ACHRE Report
Final Report
Executive Summary
Preface
Introduction
Part I
Part II
Part III
Discussion: Part III
Part IV
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Acknowledgements
The Committee's work over the past
year and a half would have been impossible without the assistance of an
extraordinary number of individuals and groups from all corners of the United
States, and beyond. We wish to express the depth of our gratitude to the many
people who assisted, informed, and advised us.
Some of these people are identified by name elsewhere in this report and its
supplemental volumes. An appendix in this volume lists the more than 200
witnesses who appeared before the Committee at our public meetings in
Washington, D.C., Cincinnati, Knoxville, San Francisco, Santa Fe, and Spokane.
The supplemental volumes identify the dozens of individuals who agreed to
formal, taped interviews in connection with the Committee's oral history
projects. We thank all these people and many more:
- The hundreds of people who contacted the Committee with information about
their own experiences or the experiences of their family members. Many of
these people shared not only their personal stories but also the information
they had collected in the course of conducting their own research into
government archives.
- The representatives of many groups whose interests coincided with the work of
the Committee. These include organizations of former subjects of biomedical
radiation experiments (and their families), downwinders, atomic veterans,
uranium miners, and workers in and around atomic energy communities. These
groups, as well, shared the accumulated information and perspective of years of
experience and research.
- The numerous professionals in fields related to our research who gave
of their time and expertise to provide information or comment on the myriad
factual, technical, and policy questions before the Committee. These experts
provided help in understanding areas ranging from military and human rights law
to the laws of the atom, from the history of the government's use of secrecy to
the history of radiation science.
- The dozens of universities and independent hospitals, located in all regions
of the country, that willingly provided us with the documents we needed to
conduct our Research Proposal Review Project.
- The nearly 1,900 individuals who graciously participated in our Subject
Interview Study, and the university hospitals, veterans hospitals, and
community hospitals that permitted us to conduct the study.
- The numerous chairs of institutional review boards and radiation safety
committees who were kind enough to share with us their views about the current
status of human subject protections.
- Archivists at public and private libraries, universities, and research
institutions, who assisted the Committee in our search for information.
- The many journalists and scholars who have previously researched and written
about the subjects covered in this report, for sharing the knowledge and wisdom
embodied in their own many years of inquiry and reflection.
- A variety of state and local agencies for sharing with the Committee the
results of their own reviews of activities that we explored.
- Members of Congress and congressional staff, including the staffs of the
General Accounting Office and the Office of Technology Assessment, for sharing
the product of their own prior inquiries into many of the areas discussed in
this report.
- The members of the Human Radiation Interagency Working Group, who provided
invaluable assistance. We are particularly grateful to the many employees at
the Department of Energy, the Department of Defense, the Department of Health
and Human Services, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Central Intelligence Agency, who
aided us in the search and retrieval of the many thousands of documents that
provide the backbone for the Committee's review of human radiation experiments
that took place between 1944 and 1974 and the history of government
requirements for the conduct of that research. We are also grateful to the
staffs of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the National Archives and
Records Administration for their invaluable assistance. Many of the same
people, as well as others, also provided advice and information as we undertook
our evaluation of the conduct of research involving human subjects today.
We wish to thank both the professional and administrative members of our staff
who worked so hard and showed such dedication to our task. Their talent,
energy, and commitment provided the foundation for our work. It is impossible
to overstate our gratitude and appreciation for their extraordinary efforts.
Finally, we wish to acknowledge our indebtedness to President Clinton for the
honor he bestowed upon us when he selected us to serve on the Advisory
Committee.
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