Physicians for Safe Technology

Wireless Technology and Public Health

Informed Consent

The development and expansion of wireless radiation is done without adequate study but also without informed consent. It is the largest human experiment to date as it literally involves billions of people.

The Tuskegee Study: No Informed Consent

History reveals the strategy of the USPHS in the Tuskegee Study which started in 1932 and was designed to observe the “natural history” of syphilis. 600 black men were initially enrolled, many of whom had syphilis, and were followed for their lifetimes. They were given ineffective medication and told these were for “bad blood”, but never offered penicillin treatment when it became available in 1944. They were, however, offered food, transportation and burial expenses. The study ended in 1972 after leaked documents resulted in a front page New York Times article.

The National Research Act of 1974

Congress passed the National Research Act in 1974, as a response to the Tuskegee experiment and the atrocious acts by the Nazi’s in Germany, and the Office for Human Research Protections was established within the USPHS. All research on humans there after required informed consent. The process is overseen by Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) within academia and hospitals.

The Nuremberg Code

The Nuremberg Code was written in 19 after an International Military Tribunal of 23 Nazi physicians took place on November 19th, 1945.  These physcians were tried for their “crimes against humanity” after evidence surfaced of the atrocious experiments they carried out on unwilling prisoners of war.

“The Nuremberg Code aimed to protect human subjects from enduring the kind of cruelty and exploitation the prisoners endured at concentration camps. The 10 elements of the code are: 

  1. Voluntary consent is essential
  2. The results of any experiment must be for the greater good of society
  3. Human experiments should be based on previous animal experimentation
  4. Experiments should be conducted by avoiding physical/mental suffering and injury
  5. No experiments should be conducted if it is believed to cause death/disability
  6. The risks should never exceed the benefits
  7. Adequate facilities should be used to protect subjects
  8. Experiments should be conducted only by qualified scientists
  9. Subjects should be able to end their participation at any time
  10. The scientist in charge must be prepared to terminate the experiment when injury, disability, or death is likely to occur

Former U.S. Bioethics Commissions

A list of Former Bioethics Commissions lists an Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments [1994-1995]

Created in January 1994 and dissolved in October 1995, the 14-member Committee was charged with investigating and reporting on the use of human beings as subjects of federally funded research using ionizing radiation. To maximize public access as required under the Federal Advisory Committee Act, the Committee created for the first time a gopher site on the World Wide Web, which is now under the National Security Agency Archives athttp://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/ . For additional information, see http://www.hss.energy.gov/HealthSafety/ohre/roadmap/index.html