But many space analysts warn that the agency鈥檚 problems run much deeper than
the loss of a few probes. In the post-Cold War world, they argue, NASA is in
danger of losing its raison d鈥櫭猼re. And by trying to reinvent itself as
the torchbearer for the search for extraterrestrial life, the agency is building
its future on shaky ground. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not something you can hang a $13
billion-a-year agency on,鈥� says John Pike, a space analyst with the Federation
of American 女生小视频s in Washington DC.

When NASA administrator Dan Goldin made 鈥渇aster, cheaper, better鈥� his mantra
in 1992, he had little choice. Billion-dollar probes such as Galileo, now
finishing its mission to Jupiter and its moons, were soaking up so much of
NASA鈥檚 funds that the agency could only launch one science mission every 18
months or so.

And spending $1 billion on a mission is no guarantee of success. In
1993, NASA lost contact with the Mars Observer satellite, presumed to have been
disabled by an explosion in a fuel line as the craft tried to slip into orbit
around the Red Planet.

At first, Goldin鈥檚 attempt to do more with less appeared to be paying off.
The Mars Pathfinder mission, which landed on the Red Planet in July 1997, was a
resounding success. And the Mars Global Surveyor, which entered orbit two months
later, achieved many of the Mars Observer鈥檚 goals for a fifth of the cost.

But even then, the warning signs were beginning to show. Mars Global Observer
flirted with disaster when one of its solar panels was used for an 鈥渁erobraking鈥�
man oeuvre, exploiting the friction of the Martian upper atmosphere. The panel
looked likely to break, forcing a rethink of the manoeuvre that saw the craft
enter its mapping orbit a year behind schedule.

This year, the problems have come thick and fast. The loss of the Mars
Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander are just the highest profile
disappointments. The Wide-Field Infrared Explorer, an orbiting observatory, was
unable to fulfil its primary scientific mission after the hydrogen needed to
cool its sensors leaked away into space in March. Two months earlier, the Near
Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission had failed to make its date with asteroid 433
Eros. And while the Deep Space 1 experimental probe did make its flyby of
asteroid Braille in July, its camera was pointing the wrong way.

There鈥檚 now a widespread feeling that the 鈥渇aster, cheaper, better鈥� policy
means cutting corners, while mission controllers are being worked too hard
without adequate training. Even NASA staff are speaking out. 鈥淚f we had 10 per
cent more in the integration and test phase, we could have done so much more,鈥�
sighs David Crisp, project scientist for NASA鈥檚 New Millennium space science
program, reflecting on the Mars Polar Lander. 鈥淲e were living on vapours.鈥�

Crisp thinks that Goldin will have to 鈥渢une up鈥� the budgets for the cheapest
missions, giving them a bit more money so that scientists don鈥檛 have to make
fatal compromises to get them aloft. Boosting mission budgets by 10 or 20 per
cent would seem to be an easy way to solve the problem. But that鈥檚 where
Goldin鈥檚 real headaches begin.

In the late 1960s, at the height of the Cold War space race, the Apollo
programme alone received as much as 0.8 per cent of the US鈥檚 gross domestic
product鈥攅quivalent to more than $60 billion today. But as the
Soviet Union dissolved, so did Congress鈥檚 enthusiasm for space. NASA鈥檚 entire
annual budget is now just $13 billion, and this year the agency only
narrowly avoided losing a further $1 billion in 2000.

Winning money from Congress depends on two things: showing that the spending
will bring investment and jobs to the districts and states represented by
influential members of Congress, or exciting the interest of ordinary voters.
The lure of lucrative aerospace contracts has so far kept the International
Space Station alive. And in 1996, NASA found a sexy new justification for space
science: life.

Nestled within an ancient chunk of Martian meteorite lay tiny structures that
resembled fossilised bacteria. No longer was NASA confined to planetary physics
and atmospheric science, neither of which are likely to set the public鈥檚 pulse
racing. The science of 鈥渁strobiology鈥� was born.

Since then, NASA has increasingly played up the search for life when
justifying its planetary missions. The failed Mars Polar Lander was designed to
solve one the biggest mysteries in planetary science: why the surface of Earth鈥檚
sister planet is bone dry. The lander was armed with a robot arm to burrow into
the soil, a laser to analyse the atmosphere and oodles of other high-tech
gadgets to analyse the past and present Martian climate and help unravel the
planet鈥檚 ancient history. Yet as exciting as this mission might be to planetary
physicists, astrobiology seized the public relations agenda. Newsweek鈥檚
cover shouted about 鈥淭he New Search for Life on Mars鈥�.

Likewise, when astronomers announced that they had found six new planets
orbiting distant suns earlier this month, the real value of the discoveries lay
in the possibility of understanding the mechanics of planet formation in ways
that would have been impossible a mere five years ago. Yet when the researchers
talked to the press, they stressed how five of the six planets spent most of
their time in the 鈥渉abitable zone鈥� around their stars, where the temperature is
just right to keep water in its liquid form.

This public relations strategy may be understandable, but some scientists
fear that it could backfire. The evidence for life in the Martian meteorite has
since been dismissed by many experts, and even if there are signs of life
somewhere on Mars, the chances of a craft like the Polar Lander finding it are
slim. As for the possibility of extrasolar planets harbouring life, there鈥檚
simply no way at the moment that we can tell.

The lure of alien life may secure funding for some high profile missions.
After Mars, the icy ocean on the Jovian moon Europa is likely to be the next
target. But a scientifically interesting mission to barren Pluto is already
effectively dead. The danger is that by pinning its hopes on astrobiology, NASA
is gambling with its future. The public could soon lose interest if the search
for life fails to yield rapid results.

Goldin denies that he is placing too much emphasis on biology, pointing put
that it consumes a tiny portion of NASA鈥檚 budget. 鈥淎lmost all NASA missions
focus on chemistry and physics.鈥� But he adds: 鈥淚f NASA isn鈥檛 investing in
biology, we鈥檙e not going to be able to do the things we want to do.鈥�

Nevertheless, some scientists feel NASA should make more of its undoubted
strengths. Missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray
Observatory and the Cosmic Background Explorer are all answering some of the
fundamental questions in astrophysics, cosmology and planetary science: how did
the Solar System form? What is the nature of matter in the cosmos? How will the
Universe end?

Whatever the answer, analysts such as John Logsdon of George Washington
University in Washington DC think that NASA must start arguing a more coherent
case now if it is to secure its future. 鈥淚 think it鈥檚 in danger,鈥� he says.

Futron, a management consultancy near Washington DC, has released the first
results of its attempts to quantify for NASA the risks the station鈥檚 crews will
face. Its 鈥渓oss of crew member鈥� category includes serious illness leading to the
evacuation of an astronaut, as well as deaths.

Futron鈥檚 preliminary calculations, which the company admits are crude,
considered the risks for a station crewed by three astronauts, half way through
construction, and extended this to cover a 15-year period. In reality, of
course, the size of the space station, and the number of crew, will change.

Experts have been badgering NASA to finish a full risk assessment for the
space station. And while they are pleased that the agency is getting round to
it, some question the details of Futron鈥檚 analysis. The consultancy suggests
that accidents inside the station are a greater risk to the astronauts than
space walks. This a surprise, given the unprecedented amount of space-walking
needed to put the space station together.

Futron also calculates that the chances of losing the entire station in any
8-month period lie between 1 in 200 and 1 in 500鈥攎eaning there鈥檚 a 5 to 10
per cent chance of disaster over 15 years. But its calculations suggest that, if
this happens, there is a 93 per cent probability that a micrometeorite impact
will be the cause. Futron assumes just a 2 per cent chance that fires,
explosions or collisions between spacecraft would be to blame.

鈥淚鈥檓 struck by how different it is from the experience on Mir,鈥� says A.
Thomas Young, formerly president of the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.
鈥淭hey鈥檝e had no basic problem with micrometeorites, but they鈥檝e had problems
with fires and crashes.鈥�

Launched in January, the Mars Polar Lander ended its voyage on 3 December. If
all had gone to plan, it would have landed near the planet鈥檚 south pole to
analyse surface weather and soil. On its approach, it was supposed to turn away
from the Earth, losing radio contact as it did so, then plunge through the
atmosphere and deploy a parachute, eventually touching down with the help of its
thrusters. It would then have unfurled its solar panels and beamed back a
message signalling its arrival.

That message never came. As New 女生小视频 went to press, mission
controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena were still
attempting to contact the lander. But hope was fading fast, following the
failure of several attempts using different radio antennas and different
assumptions about what went wrong.

Even attempts to detect radio signals from the landing zone using the
orbiting Mars Global Surveyor yielded nothing. Two hitch-hiker probes, designed
to detach from the craft and smash into the Martian soil, also remained
silent.

According to JPL spokesman David Seidel, the lander seemed to be in perfect
health until radio contact was lost. 鈥淲e clearly saw the turn begin,鈥� he says.
The probe was roughly on target, which should have placed it within a few
kilometres of its intended landing zone.

And that鈥檚 about all NASA engineers have to go on as they try to work out
what happened next. Even the failure of the hitch-hiker probes doesn鈥檛 tell them
much. The craft were supposed to separate early in the descent, and Sam Thurman,
Mars Polar Lander鈥檚 flight operations manager, believes they almost certainly
parted company as planned. He thinks the failure of the probes and that of the
lander are likely to have been separate events.

The loss of the Polar Lander is particularly worrying because NASA鈥檚 next
missions to Mars, scheduled for launch in 2001 and 2003, use the same basic
design. 鈥淲e made them as identical as possible to save money,鈥� explains Sylvia
Miller, who helped design the craft. 鈥淚n fact, we call it the workhorse
濒补苍诲别谤.鈥�

It is already too late to make radical design changes to the 2001 project. In
any case, there is little chance that re-examining the designs will uncover the
flaw that claimed the lander, as this would simply be repeating work done
following the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter in September. Engineers corrected
one problem: they found that the lander鈥檚 fuel lines were in danger of freezing
solid and so switched on its heaters early
(New 女生小视频, 20 November, p 15).
But everything else looked fine.

NASA officials are now wondering whether to redesign future probes to yield
more information if they fail. One option is to give them small radio beacons to
report the successful completion of each step in the landing sequence, but this
would leave less room for important scientific equipment. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think that鈥檚
the correct direction,鈥� says David Crisp, project scientist for NASA鈥檚 New
Millennium space science programme.

Other experts want NASA to change its 鈥渇aster, better, cheaper鈥� policy for
space exploration. Following the loss of the $1 billion Mars Observer
probe in 1993, the agency switched to missions costing around $125
million. 鈥淚 wish we could have $300 million projects,鈥� says John Logsdon,
a space policy analyst at George Washington University in Washington DC. 鈥淲e鈥檙e
really trying to skip by and trust in technological luck.鈥�

Luck, unfortunately, seems to have forsaken NASA.

In 1997, the space shuttle retrieved a section of the solar panel, which had
been attached to Mir for 10 years, giving scientists a chance to see how
radiation, micrometeorites and other hazards of space affected the panel鈥檚
performance. 鈥淚t was an ideal chance to understand the degradation,鈥� says NASA
physicist Bruce Banks, who worked on the array at the Glenn Research Center in
Cleveland, Ohio.

鈥淲hat surprised us the most was the amount of contamination on the solar
array,鈥� says Banks. Oxygen from the Earth鈥檚 upper atmosphere had reacted with an
internal layer of silicone that bonded the array together. This silicone had
turned into a brownish layer of glassy silicon oxides.

Engineers think that the glassy oxides can absorb about 10 per cent of the
usable light striking the array, making it far less efficient. 鈥淲hen you look at
the brown coating, it鈥檚 hard to imagine that there鈥檚 no degradation,鈥� says
Banks.

The solar panels aboard Russian segments of the International Space Station
are of a similar composition. Kim de Groh, a materials science engineer at the
Glenn Research Center, believes that contamination could also be a problem for
the ISS. 鈥淚t is too late coming for any design changes,鈥� she says.

Just as we see an object by detecting the light waves reflected from it,
acoustic cameras 鈥渟ee鈥� an object underwater by bouncing sound waves off it.
Conventional sonar, which uses ordinary sound waves to work out the direction
and distance to an object, can only achieve very low resolution. The new
acoustic camera鈥攄ubbed Sonocam鈥攗ses ultrasound, and can make out
details on the surface of any object in its sights.

This will be useful in shallow, muddy waters when a diver is looking for
something like a mine or a crashed aircraft鈥檚 recorders. 鈥淲ith light, there鈥檚 no
useful range, because the waters tend to be very murky,鈥� says Tim White, an
engineer at the Sanders company of Nashua, New Hampshire, a division of Lockheed
Martin. 鈥淲ith sonars, you don鈥檛 get the resolution.鈥�

White and his colleagues plan to make their acoustic camera small enough for
a diver to hold in his or her hands. They have tested components operating at
two ultrasonic frequencies: 1 megahertz gives a coarse picture up to a range of
about 50 metres, while 3 megahertz gives a fine picture鈥攚ith a resolution
of about 1 centimetre鈥攁t distances up to 10 metres.

Michael Buckingham, a physicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in
La Jolla, California, believes a hand-held acoustic camera would be useful.
鈥淭here are a number of applications out there,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he optical visibility
can be almost zero, but an acoustic system cuts right through that.鈥�

Following the Mars Climate Orbiter鈥檚 loss, engineers have been reviewing the
Mars Polar Lander鈥檚 systems, hoping to catch any errors before its scheduled
landing on 3 December. Arthur Stephenson, who led the Mars Climate Orbiter
Mission Failure Investigation Board, says that a propulsion expert on his team
discovered a serious error in the thrusters that will control the lander鈥檚
descent.

The lander鈥檚 descent engine was too cold for comfort, the team found. In the
chill of interplanetary space, its fuel lines were in danger of freezing solid.
鈥淭he fuel flow might be inhibited if it had any frozen lines,鈥� Stephenson told a
press conference in Washington DC last week.

However, Edward Stone, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in
Pasadena, believes the problem will be easy to fix. 鈥淲e鈥檝e done that reanalysis,
and will turn on the heaters earlier,鈥� he told the press conference.

Stephenson鈥檚 investigation board confirmed that Mars Climate Orbiter was the
victim of confusion over metric and imperial units
(New 女生小视频, 9 October, p 6).
The push of sunlight and the solar wind on the probe鈥檚 solar
panel tended to make it spin. To counteract the spin, the craft had to fire its
thrusters from time to time.

Technicians used a computer program to estimate the effect on the craft鈥檚
trajectory. But while the program expected the figures for the strength of these
periodic firings to be in newton-seconds, the figures actually entered were in
pound-seconds.

The error meant the orbiter entered Martian orbit at an altitude of 57
kilometres, rather than the planned 226 kilometres. It either burnt up in the
planet鈥檚 atmosphere, or bounced off into deep space like a stone skimming the
surface of a lake.

Stephenson鈥檚 report blames the Mars Climate Orbiter team鈥攚hich was
split between NASA headquarters in Washington DC, JPL and the contractor
Lockheed Martin鈥攐n several counts, including inadequate training and poor
communications. Furthermore, staff were badly overworked, as they had to cover
other Mars missions as well. 鈥淚t may have been too much to ask of them,鈥�
Stephenson told last week鈥檚 press conference.

NASA is promising better management in future. But it can鈥檛 hide from the
uncomfortable fact that the latest thruster problem with Mars Polar Lander was a
near disaster, and would probably not have been discovered had scrutiny not been
stepped up in the wake of the orbiter鈥檚 loss.

Io, the largest, innermost moon of Jupiter, is constantly squeezed, stretched
and heated by Jupiter鈥檚 gravity. As a result, the moon鈥檚 tortured innards are
churning and volcanoes are erupting on its surface, enriching the atmosphere
with such elements as sodium.

Matthew Burger of the University of Colorado in Boulder, planned to use
Galileo鈥檚 observations of the greenish light sodium emits to image Io鈥檚
atmosphere. When he did the analysis, however, he was surprised. 鈥淭here was a
jet coming out鈥攏obody expected it,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 what I was looking
蹿辞谤.鈥�

The observations suggest that electric fields generated on Io as it sweeps
through Jupiter鈥檚 magnetic field accelerate sodium ions in the moon鈥檚 atmosphere
away from its equator. The ions are neutralised by neutral atoms before escaping
from the moon in high-velocity jets. The sodium atoms then form a cloud around
Jupiter. 鈥淓verything鈥檚 escaping,鈥� says Burger. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a large sodium
苍别产耻濒补.鈥�

The fact that the sodium jets come from the equatorial regions implies that
Io鈥檚 atmosphere itself is localised to a band near the equator. That may be
because there are more volcanoes there, spewing more material into the sky.
These jets should help astronomers work out the orientation and strength of Io鈥檚
magnetic field, which will soon be measured during a Galileo flyby. 鈥淚t鈥檚 going
to be really interesting,鈥� says Burger.

In 1995, the Galileo mission dropped a probe into the Jovian atmosphere. A
mass spectrometer on board returned data on the composition of the atmosphere
before the probe was crushed by pressures of 20 atmospheres.

If Jupiter had formed from colliding comets, as many planetary physicists
believe, then the levels of argon and other volatile elements in its atmosphere
should be roughly the same as those observed in comets. However, the probe
measurements reveal that they are not the same, says Tobias Owen, a physicist at
the University of Hawaii. 鈥淎rgon is as abundant relative to hydrogen as carbon
and sulphur,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t was expected to be much less abundant.鈥� Krypton and
xenon, too, are present at higher levels than expected.

鈥淭he pattern in the Jupiter data is not what is seen in comets,鈥� agrees Kevin
Zahnle of NASA鈥檚 Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. 鈥淚t鈥檚 very
interesting, because it was thought that comets were the building blocks.鈥�
Although Zahnle admits that the data analysis is very difficult and potentially
error-prone, he says that if the findings are correct, the implications are
important.

One possibility is that Jupiter formed in a cold region much farther away
from the Sun, allowing the young planet to trap volatile gases. The planet may
then have migrated inwards to its current position. Another possibility is that
Jupiter formed from material that was more primitive than anyone realised. Owen
says: 鈥淚t looks as if we鈥檙e dealing with something even more primordial than
肠辞尘别迟蝉.鈥�

鈥淭HE UK, like our other allies, thinks we鈥檙e out of our goddamned minds for talking about this kind of thing in public and releasing any kind of classified information at all, ever.鈥�

So says American bioethicist Jonathan Moreno. The topic is his own government鈥檚 past-and distinctly inglorious-record on human experimentation. And he has a point: no other nation has allowed scholars of Moreno鈥檚 ilk to root through box after box of secret documents looking for evidence of how scientists, backed by the military, systematically mistreated human subjects in their studies of the effects of radiation, chemicals and biological agents. And when other governments get around to looking at the experiments detailed in those documents, it鈥檚 fair to say they won鈥檛 be eager to unlock all of their own files.

Many boxes contained nothing more than old newspaper clippings. Yet occasionally, there were documents that told of horrible abuses. Some examples. In 1949, US scientists wanted to judge their ability to monitor radioactive plumes. Their solution: deliberately release a cloud of radioactive iodine into the atmosphere over Washington state. In the 1950s, US generals wanted to know whether their men would panic in a nuclear attack. Their solution: parade several hundred thousand US troops in front of atomic explosions. Or what about the attempts the US Army made in the 1960s to develop a 鈥渟upersoldier鈥� with skin so tough it acted like a natural body armour? To perfect the skin-hardening technology, the US Army needed human subjects, so it turned to a prison in Holmesburg, Philadelphia. There it found 鈥渁cres of skin鈥� to play with. The prisoners were treated with chemical agents, which, when effective, caused 鈥渟ignificant inflammation and crusting鈥�.

But for Moreno, one of the worst cases happened in the 1950s when the US Army persuaded psychiatrists to secretly inject hallucinogenic drugs into mental patients. 鈥淭hat episode strikes me as the one that really epitomises how wrong things went,鈥� he says. 鈥淗ospitals are supposed to be secure places where you鈥檙e protected.鈥�

The US Army鈥檚 aim in these experiments, according to a 1951 internal memo, was to investigate 鈥渢he utilisation of psychochemical agents both for offensive use and for protection against them鈥�. In other words, they were looking for mind-control agents. And to this end, they supplied novel derivatives of mescaline to psychiatrists at Bellevue Hospital in New York. As Moreno recounts in his book, one of the guinea pigs was Howard Blauer, a tennis pro admitted to Bellevue with depression in 1952, and who died there after being given very high doses of a mescaline compound, possibly by accident. Blauer seems to have known he was being given an experimental drug. What he didn鈥檛 know, according to Moreno, was that the drug wasn鈥檛 designed to help his condition.

Of course, freak accidents can blight even meticulously ethical studies. But what upsets Moreno is the sheer number of studies that failed to meet the most basic ethical requirement: namely, telling subjects what the experiment involved and what it was trying to discover before asking them to enrol. Even the cases where no physical harm was done disturb him.

Few more so than the so-called 鈥渟cience club鈥� studies of the 1940s and 1950s, in which scientists fed radioactive cereal to unsuspecting youngsters at institutions for troubled adolescents. The experiments were co-sponsored by the US government鈥檚 Atomic Energy Commission and the Quaker Oats company in the US, and carried out by scientists from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology. According to Moreno, Quaker Oats wanted to trace where the iron and other nutrients in their cereals travelled to in the body, while the AEC wanted to learn more about how radiation was deposited.

In 1997, Quaker Oats and MIT agreed to pay $1.85 million in compensation without admitting guilt. Moreno acknowledges that the radiation levels were too low to do any harm. But that鈥檚 not the point, he says. The parents weren鈥檛 told radiation was involved, or that the research offered no medical benefits. All they knew was their kids were joining a special club which would involve outings to watch baseball-and a special cereal diet.

鈥淵ou probably wouldn鈥檛 give kids at Andover [an expensive boarding school] breakfast cereal with radioactive tracers in them. There is a real wrong here. There was a form of discrimination. They were used.鈥�

So, unfortunately, were others. Not least the human subjects who were secretly injected with plutonium by US government researchers in the 1940s-the very experiments that propelled Moreno into the political and media limelight six years ago.

The Manhattan Project produced a new element, plutonium, which was not only radioactive but difficult to handle. The US government wanted to know how it would behave in the human body if it was accidentally ingested. What happened next, Moreno explains in his book: 鈥淥n March 24, 1945, a black, 53-year-old cement worker named Ebb Cade had a car accident near Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Suffering from broken bones in his right arm and both legs, Cade was taken to the nearby Manhattan Project Hospital. Because Cade鈥檚 injuries required several operations to properly set the bones, he was kept in the hospital for a few weeks. It was long enough, also, for Cade-code-named `HP [human product] 1鈥�-to become the first of eighteen patients to be injected with plutonium.鈥�

Moreno makes it clear that there鈥檚 never been any evidence that these injections caused cancer or other illnesses. The radiation levels were too low (Cade died eight years later from unrelated causes). Even so, most people would unreservedly condemn the idea of such research. Which is what makes Moreno鈥檚 attitude so interesting.

You鈥檇 think that studying such cases for so many years would have turned him into one of the biggest anti-science and anti-government voices around. But it hasn鈥檛. For Moreno, the offence in these experiments was not that human subjects were injected with plutonium: given that people were handling the stuff to make bombs, the US government was right to study possible adverse effects. No, the offence, says Moreno, was that nobody asked them first. All but one of the 18 subjects were-like Cade-unaware of what was happening. And nor can that secretive approach be attributed to simple ignorance. Quite the opposite.

Among the boxes of declassified documents, Moreno found evidence that US officials were aware of the need to treat subjects ethically long before bioethics was born. Take the term 鈥渋nformed consent鈥�. Medical ethics books say that it was coined in 1957 in a legal case. In fact, it appears a decade earlier in a letter from the general manager of the AEC to a radiologist who wanted to publish his research from the Manhattan Project era. The letter remains classified but appears to have forbidden publication on the grounds that no attempt had been made to obtain informed consent from the subjects. 鈥淭hat really blew me away because it was taking place during mid-1947 when the Nazi doctors were being tried,鈥� says Moreno. 鈥淚f [the Nuremberg trial] was in nobody else鈥檚 mind, it was in the minds of the AEC administrators.鈥�

But if the US government invented the term 鈥渋nformed consent鈥�, why did so many US Army sponsored researchers choose secrecy and deception? 鈥淭he doctors didn鈥檛 identify with it, because at that time there was a paternalistic attitude towards people who were your patients or your research subjects. The military people couldn鈥檛 identify with it because the whole idea of informed consent was anathema to them.鈥�

Into the early 1970s, the US government continued experimenting on ill-informed troops and prisoners, as well as unsuspecting civilians. For some of these experiments, such as the release of harmless bacteria in airports and subways, the government could never have received informed consent from each person who would be affected.

Again, however, Moreno鈥檚 view is surprising. Far from condemning such experiments, he suggests democratic governments actually have a duty to carry them out. 鈥淲e live in a world where small groups that hate the US enough might be quite interested in creating generalised terror. Is it politically acceptable for elected officials to decide to do experiments about how to protect against stuff and in the process perhaps expose some of us to some risk?鈥� Moreno鈥檚 answer is yes, but with a big proviso: governments should find a moral way of carrying out the research.

Even experiments that involve releasing bacteria in subways? Absolutely, says Moreno. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 get informed consent from the whole population, so what is the moral equivalent? I guess it鈥檚 letting the public know that these things may have to be done, and we vote for representatives knowing they make the decision that these things have to be done.鈥�

For Moreno, that includes dealing with the threat of so-called genetic weapons-viruses or bacteria engineered to harm specific racial groups. Some believe fears about these hypothetical agents have been overblown, but Moreno sees them as the biggest reason why governments are going to have to continue to think imaginatively about how to do human experiments ethically.

And who would Moreno most trust to carry out the research? Ironically, it鈥檚 the US Army. These days most subjects in military experiments are recruited from the Army鈥檚 own medical units at Fort Detrick in Maryland. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e informed, they have a large amount of identification with the work, they鈥檙e not getting a lot of money-if any. The Army really has learnt, and does a better job of this than academia.鈥� And most drugs companies. 鈥淲hat percentage of the funds spent by the American pharmaceutical industry on research are being spent on research into informed consent? Zero. And yet, we know that without these people鈥檚 bodies, there would be no market for these drugs.鈥�

According to Moreno, the US military has learnt from its mistakes and the horrible abuses detailed in those boxes of secret documents. It鈥檚 time now for civilian organisations to take the documents to heart. The point for all of us, he says, 鈥渋s that history is not just history鈥�.