A symptom, not a solution

In a human experiment that took place 11 years ago at the nuclear reactor in Dimona, employees were coerced into drinking a mixture containing a concentration containing at least seven times more uranium than the allowable quantity in drinking water.

The experiment, as Yossi Melman reported in Haaretz, contravened the Declaration of Helsinki, and may have caused real damage to the health of the participants. When the report came out, the Atomic Energy Commission quickly asked the Committee for Nuclear Safety to appoint a special committee to investigate the experiment.

It is hard not to be amazed at the number of committees that are supposed to oversee the safety of operations at nuclear centers in Israel, including secret Knesset sub-committees, the state comptroller and internal auditors working at all those secret centers.

The system-wide failures in oversight and supervision of the experiment in question is therefore astonishing. It may be assumed that if the report had not come out in Haaretz, responsibility for this experiment would not have come under review.

The nature of these human experiments carried out by government entities like the Negev Nuclear Research Center in Dimona, the Israel Institute for Biological Research, or the Israel Defense Forces enjoys secrecy under the pretext of security considerations. The public has learned to acquiesce to these experiments, on the unfounded assumption that they are necessary to strengthen the state's ability to protect its citizens.

The systems of oversight for these experiments were put in place to reassure the public, and especially those who take part in the experiments, that they are protected by watchful, professional authorities that act as a wall against any breach of law or protocol, in order to prevent improper experimentation.

However, it turns out that there are cracks, at the very least, in this protective wall. That is the case with the uranium-drinking experiment, the dives in the Kishon River, the anthrax experiments, the nerve gas at the Institute for Biological Research and apparently other cases that are still waiting to be aired, or those that "for security reasons" will never be publicized.

These cases require the experiments' supervisors to reexamine the efficacy of their implementation, and use their authority to set clearer and more transparent procedures that do not permit looking the other way or circumvention. A special investigative committee is part of the symptom, not the solution.