France used troops as nuclear "guinea pigs": paper

France used troops as nuclear "guinea pigs": paper

www.reuters.com

PARIS (Reuters) - France deliberately exposed its soldiers to nuclear explosions in Algeria in the 1960s to study the effect of radiation on humans, a newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing confidential documents.

The French government promised last year to compensate victims of nuclear tests in Algeria, carried out between 1960 and 1966, recognizing a link between the explosions and veterans' illnesses such as cancer.

One of the aims was "to study the physical and psychological effect of a

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Related News Links:
www.france24.com

[edit on 16-2-2010 by ModernAcademia]

France conducted 210 nuclear tests in total, beginning with the one in the Sahara in 1960 and ending as late as 1996 in French Polynesia. Thousands of soldiers believe themselves to have suffered radioactive contamination, and have demanded justice.
www.france24.com...

Pretty crazy to use your own troops as nuclear guinea pigs but that's what the military does though. It's not like other super-powers haven't done something similar to this as well.

But it does goes to show you how much you are worth.

You are worse than a pig, your a guinea pig!

www.france24.com
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I think Britain also did this, it was in the news last year, they finally paid out after nearly all of them had died...

I'm off to google.

Yeah, they are going to want to pay any survivors and the families of the ones that have since passed alot of money! testing them also would have put future generations of their familes at risk, my grandfather was in hiroshima shortly after the blast, and he died in the early 90's of cancer, and out of his 3 kids, my aunt has died of agressive cancer within 5 months of being diagnosed, my other aunt has had breast cancer and various other illnesses, and my dad has to be continually tested and has yet to have found anything, but they have done countless testing on him, my cousin had cervical cancer at 21, and my other cousin has had tissue taken from her breasts over and over again since she was 16. Only nowdays are we seeing how much it's affected future generations. Sad.