As part of the Department of Energy's Openness Initiative, the Office of Human Radiation Experiments was established in March 1994 to lead the Department's efforts to tell the agency's Cold War story of radiation research using human subjects. This office managed the project to identify and catalog relevant historical documents from DOE's 3.2 million cubic feet of records scattered across the country.
Historically, Berkeley Lab played a central role in the development of nuclear medicine for the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Working closely with the Office of Human Radiation Experiments, the Berkeley Lab Archives and Records Office searched institutional records of both the Laboratory as well as other University of California sites to help in this effort. The Archives and Records Office provided:
- A complete "preliminary information search"
- A report of records volumes by experiment
- A records inventory of the relevant Laboratory divisions' records
- Complete and timely searches and responses to records requests from the government and the public
Relevant citations of Berkeley Lab's contributions to the project can be found at:
- Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Record Series Descriptions
- Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Experiments List
- Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of Human Radiation Experiments: The Department of Energy Roadmap to the Story and the Records.
