Tortured Science: Health Studies, Ethics and Nuclear Weapons in the United States(Critical Approaches in the Health Social Sciences Series)

The U.S.A. s nuclear weapons program has exposed workers and the public to health hazards since World War II. In the 1980s and 1990s, federal health agencies responded to new revelations about these hazards by pouring millions of dollars into research on the health impacts of radiation. In Tortured Science: Health Studies, Ethics and Nuclear Weapons in the United States , community health activists and researchers reflect on the research program for addressing the health effects of nuclear weapons production at Hanford, WA, Rocky Flats, CO, Livermore Labs, CA, and Fernald, OH. The authors describe conflicts of interest, data suppression, technical inadequacies, and other examples of how researchers failed in their social responsibility to the affected human populations. The research program s health studies did not lead to any meaningful follow-up on the major health concerns of community members, nor have they helped communities seek reparations for high radiation exposures that may have contributed to thyroid, bone, lung and other diseases. In Tortured Science , several ethicists review these health research problems. Research ethics as a discipline seeks to protect individuals and groups, obtain approval from affected communities, mitigate potential research harms, and guard against vigilance, scientific contrivance, denial, and suppression of findings. Such protections were not adequately provided in the research program on the health effects of nuclear weapons production, as critiqued in the ethical reviews. This book compels us to develop a new ethical framework for scientific research on military-industrial and other sources of contamination. Intended Audience: Public health professionals; graduates/undergraduates in public health, community health, environmental studies, epidemiology, medical anthropology, public sociology, ethics/religious studies, and science policy; government health researchers at federal health agencies, centres for ethics and bioethics (private/academic), and community health organisations; community-based researchers and environmental organisations; nuclear weapons and peace organisations.

Table of Contents:
Tribute Steve Wing Foreword: Class, Race, and Research on Health Impacts of Nuclear Weapons Production Acknowledgments Introduction CHAPTER 1 Commentary on Ethics and Community-Based Research: Responsibility, Precaution, and Transparency Sheldon Krimsky CHAPTER 2 Insignificant and Invisible: The Human Toll of the Hanford Thyroid Disease Study Trisha Thompson Pritikin CHAPTER 3 A Community’s Experience with Environmental Health Research at the Fernald Feed Production Plant Edwa Yocum CHAPTER 4 Democracy and Public Health at Rocky Flats: The Examples of Edward A. Martell and Carl J. Johnson LeRoy Moore CHAPTER 5 A Collaborative Effort to Address the Distribution of Plutonium-Contaminated Sludge in Livermore, California Patrice Sutton, Jacqueline Cabasso, Tracy Barreau, and Marylia Kelley CHAPTER 6 Institutional Preferences for Justice, Avoiding Harm, and Expertise in Public Health Policy Making about the Health Consequences of Iodine-131 Nuclear Weapons Testing Fallout Seth Tuler CHAPTER 7 Ethics of Uranium Mining Research and the Navajo People Bindu Pannikar, Esther Yassie, and Doug Brugge CHAPTER 8 Investigation of an Excess of Malignant Melanoma among Employees of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Donald F. Austin CHAPTER 9 The Risks of Making Nuclear Weapons Robert Alvarez CHAPTER 10 Improving Community Research Protections for Communities Exposed to Cold War Nuclear Experiments Dianne Quigley CHAPTER 11 Ethical Review of Radiation Effect Narratives Ernest Wallwork PostscriptIndex

About the Author :
Amy Lowman, Dianne Quigley, Steve Wing