NUCLEAR NEWS FOR LIFE ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM

BILL ADDS CASH FOR NATIVES $7 MILLION TO SETTLE IODINE TEST CLAIMS

By David Whitney
Daily News Washington Bureau
{originally appearing here:  http://www.adn.com/metro/story/0,2633,177791,00.html  }

(Published July 16, 2000)

Washington -- House and Senate negotiators working on a compromise defense spending bill have agreed to include $7 million to compensate Alaska Natives tested with radioactive iodine during Cold War experiments four decades ago.

Aides to Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the money is being included at the request of the U.S. Air Force in order to settle claims filed by the Natives.

The testing was done between 1955 and 1957 on 102 Native men, women and children to determine why they were able to withstand prolonged cold weather.

At the time, there was great concern that Alaska would be a battleground in a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

The experiments were intended to test whether the thyroid gland played any role in adjusting to cold weather. It doesn't.

The National Research Council was asked by Congress in 1994 to look into the experiments. In a report released in January 1996, it concluded that the testing did not harm the Natives.

But the report said the Natives were "wronged" because they were not adequately informed before they were given oral doses of Iodine-131.

The report urged the federal government and the Air Force to acknowledge their wrongs, give participants their records from the experiments and conduct follow-up examinations of participants younger than 20 at the time because they had the longest sustained risk of developing thyroid cancer as a result of the experiments.

Reporter David Whitney can be reached at .
Related links:
Searchable Index of Human Radiation Experiments