Radioactive man, extravaganza of cynicism and oncology that never happened (5 photos)

Patient CAL-1. An ordinary American went down in history under this code name and became known throughout the world as the person who survived the maximum accumulated dose of radiation.





In the spring of 1945, house painter Albert Stevens came to a San Francisco hospital. A 59-year-old man complained of abdominal pain, and doctors diagnosed him with liver cancer. The diagnosis was wrong and the patient did not know about it. But nuclear researchers found out and needed a volunteer for research.



Albert Stevens

Well, as a volunteer - a guinea pig whose days were numbered. Because they were going to study the effect of plutonium, which was discovered in 1941, on the body.

The head of the team involved in secret research was Dr. Joseph Gilbert Hamilton. And Stevens was chosen for the role of the subject, who, according to doctors, had no more than a year to live. The researchers notified doctors that they were taking over Mr. Stevens' treatment. And on May 14, 1945, under the guise of a vitamin solution, the man was given an injection. Which in reality consisted of a mixture of 0.2 micrograms of plutonium-238 and 0.75 micrograms of plutonium-239. The dose was several times higher than what was indicated in the guidelines of that time as lethal for humans.





Professor Joseph Gilbert Hamilton

At the same time as Stevens, the working group tested 18 more people with fatal diseases. Eight of them passed away within a couple of years. The rest were later, but the cause of death was fatal diseases that were initially identified in the experimental subjects.

It turned out that it was Albert who received the maximum dose of plutonium, which was many times greater than the lethal dose. During the course of treatment, the man agreed to undergo surgery. As a result of the intervention, the patient's stomach, part of the liver and lymph nodes were partially removed. And at the same time they found out that the diagnosis was erroneous, and instead of oncology, a stomach ulcer was discovered. Serious but not life threatening. But the experiment had already begun, and the patient did not find out that a deadly mixture was splashing in his blood, and he himself became a laboratory rat against his will.



Allegedly, to monitor the progress of the disease, he was told to undergo weekly tests. Albert did not protest, since he received a small amount for each of them. This was explained to him by the ongoing scientific research.

Amazingly, for 10 years everything was more or less normal with the body. Only after the specified time after the injection, the first signs of degeneration of bone tissue, intervertebral discs of the lumbar region and internal organs began to be observed.



Stevens survived the lethal injection for 20 years. And during this period he accumulated a radiation dose of 6400 Rem with a one-time fatal dose of 500 Rem. The man, listed in secret documents as CAL-1, died in 1966 from heart disease. The man was 79 years old, the last 20 of which he had been battling non-existent cancer and did not suspect that he had become a participant in a program to test the effects of radiation on humans.

In 1975, Albert's cremated remains were taken to the laboratory for study, but the ashes never returned to their final resting place - the chapel.