"More like us than mice"

After reading Johnston's article, "More like us than mice"; Radiation Experiments with Indigenous Peoples, I was struck by the lack of ethical questions posed during the period of nuclear testing on human subjects. Johnston exposes the questions posed in 1949 as primarily scientific and quantifying: "What is the nature and persistence of fission by-products? How do they accumulate in the environment, the food chain, and the human body and to what biophysical effect?"(31). These questions leave out the ethical and moral investigation needed in order to mitigate the negative effects of nuclear technology, weaponry, and testing on human subjects. It seems like questions about rights and protection of the human subjects so as to limit the negative effects of testing were completely missing from the conversation. Nobody seemed to ask, how will the nuclear testing of human subjects negatively effect both the human subjects as well as their communities? Or is there other ways to learn about negative effects of nuclear power and fall out that do not displace and harm humans?
Politics of race seem to fill the field of nuclear testing on human subjects as certain human lives become means for intelligence for those who are able to test and view from positions of power. Living in a time where nuclear energy, weaponry, and technology is ever present and seemingly part of both our past, present, and future, it is vital to reincorporate the ethical into the realm of nuclear energy. It is also important when testing nuclear power to consider the technology as a double sided coin of both positive and negative effects, the research constructed must be constructed in a way that understands the duality of such new waves of technology, and thus done in a way that considers both the positive and profitable effects of nuclear technology along with the risks and negative effects on human populations.