hospitals in the us performed radiation experiments on mentally retarded Norwegians during the Cold War, reveals a retired senior health official. Fredrik Mellbye, a top government doctor from 1950 until 1972, says that these people were used to determine the effect of radiation on humans. Such experiments were carried out by several hospitals in the us , including the National Hospital in Oslo, which were involved in experiments in the 1950s and 1960s.

People in Norway are shocked to know the darker side of their welfare-state medical system. In recent years, they have also learned that thousands of Norwegians were involuntarily sterilised this century and that hundreds of other underwent lobotomies. Mellbye says that mentally impaired people had been used in radiation research "because they were easy to deal with'.

Dagbladet, a newspaper in Oslo, has reported that the experiments included sterilising subjects with x -rays, a technique developed by Nazi death camp doctors. Mellbye, however, could not confirm this claim. He also refused to identify the us institutions or agencies involved in the radiation tests.