Human experimentation
-- that is, subjecting live
human beings to science experiments
that are sometimes cruel, sometimes
painful, sometimes deadly and always
a risk -- is a major part of U.S.
history that you won't find in most
history or science books. The
United States is undoubtedly
responsible for some of the most amazing
scientific breakthroughs. These
advancements, especially in the field of
medicine, have changed the lives of
billions of people around the world --
sometimes for the better, as in the case
of finding a cure for malaria and other
epidemic diseases, and sometimes for the
worse (consider modern "psychiatry" and
the drugging of schoolchildren).
However, these
breakthroughs come with a hefty price
tag: The human beings used in the
experiments that made these advancements
possible. Over the last two centuries,
some of these test subjects have been
compensated for the damage done to their
emotional and physical health, but most
have not. Many have lost their lives
because of the experiments they often
unwillingly and sometimes even
unwittingly participated in, and they of
course can never be compensated for
losing their most precious possession of
all: Their health.
As you read through
these science experiments, you'll learn
the stories of
newborns injected with radioactive
substances, mentally ill people placed
in giant refrigerators,
military personnel exposed to
chemical weapons by the very
government they served and mentally
challenged children being purposely
infected with
hepatitis. These stories are facts,
not fiction: Each account, no matter how
horrifying, is backed up with a link or
citation to a reputable source.
These stories must be
heard because
human experimentation is still going
on today. The reasons behind the
experiments may be different, but the
usual human
guinea pigs are still the same --
members of minority groups, the poor and
the disadvantaged. These are the lives
that were put on the line in the name of
"scientific" medicine.
(1833)
Dr. William Beaumont,
an army surgeon physician, pioneers
gastric medicine with his study of a
patient with a permanently open gunshot
wound to the abdomen and writes a human
medical experimentation code that
asserts the importance of experimental
treatments, but also lists requirements
stipulating that human subjects must
give voluntary, informed consent and be
able to end the experiment when they
want. Beaumont's Code lists verbal,
rather than just written, consent as
permissible (Berdon).
(1845)
(1845 - 1849) J.
Marion Sims, later hailed as the "father
of gynecology," performs medical
experiments on enslaved African women
without
anesthesia. These women would
usually die of infection soon after
surgery. Based on his belief that the
movement of newborns' skull bones during
protracted births causes trismus, he
also uses a shoemaker's awl, a pointed
tool shoemakers use to make holes in
leather, to practice moving the skull
bones of babies born to enslaved mothers
(Brinker).
(1895)
New York pediatrician
Henry Heiman infects a 4-year-old boy
whom he calls "an idiot with chronic
epilepsy" with gonorrhea as part of a
medical experiment ("Human
Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and
After").
(1896)
Dr. Arthur Wentworth
turns 29 children at Boston's Children's
Hospital into human guinea pigs when he
performs spinal taps on them, just to
test whether the procedure is harmful (Sharav).
(1900)
U.S Army
doctors working in the Philippines
infect five Filipino prisoners with
plague and withhold proper
nutrition to create Beriberi in 29
prisoners; four test subjects die (Merritte,
et al.;
Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
Under commission from
the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Walter
Reed goes to Cuba and uses 22 Spanish
immigrant workers to prove that yellow
fever is contracted through mosquito
bites. Doing so, he introduces the
practice of using healthy test subjects,
and also the concept of a written
contract to confirm informed consent of
these subjects. While doing this study,
Dr. Reed clearly tells the subjects
that, though he will do everything he
can to help them, they may die as a
result of the experiment. He pays them
$100 in gold for their participation,
plus $100 extra if they contract yellow
fever (Berdon,
Sharav).
(1906)
Harvard professor Dr.
Richard Strong infects prisoners in the
Philippines with cholera to study the
disease; 13 of them die. He compensates
survivors with cigars and cigarettes.
During the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi
doctors cite this study to justify their
own medical experiments (Greger,
Sharav).
(1911)
Dr. Hideyo Noguchi of
the Rockefeller Institute for Medical
Research publishes data on injecting an
inactive syphilis preparation into the
skin of 146
hospital patients and normal
children in an attempt to develop a skin
test for syphilis. Later, in 1913,
several of these children's
parents sue Dr. Noguchi for
allegedly infecting their children with
syphilis ("Reviews
and Notes: History of Medicine:
Subjected to Science: Human
Experimentation in America before the
Second World War").
(1913)
Medical experimenters
"test" 15 children at the children's
home St. Vincent's House in Philadelphia
with tuberculin, resulting in permanent
blindness in some of the children.
Though the Pennsylvania House of
Representatives records the incident,
the researchers are not punished for the
experiments ("Human
Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and
After").
(1915)
Dr. Joseph
Goldberger, under order of the U.S.
Public Health Office, produces Pellagra,
a debilitating disease that affects the
central
nervous system, in 12 Mississippi
inmates to try to find a cure for the
disease. One test subject later says
that he had been through "a thousand
hells." In 1935, after millions die from
the disease, the director of the U.S
Public Health Office would finally admit
that officials had known that it was
caused by a niacin deficiency for some
time, but did nothing about it because
it mostly affected poor
African-Americans. During the Nuremberg
Trials, Nazi doctors used this study to
try to justify their medical experiments
on concentration camp inmates (Greger;
Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1918)
In response to the
Germans' use of chemical weapons during
World War I, President Wilson creates
the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) as a
branch of the U.S. Army. Twenty-four
years later, in 1942, the CWS would
begin performing mustard gas and
lewisite experiments on over 4,000
members of the armed forces (Global
Security, Goliszek).
(1919)
(1919 - 1922)
Researchers perform testicular
transplant experiments on inmates at San
Quentin State Prison in California,
inserting the testicles of recently
executed inmates and goats into the
abdomens and scrotums of living
prisoners (Greger).
(1931)
Cornelius Rhoads, a
pathologist from the Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Research,
purposely infects human test subjects in
Puerto Rico with
cancer cells; 13 of them die. Though
a Puerto Rican doctor later discovers
that Rhoads purposely covered up some of
details of his experiment and Rhoads
himself gives a written testimony
stating he believes that all Puerto
Ricans should be killed, he later goes
on to establish the U.S. Army Biological
Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah and
Panama, and is named to the U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission, where he begins a
series of radiation exposure experiments
on American soldiers and civilian
hospital patients (Sharav;
Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1931 - 1933) Mental
patients at Elgin State Hospital in
Illinois are injected with radium-266 as
an experimental therapy for mental
illness (Goliszek).
(1932)
(1932-1972) The U.S.
Public Health Service in Tuskegee, Ala.
diagnoses 400 poor, black sharecroppers
with syphilis but never tells them of
their illness nor treats them; instead
researchers use the men as human guinea
pigs to follow the symptoms and
progression of the disease. They all
eventually die from syphilis and their
families are never told that they could
have been treated (Goliszek,
University of Virginia Health System
Health Sciences Library).
(1937)
Scientists at Cornell
University Medical School publish an
angina drug study that uses both
placebo and blind assessment
techniques on human test subjects. They
discover that the subjects given the
placebo experienced more of an
improvement in symptoms than those who
were given the actual drug. This is
first account of the
placebo effect published in the
United States ("Placebo
Effect").
(1939)
In order to test his
theory on the roots of stuttering,
prominent speech pathologist Dr. Wendell
Johnson performs his famous "Monster
Experiment" on 22 children at the Iowa
Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Davenport.
Dr. Johnson and his graduate students
put the children under intense
psychological pressure, causing them to
switch from speaking normally to
stuttering heavily. At the time, some of
the students reportedly warn Dr. Johnson
that, "in the aftermath of World War II,
observers might draw comparisons to Nazi
experiments on human subjects, which
could destroy his career" (Alliance
for Human Research Protection).
(1941)
Dr. William C. Black
infects a 12-month-old baby with herpes
as part of a medical experiment. At the
time, the editor of the Journal of
Experimental Medicine, Francis
Payton Rous, calls it "an abuse of
power, an infringement of the rights of
an individual, and not excusable because
the illness which followed had
implications for science" (Sharav).
An article in a 1941
issue of Archives of Pediatrics
describes medical studies of the severe
gum disease Vincent's angina in which
doctors transmit the disease from sick
children to healthy children with oral
swabs (Goliszek).
Drs. Francis and Salk
and other researchers at the University
of Michigan spray large amounts of wild
influenza virus directly into the nasal
passages of "volunteers" from mental
institutions in Michigan. The test
subjects develop influenza within a very
short period of time (Meiklejohn).
Researchers give 800
poverty-stricken
pregnant women at a Vanderbilt
University prenatal clinic "cocktails"
including radioactive iron in order to
determine the iron requirements of
pregnant women (Pacchioli).
(1942)
The United States
creates Fort Detrick, a 92-acre
facility, employing nearly 500
scientists working to create biological
weapons and develop defensive measures
against them. Fort Detrick's main
objectives include investigating whether
diseases are transmitted by inhalation,
digestion or through skin absorption; of
course, these biological
warfare experiments heavily relied
on the use of human subjects (Goliszek).
U.S. Army and Navy
doctors infect 400 prison inmates in
Chicago with malaria to study the
disease and hopefully develop a
treatment for it. The prisoners are told
that they are helping the war effort,
but not that they are going to be
infected with malaria. During Nuremberg
Trials, Nazi doctors later cite this
American study to defend their own
medical experiments in concentration
camps like Auschwitz (Cockburn
and St. Clair, eds.).
The Chemical Warfare
Service begins mustard gas and lewisite
experiments on 4,000 members of the U.S.
military. Some test subjects don't
realize they are volunteering for
chemical exposure experiments, like
17-year-old Nathan Schnurman, who in
1944 thinks he is only volunteering to
test "U.S. Navy summer clothes" (Goliszek).
In an experiment
sponsored by the U.S. Navy, Harvard
biochemist Edward Cohn injects 64
inmates of Massachusetts state prisons
with cow's blood (Sharav).
Merck Pharmaceuticals
President George
Merck is named director of the War
Research Service (WRS), an agency
designed to oversee the establishment of
a biological warfare program (Goliszek).
(1943)
In order to "study
the effect of frigid temperature on
mental disorders," researchers at
University of Cincinnati Hospital keep
16 mentally disabled patients in
refrigerated cabinets for 120 hours at
30 degrees Fahrenheit (Sharav).
(1944)
As part of the
Manhattan Project that would eventually
create the atomic bomb, researchers
inject 4.7 micrograms of plutonium into
soldiers at the Oak Ridge facility, 20
miles west of Knoxville, Tenn. ("Manhattan
Project: Oak Ridge").
Captain A. W. Frisch,
an experienced microbiologist, begins
experiments on four volunteers from the
state prison at Dearborn, Mich.,
inoculating prisoners with
hepatitis-infected specimens obtained in
North
Africa. One prisoner dies; two
others develop hepatitis but live; the
fourth develops symptoms but does not
actually develop the disease (Meiklejohn).
Laboratory workers at
the University of Minnesota and
University of Chicago inject human test
subjects with phosphorus-32 to learn the
metabolism of hemoglobin (Goliszek).
(1944 - 1946) In
order to quickly develop a cure for
malaria -- a disease hindering Allied
success in World War II -- University of
Chicago Medical School professor Dr. Alf
Alving infects psychotic patients at
Illinois State Hospital with the disease
through blood transfusions and then
experiments malaria cures on them (Sharav).
A captain in the
medical corps addresses an April 1944
memo to Col. Stanford Warren, head of
the Manhattan Project's Medical Section,
expressing his concerns about atom bomb
component fluoride's central nervous
system (CNS) effects and asking for
animal research to be done to determine
the extent of these effects: "Clinical
evidence suggests that uranium
hexafluoride may have a rather marked
central nervous system effect ... It
seems most likely that the F [code for
fluoride] component rather than the T
[code for uranium] is the causative
factor ... Since work with these
compounds is essential, it will be
necessary to know in advance what mental
effects may occur after exposure." The
following year, the Manhattan Project
would begin human-based studies on
fluoride's effects (Griffiths
and Bryson).
The Manhattan Project
medical team, led by the now infamous
University of Rochester radiologist Col.
Safford Warren, injects plutonium into
patients at the University's teaching
hospital, Strong Memorial (Burton
Report).
(1945)
Continuing the
Manhattan Project, researchers inject
plutonium into three patients at the
University of Chicago's Billings
Hospital (Sharav).
The U.S. State
Department, Army
intelligence and the CIA begin
Operation Paperclip, offering Nazi
scientists immunity and secret
identities in exchange for work on
top-secret government projects on
aerodynamics and chemical warfare
medicine in the United States ("Project
Paperclip").
Researchers infect
800 prisoners in Atlanta with malaria to
study the disease (Sharav).
(1945 - 1955) In
Newburgh, N.Y., researchers linked to
the Manhattan Project begin the most
extensive American study ever done on
the health effects of fluoridating
public drinking water (Griffiths
and Bryson).
(1946)
Gen. Douglas
MacArthur strikes a secret deal with
Japanese physician Dr. Shiro Ishii to
turn over 10,000 pages of information
gathered from human experimentation in
exchange for granting Ishii immunity
from prosecution for the horrific
experiments he performed on Chinese,
Russian and American war prisoners,
including performing vivisections on
live human beings (Goliszek,
Sharav).
Male and female test
subjects at Chicago's Argonne National
Laboratories are given intravenous
injections of arsenic-76 so that
researchers can study how the
human body absorbs, distributes and
excretes
arsenic (Goliszek).
Continuing the
Newburg study of 1945, the Manhattan
Project commissions the University of
Rochester to study fluoride's effects on
animals and humans in a project
codenamed "Program F." With the help of
the
New York State Health Department,
Program F researchers secretly collect
and analyze blood and tissue samples
from Newburg residents. The studies are
sponsored by the Atomic Energy
Commission and take place at the
University of Rochester Medical Center's
Strong Memorial Hospital (Griffiths
and Bryson).
(1946 - 1947)
University of Rochester researchers
inject four male and two female human
test subjects with uranium-234 and
uranium-235 in dosages ranging from 6.4
to 70.7 micrograms per one kilogram of
body weight in order to study how much
uranium they could tolerate before their
kidneys become damaged (Goliszek).
Six male
employees of a Chicago metallurgical
laboratory are given
water contaminated with
plutonium-239 to drink so that
researchers can learn how plutonium is
absorbed into the digestive tract (Goliszek).
Researchers begin
using patients in VA hospitals as test
subjects for human medical experiments,
cleverly worded as "investigations" or
"observations" in medical study reports
to avoid negative connotations and bad
publicity (Sharav).
The American public
finally learns of the biowarfare
experiments being done at Fort Detrick
from a report released by the War
Department (Goliszek).
(1946 - 1953) The
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission sponsors
studies in which researchers from
Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts
General Hospital and the Boston
University School of Medicine feed
mentally disabled students at Fernald
State School Quaker Oats breakfast
cereal spiked with radioactive tracers
every morning so that nutritionists can
study how preservatives move through the
human body and if they block the
absorption of vitamins and minerals.
Later,
MIT researchers conduct the same
study at Wrentham State School (Sharav,
Goliszek).
Human test subjects
are given one to four injections of
arsenic-76 at the University of Chicago
Department of Medicine. Researchers take
tissue biopsies from the subjects before
and after the injections (Goliszek).
(1947)
Col. E.E. Kirkpatrick
of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
issues a top-secret document (707075)
dated Jan. 8. In it, he writes that
"certain radioactive substances are
being prepared for intravenous
administration to human subjects as a
part of the work of the contract" (Goliszek).
A secret AEC document
dated April 17 reads, "It is desired
that no document be released which
refers to experiments with humans that
might have an adverse reaction on public
opinion or result in legal suits,"
revealing that the U.S. government was
aware of the health risks its nuclear
tests posed to military personnel
conducting the tests or nearby civilians
(Goliszek).
The
CIA begins studying LSD's potential
as a weapon by using military and
civilian test subjects for experiments
without their consent or even knowledge.
Eventually, these LSD studies will
evolve into the MKULTRA program in 1953
(Sharav).
(1947 - 1953) The
U.S. Navy begins Project Chatter to
identify and test so-called "truth
serums," such as those used by the
Soviet Union to interrogate spies.
Mescaline and the central nervous system
depressant scopolamine are among the
many drugs tested on human subjects (Goliszek).
(1948)
Based on the secret
studies performed on Newburgh, N.Y.
residents beginning in 1945, Project F
researchers publish a report in the
August 1948 edition of the Journal
of the American Dental Association,
detailing fluoride's health dangers. The
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
quickly censors it for "national
security" reasons (Griffiths
and Bryson).
(1950)
(1950 - 1953) The CIA
and later the Office of Scientific
Intelligence begin Project Bluebird
(renamed Project Artichoke in 1951) in
order to find ways to "extract"
information from CIA agents, control
individuals "through special
interrogation techniques," "enhance
memory" and use "unconventional
techniques, including
hypnosis and drugs" for offensive
measures (Goliszek).
(1950 - 1953) The
U.S. Army releases chemical clouds over
six American and Canadian cities.
Residents in Winnipeg, Canada, where a
highly toxic chemical called cadmium is
dropped, subsequently experience high
rates of respiratory illnesses (Cockburn
and St. Clair, eds.).
In order to determine
how susceptible an American city could
be to biological attack, the U.S. Navy
sprays a cloud of Bacillus globigii
bacteria from ships over the
San Francisco shoreline. According
to monitoring devices situated
throughout the city to test the extent
of infection, the eight thousand
residents of San Francisco inhale five
thousand or more bacteria particles,
many becoming sick with pneumonia-like
symptoms (Goliszek).
Dr. Joseph Strokes of
the University of Pennsylvania infects
200 female prisoners with viral
hepatitis to study the disease (Sharav).
Doctors at the
Cleveland City Hospital study changes in
cerebral
blood flow by injecting test
subjects with spinal anesthesia,
inserting needles in their jugular veins
and brachial arteries, tilting their
heads down and, after massive blood loss
causes paralysis and fainting, measuring
their
blood pressure. They often perform
this experiment multiple times on the
same subject (Goliszek).
Dr. D. Ewen Cameron,
later of MKULTRA infamy due to his 1957
to1964 experiments on Canadians,
publishes an article in the British
Journal of Physical Medicine, in
which he describes experiments that
entail forcing schizophrenic patients at
Manitoba's Brandon Mental Hospital to
lie naked under 15- to 200-watt red
lamps for up to eight hours per day. His
other experiments include placing mental
patients in an electric cage that
overheats their internal body
temperatures to 103 degrees Fahrenheit,
and inducing comas by giving patients
large injections of
insulin (Goliszek).
(1951)
The U.S. Navy's
Project Bluebird is renamed Project
Artichoke and begins human medical
experiments that test the effectiveness
of LSD, sodium pentothal and hypnosis
for the interrogative purposes described
in Project Bluebird's objectives (1950)
(Goliszek).
The U.S. Army
secretly contaminates the Norfolk Naval
Supply Center in Virginia and
Washington, D.C.'s National Airport with
a strain of bacteria chosen because
African-Americans were believed to be
more susceptible to it than Caucasians.
The experiment causes food poisoning,
respiratory problems and blood poisoning
(Cockburn
and St. Clair, eds.).
(1951 - 1952)
Researchers withhold insulin from
diabetic patients for up to two days in
order to observe the effects of
diabetes; some test subjects go into
diabetic comas (Goliszek).
(1951 - 1956) Under
contract with the Air Force's School of
Aviation Medicine (SAM), the University
of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in
Houston begins studying the effects of
radiation on
cancer patients -- many of them
members of minority groups or indigents,
according to sources -- in order to
determine both radiation's ability to
treat
cancer and the possible long-term
radiation effects of pilots flying
nuclear-powered planes. The study lasts
until 1956, involving 263 cancer
patients. Beginning in 1953, the
subjects are required to sign a waiver
form, but it still does not meet the
informed consent guidelines established
by the Wilson memo released that year.
The TBI studies themselves would
continue at four different institutions
-- Baylor University College of
Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering
Institute for Cancer Research, the U.S.
Naval Hospital in Bethesda and the
University of Cincinnati College of
Medicine -- until 1971 (U.S.
Department of Energy, Goliszek).
American, Canadian
and British military and intelligence
officials gather a small group of
eminent psychologists to a secret
meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in
Montreal about Communist
"thought-control techniques." They
proposed a top-secret research program
on behavior modification -- involving
testing drugs, hypnosis, electroshock
and lobotomies on humans (Barker).
(1952)
Military scientists
use the Dugway Proving Ground -- which
is located 87 miles southwest of Salt
Lake City, Utah -- in a series of
experiments to determine how
Brucella suis and Brucella
melitensis spread in human
populations. Today, over a half-century
later, some experts claim that we are
all infected with these agents as a
result of these experiments (Goliszek).
In a U.S. Department
of Denfense-sponsored experiment, Henry
Blauer dies after he is injected with
mescaline at Columbia University's New
York State Psychiatric Institute (Sharav).
At the famous
Sloan-Kettering Institute, Chester M.
Southam injects live cancer cells into
prisoners at the Ohio State Prison to
study the progression of the disease.
Half of the prisoners in this National
Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH)
study are black, awakening racial
suspicions stemming from Tuskegee, which
was also an NIH-sponsored study (Merritte,
et al.).
(1953)
(1953 - 1970) The CIA
begins project MKNAOMI to "stockpile
incapacitating and lethal materials, to
develop gadgetry for the disseminations
of these materials, and to test the
effects of certain drugs on animals and
humans." As part of MKNAOMI, the CIA and
the Special Operations Division of the
Army Biological Laboratory at Fort
Detrick try to develop two
suicide pill alternatives to the
standard cyanide suicide pill given to
CIA agents and U-2 pilots. CIA agents
and U-2 pilots are meant to take these
pills when they find themselves in
situations in which they (and all the
information they hold in their brains)
are in enemy hands. They also develop a
"microbioinoculator" -- a device that
agents can use to fire small darts
coated with biological agents that can
remain potent for weeks or even months.
These darts can be fired through
clothing and, most significantly, are
undetectable during autopsy. Eventually,
by the late 1960s, MKNAOMI enables the
CIA to have a stockpile of biological
toxins -- infectious viruses,
paralytic shellfish toxin, lethal
botulism toxin, snake venom and the
severe skin disease-producing agent
Mircosporum gypseum. Of course, the
development of all of this "gadgetry"
requires human experimentation (Goliszek).
(1953 - 1974) CIA
Director Allen Dulles authorizes the
MKULTRA program to produce and test
drugs and biological agents that the CIA
could use for mind control and behavior
modification. MKULTRA later becomes well
known for its pioneering studies on LSD,
which are often performed on prisoners
or patrons of brothels set up and run by
the CIA. The brothel experiments, known
as "Operation Midnight Climax," feature
two-way mirrors set up in the brothels
so that CIA agents can observe LSD's
effects on sexual behavior. Ironically,
governmental figures sometimes slip LSD
into each other's drinks as part of the
program, resulting in the LSD
psychosis-induced suicide of Dr. Frank
Olson indirectly at the hands of
MKULTRA's infamous key player Dr. Sidney
Gottlieb. Of all the hundreds of human
test subjects used during MKULTRA, only
14 are ever notified of the involvement
and only one is ever compensated
($15,000). Most of the MKULTRA files are
eventually destroyed in 1973 (Elliston;
Merritte, et al.;
Barker).
The U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC) sponsors
iodine studies at the University of
Iowa. In the first study, researchers
give pregnant women 100 to 200
microcuries of iodine-131 and then study
the women's aborted embryos in order to
learn at what stage and to what extent
radioactive iodine crosses the placental
barrier. In the second study,
researchers give 12 male and 13 female
newborns under 36 hours old and weighing
between 5.5 and 8.5 pounds iodine-131
either orally or via intramuscular
injection, later measuring the
concentration of iodine in the newborns'
thyroid glands (Goliszek).
Secretary of Defense
Charles Wilson issues the Wilson memo, a
top-secret document establishing the
Nuremberg Code as Department of Defense
policy on human experimentation. The
Wilson memo requires voluntary, written
consent from a human
medical research subject after he or
she has been informed of "the
nature, duration, and purpose of the
experiment; the method and means by
which it is to be conducted; all
inconveniences and hazards reasonably to
be expected; and effects upon his health
or person which may possibly come from
his participation in the experiment." It
also insists that doctors only use
experimental treatments when other
methods have failed (Berdon).
As part of an AEC
study, researchers feed 28 healthy
infants at the University of Nebraska
College of Medicine iodine-131 through a
gastric tube and then test concentration
of iodine in the infants' thyroid glands
24 hours later (Goliszek).
(1953 - 1957) Eleven
patients at Massachusetts General
Hospital in Boston are injected with
uranium as part of the Manhattan Project
(Sharav).
In an AEC-sponsored
study at the University of Tennessee,
researchers inject healthy two- to
three-day-old newborns with
approximately 60 rads of iodine-131
(Goliszek).
Newborn Daniel Burton
becomes blind when
physicians at Brooklyn Doctors
Hospital perform an experimental high
oxygen treatment for Retrolental
Fibroplasia, a retinal disorder
affecting premature infants, on him and
other premature babies. The physicians
perform the experimental treatment
despite earlier studies showing that
high oxygen levels cause blindness.
Testimony in Burton v. Brooklyn
Doctors Hospital (452 N.Y.S.2d875)
later reveals that researchers continued
to give Burton and other infants excess
oxygen even after their eyes had swelled
to dangerous levels (Goliszek,
Sharav).
The CIA begins
Project MKDELTA to study the use of
biochemicals "for harassment,
discrediting and disabling purposes" (Goliszek).
A 1953 article in
Clinical Science describes a
medical experiment in which researchers
purposely blister the abdomens of 41
children, ranging in age from eight to
14, with cantharide in order to study
how severely the substance irritates the
skin (Goliszek).
The AEC performs a
series of field tests known as "Green
Run," dropping radiodine 131 and xenon
133 over the Hanford, Wash. site --
500,000 acres encompassing three small
towns (Hanford, White Bluffs and
Richland) along the Columbia River (Sharav).
In an AEC-sponsored
study to learn whether radioactive
iodine affects premature babies
differently from full-term babies,
researchers at Harper Hospital in
Detroit give oral doses of iodine-131 to
65 premature and full-term infants
weighing between 2.1 and 5.5 pounds (Goliszek).
(1954)
The CIA begins
Project QKHILLTOP to study Chinese
Communist Party brainwashing techniques
and use them to further the CIA's own
interrogative methods. Most experts
speculate that the Cornell University
Medical School Human Ecology Studies
Program conducted Project QKHILLTOP's
early experiments (Goliszek).
(1954 - 1975) U.S.
Air Force medical officers assigned to
Fort Detrick's Chemical Corps Biological
Laboratory begin Operation Whitecoat --
experiments involving exposing human
test subjects to hepatitis A, plague,
yellow fever, Venezuelan equine
encephalitis, Rift Valley fever,
rickettsia and intestinal microbes.
These test subjects include 2,300
Seventh Day Adventist military
personnel, who choose to become human
guinea pigs rather than potentially kill
others in combat. Only two of the 2,300
claim long-term medical complications
from participating in the study ("Operation
Whitecoat".)
In a general memo to
university researchers under contract
with the military, the
Surgeon General of the U.S. Army
asserts the human experimentation
guidelines -- including informed,
written consent -- established in the
classified Wilson memo (Goliszek).
(1955)
In U.S.
Army-sponsored experiments performed at
Tulane University, mental patients are
given LSD and other drugs and then have
electrodes implanted in their brain to
measure the levels (Barker,
"The Cold War Experiments").
(1955 - 1957) In
order to learn how cold weather affects
human physiology, researchers give a
total of 200 doses of iodine-131, a
radioactive tracer that concentrates
almost immediately in the
thyroid gland, to 85 healthy Eskimos
and 17 Athapascan Indians living in
Alaska. They study the tracer within the
body by blood, thyroid tissue, urine and
saliva samples from the test subjects.
Due to the language barrier, no one
tells the test subjects what is being
done to them, so there is no informed
consent (Goliszek).
(1955 - 1965) As a
result of their work with the CIA's mind
control experiments in Project QKHILLTOP,
Cornell neurologists Harold Wolff and
Lawrence Hinkle begin the Society for
the Investigation of Human Ecology
(later renamed the Human Ecology Fund)
to study "man's relation to his social
environment as perceived by him" (Goliszek).
(1956)
(1956 - 1957) U.S.
Army covert biological weapons
researchers release mosquitoes infected
with yellow fever and dengue fever over
Savannah, Ga., and Avon Park, Fla., to
test the insects' ability to carry
disease. After each test, Army agents
pose as
public health officials to test
victims for effects and take pictures of
the unwitting test subjects. These
experiments result in a high incidence
of fevers, respiratory distress,
stillbirths, encephalitis and typhoid
among the two cities' residents, as well
as several deaths (Cockburn
and St. Clair, eds.).
(1957)
The U.S. military
conducts Operation Plumbbob at the
Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest of
Las Vegas. Operation Pumbbob consists of
29 nuclear detonations, eventually
creating radiation expected to result in
a total 32,000 cases of thyroid cancer
among civilians in the area. Around
18,000 members of the U.S. military
participate in Operation Pumbbob's
Desert Rock VII and VIII, which are
designed to see how the average foot
soldier physiologically and mentally
responds to a nuclear battlefield ("Operation
Plumbbob", Goliszek).
(1957 - 1964) As part
of MKULTRA, the CIA pays McGill
University Department of Psychiatry
founder Dr. D. Ewen Cameron $69,000 to
perform LSD studies and potentially
lethal experiments on Canadians being
treated for minor disorders like
post-partum depression and anxiety at
the Allan Memorial Institute, which
houses the Psychiatry Department of the
Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. The
CIA encourages Dr. Cameron to fully
explore his "psychic driving" concept of
correcting madness through completely
erasing one's memory and rewriting the
psyche. These "driving" experiments
involve putting human test subjects into
drug-, electroshock- and sensory
deprivation-induced vegetative states
for up to three months, and then playing
tape loops of noise or simple repetitive
statements for weeks or months in order
to "rewrite" the "erased" psyche. Dr.
Cameron also gives human test subjects
paralytic drugs and electroconvulsive
therapy 30 to 40 times, as part of his
experiments. Most of Dr. Cameron's test
subjects suffer permanent damage as a
result of his work (Goliszek,
"Donald Ewan Cameron").
In order to study how
blood flows through children's brains,
researchers at Children's Hospital in
Philadelphia perform the following
experiment on healthy children, ranging
in age from three to 11: They insert
needles into each child's femoral artery
(thigh) and jugular vein (neck),
bringing the blood down from the brain.
Then, they force each child to inhale a
special gas through a facemask. In their
subsequent Journal of Clinical
Investigation article on this
study, the researchers note that, in
order to perform the experiment, they
had to restrain some of the child test
subjects by bandaging them to boards (Goliszek).
(1958)
Approximately 300
members of the U.S. Navy are exposed to
radiation when the Navy destroyer
Mansfield detonates 30 nuclear
bombs off the coasts of Pacific Islands
during Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).
The U.S. Atomic
Energy Commission (AEC) drops
radioactive materials over Point Hope,
Alaska, home to the Inupiats, in a field
test known under the codename "Project
Chariot" (Sharav).
(1961)
In response to the
Nuremberg Trials, Yale psychologist
Stanley Milgram begins his famous
Obedience to Authority Study in order to
answer his question "Could it be that
(Adolf) Eichmann and his million
accomplices in the Holocaust were just
following orders? Could we call them all
accomplices?" Male test subjects,
ranging in age from 20 to 40 and coming
from all education backgrounds, are told
to give "learners" electric shocks for
every wrong answer the learners give in
response to word pair questions. In
reality, the learners are actors and are
not receiving electric shocks, but what
matters is that the test subjects do not
know that. Astoundingly, they keep on
following orders and continue to
administer increasingly high levels of
"shocks," even after the actor learners
show obvious physical pain ("Milgram
Experiment").
(1962)
Researchers at the
Laurel Children's Center in Maryland
test experimental
acne antibiotics on children and
continue their tests even after half of
the young test subjects develop severe
liver damage because of the experimental
medication (Goliszek). The U.S. Army's
Deseret Test Center begins Project 112.
This includes SHAD (Shipboard Hazard and
Defense), which exposes U.S. Navy and
Army personnel to live toxins and
chemical poisons in order to determine
naval ships' vulnerability to chemical
and biological weapons. Military
personnel are not test subjects;
conducting the tests exposes them. Many
of these participants complain of
negative health effects at the time and,
decades later, suffer from severe
medical problems as a result of their
exposure (Goliszek,
Veterans Health Administration).
The FDA begins
requiring that a new pharmaceutical
undergo three human clinical trials
before it will approve it. From 1962 to
1980, pharmaceutical companies satisfy
this requirement by running Phase I
trials, which determine a drug's
toxicity, on prison inmates, giving them
small amounts of cash for compensation (Sharav).
(1963)
Chester M. Southam,
who injected Ohio State Prison inmates
with live cancer cells in 1952, performs
the same procedure on 22 senile,
African-American female patients at the
Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital
in order to watch their immunological
response. Southam tells the patients
that they are receiving "some cells,"
but leaves out the fact that they are
cancer cells. He claims he doesn't
obtain informed consent from the
patients because he does not want to
frighten them by telling them what he is
doing, but he nevertheless temporarily
loses his medical license because of it.
Ironically, he eventually becomes
president of the American Cancer Society
(Greger,
Merritte, et al.).
Researchers at the
University of Washington directly
irradiate the testes of 232 prison
inmates in order to determine
radiation's effects on testicular
function. When these inmates later leave
prison and have children, at least four
have babies born with birth defects. The
exact number is unknown because
researchers never follow up on the men
to see the long-term effects of their
experiment (Goliszek).
In a National
Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH)
study, a researcher transplants a
chimpanzee's kidney into a human. The
experiment fails (Sharav).
(1963 - 1966) New
York University researcher Saul Krugman
promises parents with mentally disabled
children definite enrollment into the
Willowbrook State School in Staten
Island, N.Y., a resident mental
institution for mentally retarded
children, in exchange for their
signatures on a consent form for
procedures presented as "vaccinations."
In reality, the procedures involve
deliberately infecting children with
viral hepatitis by feeding them an
extract made from the feces of infected
patients, so that Krugman can study the
course of viral hepatitis as well the
effectiveness of a hepatitis vaccine (Hammer
Breslow).
(1963 - 1971) Leading
endocrinologist Dr. Carl Heller gives 67
prison inmates at Oregon State Prison in
Salem $5 per month and $25 per
testicular tissue biopsy in compensation
for allowing him to perform irradiation
experiments on their testes. If they
receive vasectomies at the end of the
study, the prisoners are given an extra
$100 (Sharav,
Goliszek).
Researchers inject a
genetic compound called radioactive
thymidine into the testicles of more
than 100 Oregon State Penitentiary
inmates to learn whether sperm
production is affected by exposure to
steroid hormones (Greger).
In a study published
in Pediatrics, researchers at
the University of California's
Department of Pediatrics use 113
newborns ranging in age from one hour to
three days old in a series of
experiments used to study changes in
blood pressure and blood flow. In one
study, doctors insert a catheter through
the newborns' umbilical arteries and
into their aortas and then immerse the
newborns' feet in ice water while
recording aortic pressure. In another
experiment, doctors strap 50 newborns to
a circumcision board, tilt the table so
that all the blood rushes to their heads
and then measure their blood pressure (Goliszek).
(1964)
(1964 - 1968) The
U.S. Army pays $386,486 (the largest sum
ever paid for human experimentation) to
University of Pennsylvania Professors
Albert Kligman and Herbert W. Copelan to
run medical experiments on 320 inmates
of Holmesburg Prison to determine the
effectiveness of seven mind-altering
drugs. The researchers' objective is to
determine the minimum effective dose of
each drug needed to disable 50 percent
of any given population (MED-50). Though
Professors Kligman and Copelan claim
that they are unaware of any long-term
effects the mind-altering agents might
have on prisoners, documents revealed
later would prove otherwise (Kaye).
(1964 - 1967) The Dow
Chemical Company pays Professor Kligman
$10,000 to learn how dioxin -- a highly
toxic, carcinogenic component of Agent
Orange -- and other herbicides affect
human skin because workers at the
chemical plant have been developing an
acne-like condition called Chloracne and
the company would like to know whether
the
chemicals they are handling are to
blame. As part of the study, Professor
Kligman applies roughly the amount of
dioxin Dow employees are exposed to on
the skin 60 prisoners, and is
disappointed when the prisoners show no
symptoms of Chloracne. In 1980 and 1981,
the human guinea pigs used in this study
would begin suing Professor Kligman for
complications including lupus and
psychological damage (Kaye).
(1965)
The Department of
Defense uses human test subjects wearing
rubber clothing and M9A1 masks to
conduct 35 trials near Fort Greely,
Ala., as part of the Elk Hunt tests,
which are designed to measure the amount
of VX nerve agent put on the clothing of
people moving through VX-contaminated
areas or touching contaminated vehicles,
and the amount of VX vapor rising from
these areas. After the tests, the
subjects are decontaminated using wet
steam and high-pressure cold water (Goliszek).
As part of a test
codenamed "Big Tom," the Department of
Defense sprays Oahu, Hawaii's most
heavily populated island, with
Bacillus globigii in order to
simulate an attack on an island complex.
Bacillus globigii causes
infections in people with weakened
immune systems, but this was not known
to scientists at the time (Goliszek,
Martin).
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