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GIs As Guinea Pigs; Vets and Radiation

By VVAW

Twenty-one years after he was an experimental subject in nuclear tests called Smokey, Donald Coe of Tompkinsville, Ky, won his case before the Veterans Board of Appeals to have his leukemia declared "service connected." Coe was one of 300,000 GIs who were used by the military to test effects of radiation during nuclear tests in Nevada and in the Pacific between 1948 and 1958. About 40,000 of these GIs were part of the series of Smokey tests run in Nevada in the 1950's where troops ran maneuvers through the radiated area hours after the explosion.

After widespread publicity around Coe's case, and that of another nuclear guinea pig, the Defense Department put out a call for information. Some 2,400 of the vets who took part in these tests have by now informed the Defense Department that they contracted leukemia or other forms of cancer in the years following their use as guinea pigs. There are no figures available on how many people died. Nor are there figures on how many just did not respond to the Defense Department publicity.

As in the case of Agent Orange, the Defense Department and the V.A. have held religiously to the position that there is no connection between the disease and the activities of the GI's in the military. In fact, in an earlier case, that of Paul C. Cooper who was also part of the Smokey tests, the V.A. finally awarded him 100% disability but not for exposure to radiation. Cooper died shortly thereafter.

Squeezing every penny until it screams, the V.A., the Defense Department, and the class which pulls all their strings resist every attempt by veterans to get what is theirs, despite the evidence. Of course, when necessary to save a buck, they can come up with their own "evidence." Following an inquiry into Smokey, where twice of the normal and expected number of Cases of leukemia were discovered, a number of physicians testified that the figures were "statistically significant," a group of government doctors said that a connection didn't exist.

Disability hearings for Coe will come later; because he lost his spleen, it's likely that he'll get 100% disability, which would make him eligible for $754 a month, plus allowances for his 7 children. Even so, the payments are small compensation for the effects of being a military guinea pig—and for having to fight for years in order to win the judgment. Coe's struggle has now opened the way for thousands of other vets to win the compensation they need to offset the effects of being used in the rich man's military.