, his accumulated dose over his remaining life was higher than anyone has ever received: 64 sv (6400 rem). neither albert stevens nor any of his relatives were told that he never had cancer; they were led to believe that the experimental "treatment" had worked. his cremated remains were surreptitiously acquired by argonne national laboratory center for human radiobiology in 1975 without the consent of surviving relatives. some of the ashes were transferred to the national human radiobiology tissue repository at washington state university, which keeps the remains of people who died with radioisotopes in their body. three patients at billings hospital at the university of chicago were injected with plutonium. in 1946, six employees of a chicago metallurgical lab were given water that was contaminated with plutonium-239 so that researchers could study how plutonium is absorbed into the digestive tract. an eighteen-year-old woman at an upstate new york hospital, expecting to be treated for a pituitary gland disorder, was injected with plutonium. experiments involving other radioactive materials immediately after world war ii, researchers at vanderbilt university gave 829 pregnant mothers in tennessee what they were told were "vitamin drinks" that would improve the health of their babies. the mixtures contained radioactive iron and the researchers were determining how fast the radioisotope crossed into the placenta. four of the women's babies died from cancers as a result of the experiments, and the women experienced rashes, bruises, anemia, hair/tooth loss, and cancer. from 1946 to 1953, at the walter e. fernald state school in massachusetts, in an experiment sponsored by the u.s. atomic energy commission and the quaker oats corporation, 73 mentally disabled children were fed oatmeal containing radioactive calcium and other radioisotopes, to track "how nutrients were digested". the children were not told that they were being fed radioactive chemicals; they were told by hospital staff and researchers that they were