The Treatment: The Story of Those Who Died in the Cincinnati Radiation Tests

by Martha Stephens

The Treatment is the story of one tragedy of medical research that stretched over eleven years and affected the lives of hundreds of people in an Ohio city. Thirty years ago the author, then an assistant professor of English, acquired a large set of little-known medical papers at her university. These documents told a grotesque story. Cancer patients coming to the public hospital on her campus were being swept into secret experiments for the U.S. military; they were being irradiated over their whole bodies as if they were soldiers in nuclear war. Of the ninety women and men exposed to this treatment, twenty-one died within a month of their radiations.
Martha Stephens’s report on these deaths led to the halting of the tests, but local papers did not print her charges, and for many years people in Cincinnati had no way of knowing that lethal experiments had taken place there. In 1994 other military tests were brought to light, and a yellowed copy of Stephens’s original report was delivered to a television newsroom. In Ohio, major publicity ensued—at long last—and reached around the world. Stephens uncovered the names of the victims, and a legal action was filed against thirteen researchers and their institutions. A federal judge compared the deeds of the doctors to the medical crimes of the Nazis during World War II and refused to dismiss the researchers from the suit. After many bitter disputes in court, they agreed to settle the case with the families of those they had afflicted. In 1999 a memorial plaque was raised in a yard of the hospital.
Who were these doctors and why had they done as they did? Who were the people whose lives they took? Who was the reporter who could not forget the story, the young attorney who first developed the case, the judge who issued the historic ruling against the doctors? This is Stephens’s moving account of all that transpired in these lives and her own during this epic battle between medicine and human rights.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, True Crime

376 pages, Hardcover

First published January 23, 2002

Reviews

[Mer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Horrifying topic and frightening at how some people looked at things. Disregard for someone's human rights still exists today but I'm glad that there have been improvements here n there since the 40s.

The author has organized the story into logical topics by chapter, and although I was really wanting to get to the stories of the individuals themselves faster than the author had things organized, I did find the chapters helpful in seeing the roadblocks put up to delay justice.

As I had to request this thru Interlibrary Loan, I wasn't able to complete the book in the time allowed to me but in the end I got what I really wanted to know.

[Fishface · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book not only takes you back to your old, half-f0rgotten Cold War paranoia; it takes it to a whole new level. This is the story of something the Pentagon was doing behind our backs. That something combined the worst features of Nagasaki with Dr. Mengele's science lab, and they did it right here in the U.S. of A. With all that said, this was a frustrating, unsatisfying read. The author really only hints at what she found out about this case over the years. She likes to summarize, not really draw us a picture of what went on. I don't know how many of these experiments were going on, how many died, how many survived and how many of the wrongdoers were called on the carpet for what they did. On top of that, Martha Stephens is one of those people who never writes "Gaffney's doubts" when she can use "the doubts of Gaffney" instead, cramming as many words as she can into every sentence. I would have expected an English professor to know better than to write an entire book in the passive voice. I wonder how much shorter and more accessible it would have been if she had handled it differently. The really affecting part of this book was reading the testimony of the survivors -- and that was too little too late. I give this one 3 stars because the story is so important, not because of the way the author presented it.

[Janet · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book by this author. She persisted and organized committees and team who were finally was able to help those who died and suffered from NO treatment from horrible radiation acute sickness induced by those monsters who were exposed with impunity.

Instead, they were promoted, praised and only had some research funding stopped. If you think this is not happening today, you are wrong.

You need to read the entire book and the Senate hearings of who knew what and who agreed to keep quiet. For more information see ACHRE via doe gov as this is just one University that knew and participated in these horrific acts. Families of survivors have never been fully compensated with a mere 100K.

If you want to know what they knew that is not in the book see the effects of radiation on the gov site. It causes doublestrand DNA breaks 67% of doublestrand DNA breaks within 1 mS. known then as it is now. see radioprotectants and Bioshield or auntminnie com under home/radiology news 7 May 2012 Antioxidant Halves DNA Damage. they show a pic of doublestrand DNA breaks, radiation depletes the oxygen molecule, there is a pic of that, not on that site. just the breaks. hence anti oxidants.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covers radiation experiments done on civilian populations for military research. I picked this up because I read Eileen Welsome's The Plutonium Files (which was great). The author refers to Welsome's book several times, and it felt like one has to read the Plutonium Files to truly enjoy this book. I think this book is a great expansion of the Plutonium Files theme. I don't believe that it is a great stand-alone book on the subject. The first third of the book primarily deals with the suppression of information regarding the experiment. The middle third of the book was the most interesting to me, because it dealt more with the experiments and the victims. The final third of the book dealt mainly with the families and their struggle for justice in the court system. The most impactful part of this book actually came at the end. The author includes appendices that list the names of each victim as well as how much radiation they were subjected to. This by itself impacted me more than anything in the text did. The author also includes testimony from one of the main doctors, as he tries to explain how this was all done to "help" the patients. This kind of story should be told, but the book wasn't put together as well as it could have been.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled across this in the new books section at our local library and am really glad I did. Stephens describes her foray into understanding the radiation tests used on hundreds of people in Cincinnati in I think the 1950s. This is a classic in helping understand ethical issues surrounding medical treatments and experimentation and research. It is also incredibly insightful into what our (i.e., US) government and academic institutions allowed as regular practice in the Cold War era of human subjects experiments with radiation. The cases documented by Stephens are horrifying. The levels of radiation people were subjected to as "treatment" were absolutely outrageous, and at some point the docs in charge KNEW what they were doing was downright evil. Stephens traces the history of many cases, as well as more recent legal battles that ensued. This book is well worth the read, and if I ever teach an ethics class or a class about Cold War government experimentation on peoples I will include this (or a portion of it) as required reading.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a powerful message. I would recommend that anyone read this book simply for the information. Unfortunately this book is long-winded and crowded with unnecessary information. Read the first chapter and then skip to the second half.

[Bethany · Rating 3 out of 5]

as much on the experiments themselves as it is on the author's investigative work uncovering the experiments and tracking down the victims and their families. I would have liked a little more scientific explanation to fill out the stories of the victims themselves and what exactly they endured.

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very interesting account of the investigation into some awful medical experiments in my city. I don't think it's a great book, but it is a great story. Please read it to learn about the awful things Americans do.

[Karen Benne · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fascinating. Always question authority....they have a history of deception and evil!!!