Name Ebb Cade | ||
 | ||
Ebb Cade (17 March 1890 – 13 April 1953) was a construction worker at Clinton Engineer Works at Oak Ridge, and an unwilling participant in the first human injection experiments with plutonium.
Ebb Cade was born on 17 March 1890 in Macon County, Georgia, the son of Evens and Carrie Cade. Ebb Cade was married to Ida Cade. At the age of 63, Cade died as a result of ventricular fibrillation followed by heart failure on 13 April 1953 in Greensboro, Guilford County, North Carolina.
Plutonium Injection Experiments
On 23 March 1945 Cade was on his way to work at a construction site for the Manhattan Project when he was involved in a traffic accident at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. He was a cement worker for the J.A. Jones Construction Company. Cade presented at the Oak Ridge Hospital with fractures of right patella, right radius and ulna and left femur. Ebb Cade received the injections at the Oak Ridge Hospital on the Clinton Engineer Works reservation at Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Cade became known as HP-12 (Human Product-12), and was the first person to be injected with Pu-239. In order to test the migration of plutonium through his body, subsequently fifteen of Cade's teeth were extracted, and bone samples taken.
Beginning in 1945 and until 1947 a total of 18 people were part of a series of studies that involved the injection of Plutonium. In Rochester, New York at Strong Memorial Hospital 11 people were injected. In Chicago, Illinois 3 individuals received injections at Billings Hospital of the University of Chicago. In San Francisco, California 3 people were injected at the University Hospital of the University of California, San Francisco. The first person injected in California was Albert Stevens. Urine and feces samples were collected from the test subjects and forwarded to Los Alamos (also known as Project Y) for plutonium analysis. The studies were utilized to formulate mathematical equations necessary to establish plutonium excretion rates.