U.S. Government Radiation Experiments in Puerto Rico

During the Cold War, the U.S. government conducted radiation experiments on unwitting human subjects across the country. Puerto Rico, as a colonial territory with reduced oversight, was a site of particular vulnerability.

The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE): In 1994, President Clinton created the ACHRE to investigate the full scope of U.S. government-sponsored radiation experiments on human subjects. The committee's 1995 report documented:
- Over 4,000 experiments involving radiation on human subjects
- Many subjects were not informed they were being experimented on
- Vulnerable populations were specifically targeted: prisoners, hospital patients, military personnel, and institutionalized individuals
- Experiments were conducted from the 1940s through the 1970s

Relevance to Puerto Rico:
- Pedro Albizu Campos repeatedly claimed he was being subjected to radiation exposure during his imprisonment (1950-1953 and 1954-1964)
- His symptoms — severe burns, swelling, and physical deterioration — were consistent with radiation exposure
- The ACHRE confirmed that prisoners were among the populations subjected to radiation experiments during this period
- While no document specifically naming Albizu Campos has been declassified, the confirmed pattern of prisoner experimentation makes his claims plausible

Cornelius P. Rhoads: The connection between radiation experiments and Puerto Rico extends to Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, a pathologist who worked at the Presbyterian Hospital in San Juan in 1931. Rhoads wrote a letter claiming to have deliberately killed Puerto Rican patients through lethal injections and transplanting cancer cells. He later led the U.S. Army's chemical warfare service and directed the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research. His letter was documented by Puerto Rican Nationalist leader Pedro Albizu Campos, who publicized it internationally.

The U.S. government dismissed Rhoads's letter as a "joke." Rhoads was never charged with any crime.

The radiation experiment history demonstrates the particular vulnerability of colonial subjects to experimentation by the colonial power — a vulnerability that extends from the birth control pill trials to radiation experiments to the treatment of Puerto Rico as a testing ground for policies not yet applied to the mainland.