Huge scale of A-bomb gene study revealed

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120422x1.html

HIROSHIMA — Organ samples and medical records on more than 1,200 babies who were stillborn or died shortly after birth after being carried by mothers who survived the 1945 U.S. atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sent to the United States for radiation research, a researcher in Hiroshima says.

It has been known that the United States conducted research on how radiation influences genetics, and that samples from A-bomb victims and their newborns in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sent there during the Allied Occupation following World War II. But this is believed to be the first time that the scale of the study has been revealed because it was classified as military information and thus had been secret.

Hiroko Takahashi, an assistant professor at the Hiroshima Peace Institute, has said internal documents from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology show that some 77,000 newborns were studied between 1948 and 1954. She estimates that tissue samples and records from more than 1,200 newborns were sent to the United States.

"Newborns were treated in the same way as guinea pigs for the study of nuclear weapons and radiation," Takahashi said, adding that the "current radiation standard" is based upon that.