16 Facts About Albert Stevens

Albert Stevens, known as patient CAL-1 and most radioactive human ever, was a house painter from Ohio who was subjected to an involuntary human radiation experiment and survived the highest known accumulated radiation dose in any human.

Albert Stevens was the person selected in the California test and designated CAL-1 in official documents.

Albert Stevens was working with other Manhattan Project doctors to perform toxicity studies on plutonium.

Albert Stevens was a house painter, originally from Ohio, who had settled in California in the 1920s with his wife.

Albert Stevens had checked into the University of California Hospital in San Francisco with a gastric ulcer that was misdiagnosed as terminal cancer.

Scott transported the plutonium from the lab to the hospital where Albert Stevens was being treated for stomach cancer.

Once Albert Stevens was out of surgery, his urine and stool samples were analyzed for plutonium activity.

Kenneth Scott analyzed the samples, but he never told Albert Stevens the true reason for collecting them; he recalled that Albert Stevens's sister was a nurse and quite suspicious.

Whenever Albert Stevens had continued health problems, he would return to the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center and receive free gastro-intestinal lab work by Dr Robert Stone, a radiologist who performed extensive human experiments in the 1940s.

None of the people at UCSF or those who treated Albert Stevens ever explained to Albert Stevens that he did not have cancer, nor did they disclose to him that he was a part of an experiment; his wife and daughter "figured they were using him for a guinea pig", but that the experimental treatment had worked.

Albert Stevens received approximately 6400 rem in the 20 years after his injection, or about 300 rem per year.

Albert Stevens died on January 9,1966, of cardiorespiratory failure at the age of 79.

Albert Stevens's cremated remains were shipped to the Argonne National Laboratory Center for Human Radiobiology in 1975, but they were never returned to the chapel which held them from 1966 to 1975.

Albert Stevens's absorbed dose was almost entirely based on the Pu-238 in his system.

Albert Stevens had uncovered the stories and published a series of articles in 1993 detailing the identification of CAL-1, CAL-2, CAL-3, and others.

Albert Stevens's work brought intense scrutiny on the wartime experiments which made Stevens famous, posthumously, for his contributions to science without informed consent.