Undue Risk

by Jonathan D. Moreno

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science

392 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 1999

Reviews

[J.M. Hushour · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reader, take caution! The subtitle might deceive you into thinking you're about to get something other than what you get. Yes, there are some brief discussions on hideous secret agency and government experiments on people, the ones perpetrated in the US being of the most interest since we're so awesome and our anuses literally ooze butterscotch democracy and we are infallible. Wait? We did weird LSD experiments on people? Fed mentally retarded kids radioactive oatmeal? Gave dudes syphilis (one of the best quotes involves injecting syphilitic pus into a patient's one-eyed trouser snake)?! Wha?
You don't get enough, though, that's the problem. The CIA and other agencies perpetrated some heinous shit during the Cold War (my lawyer tells me to not discuss today's policies). It was bad and often justified, as many shitty things are by safety and the need to secure democracy and our golden American rectums from the sodomic ravages of other people on Earth. But all this stuff gets short thrift. There's tons of stuff about the Nazis, but that's common knowledge by this point. There's also a weird structure to the book where vast chapters intermingled with the nitty-gritty go on and on about legal nuance to the point where you begin to wonder if the author if somehow trying to justify what went on.
A good place to start, but not the end-all be-all on this topic.

[Ross Mckinney · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's an interesting book, not a great book. Somehow it lacks an over-arching coherence, although all the stories about episodes of governments doing research on citizens and non-citizens are enlightening, sometimes surprising. He does a nice job on the Nazi war crimes, but doesn't go as deeply into the malaria experiments in Illinois prisoners as he should have. The radiation experiments done by the US government come off as nearly benign. He could have been clearer about what is, in fact, the main theme - governments are torn between their duty to the country, and their duty to their citizens. Look at war - we sacrifice individual lives for the good of the country. What's different about research in the interest of defense? Is it different in times of war and peace (people perceive it as more acceptable to put citizens at risk during times of war)? This over-arching theme could have been developed more clearly, chapter by chapter. You have the sense he had a bunch of interesting stories and stuck them into a chronological narrative, then went back to try to tie them together. Sort of. So good, but not great.

[Boredlaura · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too much repetition; not enough case studies. It's an interesting subject but this book made it seem dry and repetively boring. It didn't come to any conclusions, it didn't leave the reader with anything to think about, it didn't put forward any new ideas or any new takes on the subject.

It could have done so much more, the only glimmer of interesting tidbits is when Moreno starts to write about an individual case; had he stuck with that then this book could have been good; he didn't and it isn't.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

The writing is a little too taxing for something I'm most likely to be reading when I'm falling asleep, cooking, or keeping an eye out for-- or an eye on-- the boy. I'm interested, but I don't want to, you know, work that much.

Also, and I don't know that I've ever noticed this before, the paper was really distracting. In certain light, like under a reading lamp, it had an overly textured appearance, although it didn't feel like anything out of the ordinary. It was actively distracting.

[Ruthie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was written by a Clinton appointee and came out in 2001. As such, it takes a predictable view of national security issues. Claiming Iraq had anthrax or any other BW/CW is pretty wild now that it's confirmed we used nuclear weapons on them. Not sure when the lengthy afterword was written but there's no mention of 9/11 or the anthrax attacks, so apparently it required a 20 page update before September. Overall a decent survey of secret experiments, though from a clouded standpoint of American exceptionalism.

[Stacy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting survey of military-related medical experiments from WWII onwards.