UK: Secret radiation experiments
01 July 1995
A Channel 4 television programme, "True Stories: Deadly Experiments", which was screened in July, reported that radiation experiments were carried out on pregnant women in London, Liverpool and Aberdeen during the 1950s and 1960s. The tests involved monthly injections of radioactive iodine into thyroid glands and placentas.
The British Medical Council has claimed that the levels of radiation used in the experiments was harmless - a view that has been questioned by other independent authorities. In follow-up programmes to similar tests in the United States a four fold increase in cancer among exposed children was noted.
The programme also documented tests which used the bones of dead children to research the effects of nuclear fallout.