Little Manchurian Candidates
By Matt James
"One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, One ring to bring them
all, and in the darkness bind them."
--Tolkien
Our six-year-old daughter was so excited to start school. At our first
parent-teacher conference, Barb and I expected to hear the usual compliments
and heartwarming anecdotes about our bright little angel. From our experiences
with activities like T-ball and soccer, or dance and music recitals, we had
learned that parents always say nice things about the children of others. If
the compliments are sometimes unrealistic or excessive, well, parenting is
tough work. We can all use the encouragement.
I guess we had been spoiled. Jenny's teacher got right to the point. She had
some negatives to address. For one thing, Jenny was struggling with her
reading. The teacher confessed that one of the most difficult parts of her job
was deflating parents with the news that their children were simply not
exceptional. Jenny was, at best, an average reader. She was not an Eagle; she
was a Pony. Our job was to learn to enjoy her as a 40-watt bulb rather than a
bright light. Was it my imagination, or did this middle-aged matron's sweet
smile contain a trace of malice as she related these tidings?
I was confused by this assessment of Jenny's reading abilities because it
simply didn't fit in with her prior history. She had a love affair with books
for her entire childhood. We have a photograph of her at 11 months of age
staring earnestly at the contents of an open book. I remember reading to her
when she was three. I stopped for some reason, but she continued the narration.
She knew her stories by heart. Like many other children, Jenny had learned to
read at home. She was a bookworm, and she was an experienced and passionate
reader before she ever started first grade.
The teacher went on to explain that Jenny cried too much at school and that
we needed to correct this problem with the appropriate discipline. Barb and I
exchanged glances but didn't argue. We were in shock.
I was curious about the crying. Jenny was such a happy child. I asked her
that night what made her sad at school. Expecting to hear about something on
the playground, I was surprised by her answer. The listening-hour stories made
her sad:
Once upon a time there was a daddy duck with seven ducklings. They ranged in
age down to the youngest (who reminded Jenny of a first grader). The daddy was
mean. One day he demanded that all his children learn three tasks, such as
running, swimming, and diving. If a duckling was unable to master all of the
tasks, he would be banished from the family to live with the chickens. The
youngsters struggled under the cruel eye of their father. When it came to
diving, the first grader floundered and was sent away to live with the
chickens.
This was the story Jenny related, in her own words, as an example. I heard
it told a second time several years later, by my cousin Nancy, as a sample of
objectionable curriculum. We were impressed with the coincidence, since our
families resided in different states.
Jenny told me she also cried over stories in her readers. They made her sad
and frustrated in some way. What a mess! In one evening we had found out that
Jenny was unhappy at school, that her teacher thought she was a poor reader and
a dim bulb, and that she heard mean tales during listening-hour that I wouldn't
repeat to hardened convicts. What in the name of heaven was going on at this
school?
I was determined to get to the bottom of things. Since they didn't send
books home with students in the younger grades, I went to the school the
following day and spent a couple of hours reviewing the elementary readers. As
I read, my eyes opened wider and wider. I had assumed the purpose of the
reading curriculum was to stimulate the juvenile imagination and teach reading
skills. Instead, I saw material saturated with, to borrow another parent's
language, "an unadvertised agenda promoting parental alienation, loss of
identity and self-confidence, group-dependence, passivity, and
anti-intellectualism."
I once daydreamed through a basic psychology class in medical school which
described the work of Pavlov and B.F Skinner in the twentieth century. Their
conclusions were that animal (and human) behaviors can be encouraged or
discouraged by associating them with pleasure or pain. This is such an obvious
fact of nature. It is amazing that anyone would bother to prove it with
experimentation, as if the carrot and the stick haven't been used since time
began.
In behaviorist experiments various stimuli, such as food or electrical
shocks, were used as rewards or deterrents. Over time, due to animal memory, a
pattern of behavior could be established without food or shocks coming into
play. This educational or training process is called "conditioning." With
enough conditioning, the dog will stop chasing cars.
As I read the stories and poems in Jenny's readers, I was astonished to
discover that they were alive, in their own way, with the theories and
practices of these dead scientists. But the animals to be trained weren't dogs
or rats. They were our young students. Pleasure and pain signals were embedded
into the reading material in a consistent way. Given the vicarious nature of
the reading experience, and by identifying with the protagonists in the
stories, it was our first graders who were "learning" certain attitudes and
behaviors.
When a child-figure in the stories split away from his group, for example,
he would get rained on, his toes would get cold in the snow, or he would
experience some other form of discomfort or torment. Similar material was
repeated ad infinitum. Through their reading, our students would feel the
stinging rain and the pain of freezing toes. They would learn the lesson like
one of Pavlov's dogs: avoid the pain, stay with the group.
The stories in the readers consistently associated individual initiative
with emotional or physical pain. Consider the example of the little squirrel
whose wheel falls off his wagon. When he tries to replace it, the wagon rides
with an awkward and embarrassing bump, noticeable to his friends, who then
tease him about it. Another attempt to repair the wheel results in an accident,
with bruising and bleeding and more humiliation. The cumulative effect of this
and similar story lines, given the vicarious nature of the reading experience,
would be to discourage initiative and reduce self-confidence in the first
grader.
Animal dads, moms, and grandparents were portrayed over and over in various
combinations as mean, stupid, unreliable, bungling, impotent or incompetent.
Relationships with their children were almost always dysfunctional;
communication and reciprocal trust were non-existent. A toxic mom or dad, for
instance, might have stepped in to help our youthful squirrel repair his wagon,
only to make matters worse and wreak emotional havoc in the process. Jenny's
heart would be lacerated by stories which constantly portrayed parent/child
relationships as strained, cruel, or distant. I could see her crying with hurt
or frustration.
It occurred to me that over the long run, at some level of consciousness,
our daughter would have to hold us accountable for permitting her to be
tortured in school. Logically, Barb and I had to be stupid, unreliable,
uncaring, or impotent, just like the parents in the books. By sending her to
school, we were validating the message in her readers, contributing
significantly to the parental alienation curriculum. Continuing in her
school-based reading series, Jenny's relationship with us would have become
tarnished or eroded, and an element of bitterness or cynicism might have crept
into her personality.
I borrow the term "anti-intellectualism" to describe another dominant theme
in the readers. Many of the compositions were, essentially, word salad. They
lacked intrinsic interest, coherence, or continuity, and they often
demonstrated a sort of anti-rationality. The stories and the corresponding
questions seemed to require the student to suspend the natural operations of
his intellect, such as the desire to make sense out of things or the impulse to
be curious. Under this yoke, a student could learn to hate reading or even
thought itself.
The following "story" and "comprehension" questions are representative of
the anti-intellectualism that I found in the readers:
Once upon a time there was a little green mouse who hopped after a tiger
onto a yellow airplane. The plane turned into a big red bird in flight, and the
mouse turned into a blue pumpkin. The pumpkin fell to the ground and its seeds
grew into pots and pans. Blah, blah, blah
1) "What color was the mouse?"
2) "Why do mice turn into pumpkins?"
3) "How do seeds grow?"
I can see children getting frustrated over material like this. It is
debatable as to which facet of the exercise is more onerous, the reading or the
"comprehension." I almost incline to the latter. Among other concerns, I wonder
if it is a good thing to pressure children to respond to stupid or unanswerable
questions. Such a process would lead to passivity and a loss of confidence, to
a little engine that couldn't.
According to Pavlov and B.F. Skinner, repetition of unpleasant reading
experiences would turn a student off to the reading activity. Predictable
consequences would be a child who hates reading and loses out on vast
intellectual benefits and development. In addition, his reading failure would
tax his self-confidence, and he could be branded with one of society's popular
labels such as dyslexia.
I considered Jenny's reading struggles in the context of performance
expectations as well as grading and comparisons with other children. It seemed
as if she faced a nasty dilemma: force herself to read alienating material, or
disengage and then disappoint parents, teachers and self. What an impossible
predicament for a young child. Once sunny and blue, the skies had turned dark
and stormy for our happy little girl whose only offense had been to attend her
friendly neighborhood school at the innocent age of six.
It has occurred to me that the cause of America's illiteracy crisis has been
discovered. It is the reading curriculum in our schools. Unfortunately, the
damage to children appears to extend way beyond reading failure. One wonders if
the hidden agenda in the readers has created our victim culture, a generation
of withdrawn and resentful children, alienated from themselves, their parents,
society, books and ideas.
I was reminded of the plight of our neighbors. The father and mother were
loving, dedicated parents. He was an accountant and she was a homemaker and
community leader. They were nice people, and so were their children. The two
teenagers were bright but got poor grades and hated school. They hung out with
the crowd and participated in the kind of self-destructive behaviors that are
commonplace today. I asked these young people why they would behave in ways
which would cause pain for themselves or their loved ones. They smiled
quizzically and professed not to know. Maybe the ideas that moved them truly
were subconscious.
We are all familiar with kids like this (Our own kids are kids like this, or
they come too close for comfort). They spend a lot of time "doing nothing" with
like-minded friends. Passive-aggressive with suppressed individuality, they all
seem cut from the same mold. Self mutilation with tattoos and body armor is
almost universal. Some of their groups are virtually masochistic cults. Sadism
is the other side of the masochism coin.
That so many of these dysfunctional teenagers come from loving homes and
neat families is inexplicable and shocking, until you realize that they have
all been tortured together in school since the first grade. They are a batch of
little Manchurian Candidates with attitude, victims of the obscure behaviorism
that I found, and that others have found before and since, in school
readers.
Barb and I had seen some perplexing changes in Jenny's reading since she
started in first grade. For one thing, she had stopped reading her favorite
books and stories at home. Before starting school, she had feasted on Grimm's
Fairy Tales. Although she still begged us to read these to her, she now
explained that she was not supposed to read them herself, according to her
understanding from her teacher, because they contained big words and content in
advance of her abilities. Barb and I, holding our tongues, exchanged tortured
grimaces and cross-eyed glances.
When reviewing the school readers, I had noticed an impoverished vocabulary,
composed mostly of three and four letter words. I brought this up with the
teacher. She explained that the readers were integrated into a district policy
that no more than five hundred new words be introduced to students during any
grade level. The idea was to protect children from the dizzying and confusing
effects of an overabundance of words and ideas. I nodded as if I understood,
but I didn't really get it.
Barb and I had clearly used the wrong approach with Jenny. We had allowed
her to read anything she wanted and had provided her with a flourishing home
library. Furthermore, we had encouraged her to run around in the grassy meadows
and on the sandy beaches. She must have collided with great numbers of
unfamiliar words and ideas, as well as a perilous diversity of flowers and sea
shells. It's a wonder she survived at all.
We considered the various elements of Jenny's brief experience in first
grade. She had a clueless teacher. She was regressing in her reading skills,
vocabulary, and enthusiasm. She was being indoctrinated with character
destroying qualities like passivity and group dependence. Her intellectual
development was being stunted and she was being bombarded with a curriculum of
parental alienation.
Judging by her crying in the classroom, she was part of a captive audience
being repeatedly exposed to painful stimuli. To put it plainly, she was the
victim of ongoing torture and cruelty. Along with her classmates, she was
becoming, as one of her school poems pointed out, "Small, small, small, just a
tiny, tiny, tiny piece of it all."
In our state at that time, compulsory education began at the age of eight.
Jenny was not obliged by law to attend school. With our various concerns, we
pulled her out of school while we tried to figure out what to do.
PageTOP ^
Disclaimer
Human medical experimentation in the United States
The shocking true history of modern medicine and psychiatry - (1833 to 2005)
Introduction by the Health Ranger: The United States claims to be the
world leader in medicine. But there's a dark side to western medicine that few
want to acknowledge: The horrifying medical experiments performed on
impoverished people and their children all in the name of scientific progress.
Many of these medical experiments were conducted on people without their
knowledge, and most were conducted as part of an effort to seek profits from
newly approved drugs or medical technologies.
Today, the medical experiments
continue on the U.S. population and its children. From the mass drugging of
children diagnosed with fictitious behavioral disorders invented by psychiatry to
the FDA's approval of mass-marketed drugs that have undergone no legitimate clinical
trials, our population is right now being subjected to medical experiments
on a staggering scale. Today, nearly 50% of Americans are on a least one
prescription drug, and nearly 20% of schoolchildren are on
mind-altering amphetamines like Ritalin or antidepressants like Prozac. This
mass medication of our nation is,
in every way, a grand medical experiment taking place right now.
But to truly understand how this mass experimentation on modern Americans
came into being, you have to take a close look at the horrifying history of
conventional medicine's exploitation of people for cruel medical
experiments.
WARNING: What you are about to read is truly shocking. You have never been
told this information by the American Medical Association, nor drug
companies, nor the evening news. You were never taught the truth about conventional
medicine in public school, or even at any university. This is the dark
secret of the U.S. system of medicine, and once you read the true accounts
reported here, you may never trust drug companies again. These images are
deeply disturbing. We print them here not as a form of entertainment, but as a
stern warning against what might happen to us and our children if we do not
rein in the horrifying, inhumane actions of Big Pharma and modern-day
psychiatry.
Now, I introduce this shocking timeline, researched and authored by Dani
Veracity, one of our many talented staff writers here at Truth Publishing.
Read at your own risk. - The Health Ranger
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).
Human medical experimentation in the United States: The shocking true history
of modern medicine and psychiatry (1965-2005) This is part two of a two-part
series on human medical experimentation. Click here to read part one and
the introduction.
(1966)
The CIA continues a limited number of MKULTRA plans by beginning Project
MKSEARCH to develop and test ways of using biological, chemical and radioactive
materials in intelligence operations, and also to develop and test drugs that
are able to produce predictable changes in human behavior and physiology
(Goliszek).
Dr. Henry Beecher writes, "The well-being, the health, even the actual or
potential life of all human beings, born or unborn, depend upon the continuing
experimentation in man. Proceed it must; proceed it will. 'The proper study of
mankind is man,'" in his "exposé" on human medical
experimentation Research and the Individual ("Human
Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").
U.S. Army scientists drop light bulbs filled with Bacillus subtilis
through ventilation gates and into the New York City subway
system, exposing more than one million civilians to the bacteria
(Goliszek).
The National Commission for the Protection of Research Subjects issues its
Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects, which eventually creates what we
now know as institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1967)
Continuing on his Dow Chemical Company-sponsored dioxin study without the
company's knowledge or consent, University of Pennsylvania Professor Albert
Kligman increases the dosage of dioxin he applies to 10 prisoners' skin to
7,500 micrograms, 468 times the dosage Dow official Gerald K. Rowe had
authorized him to administer. As a result, the prisoners experience
acne lesions that
develop into inflammatory pustules and papules (
Kaye).
The CIA places a chemical in the drinking water supply of
the FDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to see whether it is possible to spike
drinking water
with LSD and other substances (Cockburn and St. Clair,
eds.).
In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation,
researchers inject pregnant women with
radioactive cortisol to see if the radioactive material will cross the
placentas and affect the fetuses (Goliszek).
The U.S. Army pays Professor Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to
Holmesburg Prison inmates' faces and backs, so as to, in Professor Kligman's
words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic
chemicals, the so-called hardening process," information which would have
both offensive and defensive applications for the U.S. military (Kaye).
The CIA and Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories begin an extensive
program for developing drugs that can influence human behavior. This program
includes Project OFTEN -- which studies the toxicology, transmission and
behavioral effects of drugs in animal and human subjects -- and Project
CHICKWIT, which gathers European and Asian drug development information
(Goliszek).
Professor Kligman develops Retin-A as an acne cream (and eventually a
wrinkle cream), turning him into a multi-millionaire (Kaye).
Researchers paralyze 64 prison inmates in California with a neuromuscular
compound called succinylcholine, which produces suppressed breathing that feels
similar to drowning. When five prisoners refuse to participate in the medical
experiment, the prison's special treatment board gives researchers permission
to inject the prisoners with the drug against their will (Greger).
(1968)
Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas and the Southwest
Foundation for Research and Education begin an oral contraceptive study on 70
poverty-stricken Mexican-American women, giving only half the oral
contraceptives they think they are receiving and the other half a
placebo. When
the results of this study are released a few years later, it stirs tremendous
controversy among Mexican-Americans (
Sharav,
Sauter).
(1969)
President Nixon ends the United States' offensive biowarfare program, including
human experimentation done at Fort Detrick. By this time, tens of thousands of
civilians and members of the U.S. armed forces have wittingly and unwittingly
acted as participants in experiments involving exposure to dangerous biological
agents (Goliszek).
The U.S. military conducts DTC Test
69-12, which is an open-air test of VX and sarin nerve agents at the Army's
Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, likely exposing military personnel (Goliszek, Martin).
Experimental drugs are tested on mentally disabled children in
Milledgeville, Ga., without any institutional approval whatsoever (Sharav).
Dr. Donald MacArthur, the U.S. Department of Defense's Deputy Director for
Research and Technology, requests $10 million from Congress to develop a
synthetic biological agent that would be resistant "to the immunological and
therapeutic processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom
from infectious disease" (Cockburn and St. Clair,
eds.).
Judge Sam Steinfield's dissent in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d 145
marks the first time a judge has ever suggested that the Nuremberg Code be
applied in American court cases (Sharav).
(1970)
A year after his request, under H.R. 15090, Dr. MacArthur receives funding to
begin CIA-supervised mycoplasma research with Fort Detrick's Special Operations
Division and hopefully create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent. Some experts
believe that this research may have inadvertently created
HIV, the virus that causes
AIDS (Goliszek).
Under order from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which also
sponsored the Tuskegee Experiment, the free childcare program at Johns Hopkins
University collects blood samples from 7,000 African-American youth, telling
their parents
that they are checking for anemia but actually checking for
an extra Y chromosome (XYY), believed to be a biological predisposition to
crime. The program director, Digamber Borganokar, does this experiment without
Johns Hopkins University's permission (Greger,
Merritte, et al.).
(1971)
President Nixon converts Fort Detrick from an offensive biowarfare lab to the
Frederick Cancer Research and Development Center, now known as the National
Cancer Institute at Frederick. In addition to
cancer research,
scientists study virology, immunology and retrovirology (including HIV) there.
Additionally, the site is home to the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute,
which researches drugs,
vaccines and countermeasures
for biological
warfare, so the former Fort
Detrick does not move far away from its biowarfare past (Goliszek).
Stanford University conducts the Stanford Prison Experiment on a group of
college students in order to learn the psychology of prison life. Some students
are given the role as prison guards, while the others are given the role of
prisoners. After only six days, the proposed two-week study has to end because
of its psychological effects on the participants. The "guards" had begun to act
sadistic, while the "prisoners" started to show signs of depression and severe
psychological stress (University of New
Hampshire).
An article entitled "Viral Infections in Man Associated with Acquired
Immunological Deficiency States" appears in Federation Proceedings.
Dr. MacArthur and Fort Detrick's Special Operations Division have, at this
point, been conducting mycoplasma research to create a synthetic
immunosuppressive agent for about one year, again suggesting that this research
may have produced HIV (Goliszek).
(1972)
In studies sponsored by the U.S. Air Force, Dr. Amedeo Marrazzi gives LSD to
mental patients at the University of Missouri Institute of Psychiatry and the
University of Minnesota Hospital to study "ego strength" (
Barker).
(1973)
An
Ad Hoc Advisory Panel issues its Final Report on the Tuskegee
Syphilis Study, writing, "Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing
of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific community"
(
Sharav).
(1974)
Congress enacts the National Research Act, creating the National Commission for
the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research and
finally setting standards for human experimentation on children (
Breslow).
(1975)
The Department of Health, Education and Welfare gives the National Institutes
of Health's Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects (1966) regulatory
status. Title 45, known as "The Common Rule," officially creates institutional
review boards (IRBs) (
Sharav).
(1977)
The Kennedy Hearing initiates the process toward Executive Order 12333,
prohibiting
intelligence agencies from
experimenting on humans without informed consent (
Merritte, et al.).
The U.S. government issues an official apology and $400,000 to Jeanne
Connell, the sole survivor from Col. Warren's now-infamous plutonium injections
at Strong Memorial Hospital, and the families of the other human test subjects
(Burton
Report).
The National Urban League holds its National Conference on Human
Experimentation, stating, "We don't want to kill science but we don't want
science to kill, mangle and abuse us" (Sharav).
(1978)
The CDC begins experimental
hepatitis B vaccine trials
in New York. Its ads for research subjects specifically ask for promiscuous
homosexual men. Professor Wolf Szmuness of the Columbia University School of
Public Health had made the vaccine's infective serum from the pooled blood
serum of hepatitis-infected homosexuals and then developed it in chimpanzees,
the only animal susceptible to
hepatitis B, leading to the
theory that HIV originated in chimpanzees before being transferred over to
humans via this vaccine. A few months after 1,083 homosexual men receive the
vaccine, New York physicians begin noticing cases of Kaposi's sarcoma,
Mycoplasma penetrans and a new strain of herpes virus among New York's
homosexual community -- diseases not usually seen among young, American men,
but that would later be known as common opportunistic diseases associated with
AIDS (Goliszek).
(1979)
The National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and
Behavioral Research releases the Belmont Report, which establishes the
foundations for research experimentation on humans. The Belmont Report mandates
that researchers follow three basic principles: 1. Respect the subjects as
autonomous persons and protect those with limited ability for independence
(such as children), 2. Do no harm, 3. Choose test subjects justly -- being sure
not to target certain groups because of they are easily accessible or easily
manipulated, rather than for reasons directly related to the tests (
Berdon).
(1980)
A study reveals a high incidence of leukemia among the 18,000 military
personnel who participated in 1957's Operation Plumbbob (a
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob">"Operation Plumbob").
According to blood samples tested years later for HIV, 20 percent of all New
York homosexual men who participated in the 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment
are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
American doctors give experimental
hormone shots to hundreds of Haitian men confined to detention camps in Miami
and Puerto Rico, causing the men to develop a condition known as gynecomastia,
in which men develop full-sized breasts (Cockburn and St. Clair,
eds.).
The CDC continues its 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment in Los Angeles, San
Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis and Denver, recruiting over 7,000 homosexual
men in San Francisco alone (Goliszek).
The FDA prohibits the use of prison inmates in pharmaceutical drug trials,
leading to the advent of the experimental drug testing centers
industry (Sharav).
The first AIDS case appears in San Francisco (Goliszek).
(1981)
(1981 - 1993) The Seattle-based Genetic Systems Corporation begins an ongoing
medical experiment called Protocol No. 126, in which
cancer patients at the Fred
Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle are given
bone marrow transplants that
contain eight experimental proteins made by Genetic Systems, rather than
standard bone marrow transplants; 19 human subjects die from complications
directly related to the experimental treatment (Goliszek).
A deep diving experiment at Duke University causes test subject Leonard
Whitlock to suffer permanent brain damage (Sharav).
The CDC acknowledges that a disease known as AIDS exists and confirms 26
cases of the disease -- all in previously healthy homosexuals living in New
York, San Francisco and Los Angeles -- again supporting the speculation that
AIDS originated from the hepatitis B experiments from 1978 and 1980
(Goliszek).
(1982)
Thirty percent of the test subjects used in the CDC's hepatitis B vaccine
experiment are HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
(1984)
SFBC Phase I research clinic founded in Miami, Fla. By 2005, it would become
the largest experimental drug testing center in North
America with centers in Miami
and Montreal, running Phase I to Phase IV clinical trials (
Drug Development-Technology.com).
(1985)
A former U.S. Army sergeant tries to sue the Army for using drugs on him in
without his consent or even his knowledge in
United States v. Stanley,
483 U.S. 669. Justice Antonin Scalia writes the decision, clearing the
U.S. military from any liability in past, present or future medical experiments
without informed consent (
Merritte, et al..
(1987)
Philadelphia resident Doris Jackson discovers that researchers have removed her
son's brain
post mortem for medical study. She later learns that the
state of Pennsylvania has a doctrine of "implied consent," meaning that unless
a patient signs a document stating otherwise, consent for organ removal is
automatically implied (
Merritte, et al.).
(1988)
The U.S. Justice Department pays nine Canadian survivors of the
CIA and Dr.
Cameron's "psychic driving" experiments (1957 - 1964) $750,000 in out-of-court
settlements, to avoid any further investigations into MKULTRA (Goliszek).
(1988 - 2001) The New York City Administration for Children's Services
begins allowing foster care children living in about two dozen children's homes
to be used in National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) experimental AIDS
drug trials. These children -- totaling 465 by the program's end -- experience
serious side effects, including inability to walk, diarrhea, vomiting, swollen
joints and cramps. Children's home employees are unaware that
they are giving the HIV-infected children experimental drugs, rather than
standard AIDS treatments (New York City
ACS, Doran).
(1990)
The United States sends 1.7 million members of the armed forces, 22 percent of
whom are African-American, to the Persian Gulf for the
Gulf War ("Desert Storm"). More
than 400,000 of these soldiers are ordered to take an experimental nerve agent
medication
called pyridostigmine, which is later believed to be the cause of Gulf War
Syndrome -- symptoms ranging from skin disorders, neurological disorders,
incontinence, uncontrollable drooling and vision problems -- affecting Gulf War
veterans (Goliszek;
Merritte, et al.).
The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject 1,500
six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles with an "experimental"
measles vaccine that had never been licensed for use in the United States.
Adding to the risk, children less than a year old may not have an adequate
amount of myelin around their nerves, possibly resulting in impaired neural
development because of the vaccine. The CDC later admits that parents were
never informed that the vaccine being injected into their children was
experimental (Goliszek).
The FDA allows the U.S. Department of Defense to waive the Nuremberg Code
and use unapproved drugs and vaccines in Operation Desert Shield (Sharav).
(1991)
In the May 27 issue of the
Los Angeles Times, former U.S. Navy radio
operator Richard Jenkins writes that he suffers from
leukemia, chronic fatigue and
kidney and liver disease as a result of the radiation exposure he received in
1958's Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).
While participating in a UCLA study that withdraws schizophrenics off of
their medications, Tony LaMadrid
commits suicide (Sharav).
(1992)
Columbia University's New York State Psychiatric Institute and the Mount Sinai
School of Medicine give 100 males -- mostly African-American and Hispanic, all
between the ages of six and 10 and all the younger brothers of juvenile
delinquents -- 10 milligrams of fenfluramine (fen-fen) per kilogram of body
weight in order to test the theory that low serotonin levels are linked to
violent or aggressive behavior. Parents of the participants received $125 each,
including a $25 Toys 'R' Us gift certificate (Goliszek).
(1993)
Researchers at the West Haven VA in Connecticut give 27 schizophrenics -- 12
inpatients and 15 functioning volunteers -- a chemical called MCPP that
significantly increases their psychotic symptoms and, as researchers note,
negatively affects the test subjects on a long-term basis (
"Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
(1994)
In a double-blind experiment at New York VA Hospital, researchers take 23
schizophrenic inpatients off of their medications for a median of 30 days. They
then give 17 of them 0.5 mg/kg amphetamine and six a placebo as a control,
following up with PET scans at Brookhaven Laboratories. According to the
researchers, the purpose of the experiment was "to specifically evaluate
metabolic effects in subjects with varying degrees of amphetamine-induced
psychotic exacerbation" (
"Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome receives a Pulitzer
Prize for her investigative reporting into Col. Warren's plutonium experiments
on patients at Strong Memorial Hospital in 1945 (Burton
Report).
In a federally funded experiment at New York VA Medical Center, researchers
give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even
though central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40
percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Researchers at Bronx VA Medical Center recruit 28 schizophrenic veterans who
are functioning in society and give them L-dopa in order to deliberately induce
psychotic relapse ("Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the Advisory Commission on Human Radiation
Experiments (ACHRE), which finally reveals the horrific experiments conducted
during the Cold War era in its ACHRE
Report.
(1995)
A 19-year-old University of Rochester student named Nicole Wan dies from
participating in an MIT-sponsored experiment that tests airborne pollutant
chemicals on humans. The experiment pays $150 to human test subjects (
Sharav).
In the Mar. 15 President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
(ACHRE), former human subjects, including those who were used in experiments as
children, give sworn testimonies stating that they were subjected to radiation
experiments and/or brainwashed, hypnotized, drugged, psychologically tortured,
threatened and even raped during CIA experiments. These sworn statements
include:
- Christina DeNicola's statement that, in Tucson, Ariz., from 1966 to 1976,
"Dr. B" performed mind control experiments using drugs, post-hypnotic
injection and drama, and irradiation experiments on her neck, throat, chest
and uterus. She was only four years old when the experiments started.
- Claudia Mullen's testimony that Dr. Sidney Gottlieb (of MKULTRA fame)
used chemicals, radiation, hypnosis, drugs, isolation in tubs of water, sleep
deprivation, electric shock, brainwashing and emotional, sexual and verbal
abuse as part of mind control experiments that had the ultimate objective of
turning her, who was only a child at the time, into the "perfect spy." She
tells the advisory committee that researchers justified this abuse by telling
her that she was serving her country "in their bold effort to fight
Communism."
- Suzanne Starr's statement that "a physician, who was retired from the
military, got children from the mountains of Colorado for experiments." She
says she was one of those children and that she was the victim of experiments
involving environmental deprivation to the point of forced psychosis, spin
programming, injections, rape and frequent electroshock and mind control
sessions. "I have fought self-destructive programmed messages to kill myself,
and I know what a programmed message is, and I don’t act on them," she
tells the advisory committee of the experiments' long-lasting effects, even
in her adulthood (Goliszek).
President Clinton publicly apologizes to the thousands of people who were
victims of MKULTRA and other mind-control experimental programs (
Sharav).
In Dr. Daniel P. van Kammen's study, "Behavioral vs. Biochemical Prediction
of Clinical Stability Following Haloperidol Withdrawal in Schizophrenia,"
researchers recruit 88 veterans who are stabilized by their medications enough
to make them functional in society, and hospitalize them for eight to 10 weeks.
During this time, the researchers stop giving the veterans the medications that
are enabling them to live in society, placing them back on a two- to four-week
regimen of the standard dose of Haldol. Then, the veterans are "washed-out,"
given lumbar punctures and put under six-week observation to see who would
relapse and suffer symptomatic schizophrenia once again;
50 percent do ("Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Sharav).
Justice Edward Greenfield of the New York State Supreme Court rules that
parents do not have the right to volunteer their mentally incapacitated
children for non-therapeutic medical research
studies and that no mentally incapacitated person whatsoever can be used in a
medical experiment without informed consent (Sharav).
(1996)
Professor Adil E. Shamoo of the University of Maryland and the organization
Citizens for Responsible Care and Research sends a written testimony on the
unethical use of veterans in medical research to the U.S. Senate's Committee on
Governmental Affairs, stating: "This type of research is on-going nationwide in
medical centers and VA hospitals supported by tens of millions of dollars of
taxpayers money. These experiments are high risk and are abusive, causing not
only physical and psychic harm to the most vulnerable groups but also degrading
our society’s system of basic human values. Probably tens of thousands of
patients are being subjected to such experiments" (
"Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
The Department of Defense admits that Gulf War soldiers were exposed to
chemical agents; however, 33 percent of all military personnel afflicted with
Gulf War Syndrome never left the United States during the war, discrediting the
popular mainstream belief that these symptoms are a result of exposure to Iraqi
chemical weapons (
Merritte, et al.).
In a federally funded experiment at West Haven VA in Connecticut, Yale
University researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though
central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of
schizophrenics ("Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the Tuskegee
Syphilis Study and their families (Sharav).
(1997)
In order to expose unethical medical experiments that provoke psychotic relapse
in schizophrenic patients, the
Boston Globe publishes a four-part
series entitled "Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill" (
Sharav).
Researchers give 26 veterans at a VA hospital a chemical called
Yohimbine to purposely induce post-traumatic stress disorder ("Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In order to create a "psychosis model," University of Cincinnati researchers
give 16 schizophrenic patients at Cincinnati VA amphetamine in order to provoke
repeats bouts of psychosis and eventually produce "behavioral sensitization"
(Sharav).
National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) researchers give schizophrenic
veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system stimulants worsen
psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. government, researchers withhold
medical treatment from HIV-positive African-American pregnant women, giving
them a placebo rather than AIDS medication (Sharav).
Researchers give amphetamine to 13 schizophrenic patients in a repetition of
the 1994 "amphetamine challenge" at New York VA Hospital. As a result, the
patients experience psychosis, delusions and hallucinations. The researchers
claim to have informed consent ("Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
On Sept. 18, victims of unethical medical experiments at major U.S. research
centers, including the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) testify
before the National Bioethics Advisory Committee (Sharav).
(1999)
Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D. testifies on "The Unethical Use of Human Beings in
High-Risk Research Experiments" before the U.S. House of Representatives' House
Committee on Veterans' Affairs, alerting the House on the use of American
veterans in VA Hospitals as human guinea pigs and calling for national reforms
(
"Testimony
of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania inject 18-year-old Jesse Gelsinger
with an experimental gene therapy as part of an FDA-approved clinical trial. He
dies four days later and his father suspects that he was not fully informed of
the experiment's risk (Goliszek)
During a clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of Propulsid for
infant acid reflux, nine-month-old Gage Stevens dies at Children's Hospital in
Pittsburgh (Sharav).
(2000)
The Department of Defense begins declassifying the records of Project 112,
including SHAD, and locating and assisting the veterans who were exposed to
live toxins and chemical agents as part of Project 112. Many of them have
already died (Goliszek).
President Clinton authorizes the Energy Employees Occupational Illness
Compensation Act, which compensates the Department of Energy workers who
sacrificed their health to build the United States' nuclear defenses (Sharav).
The U.S. Air Force and rocket maker Lockheed Martin sponsor a Loma Linda
University study that pays 100 Californians $1,000 to eat a dose of perchlorate
-- a toxic component of rocket fuel that causes cancer, damages the thyroid
gland and hinders normal development in children and fetuses -- every day for
six months. The dose eaten by the test subjects is 83 times the safe dose of
perchlorate set by the State of California, which has perchlorate in some of
its drinking water. This Loma Linda study is the first large-scale study to use
human subjects to test the harmful effects of a water pollutant and is
"inherently unethical," according to Environmental Working Group research
director Richard Wiles (Goliszek, Envirnomental Working
Group).
(2001)
Healthy 27-year-old Ellen Roche dies in a challenge study at Johns Hopkins
University in Maryland (
Sharav).
On its website, the FDA admits that its policy
to include healthy children in human experiments "has led to an increasing
number of proposals for studies of safety and pharmacokinetics, including those
in children who do not have the condition for which the drug is intended"
(Goliszek).
During a tobacco industry-financed Alzheimer's experiment at Case Western
University in Cleveland, Elaine Holden-Able dies after she drinks a glass of
orange juice containing a dissolved dietary supplement (Sharav).
Radiologist Scott Scheer of Pennsylvania dies from kidney failure, severe
anemia and possibly lupus -- all caused by blood pressure drugs he was taking
as part of a five-year clinical trial. After his death, his family sues the
Institutional Review Board of Main Line Hospitals, the hospital that oversaw
the study, and two doctors. Investigators from the federal Office for Human
Research Protections, which is part of the Department of Health and Human
Services, later conclude in a Dec. 20, 2002 letter to Scheer's oldest daughter:
"Your father apparently was not told about the risk of hydralazine-induced
lupus … OHRP found that certain unanticipated problems involving risks
to subjects or others were not promptly reported to appropriate institutional
officials" (Willen and
Evans, "Doctor Who Died in Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He
Trusted.")
In Higgins and Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute The Maryland
Court of Appeals makes a landmark decision regarding the use of children as
test subjects, prohibiting non-therapeutic experimentation on children on the
basis of "best interest of the individual child" (Sharav).
(2002)
President George W. Bush signs the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act
(BPCA), offering pharmaceutical companies six-month exclusivity in exchange for
running clinical drug trials on children. This will of course increase the
number of children used as human test subjects (
Hammer
Breslow).
(2003)
Two-year-old Michael Daddio of Delaware dies of congestive
heart failure. After his
death, his parents learn that doctors had performed an experimental surgery on
him when he was five months old, rather than using the established surgical
method of repairing his congenital heart defect that the parents had been told
would be performed. The established procedure has a 90- to 95-percent success
rate, whereas the inventor of the procedure performed on baby Daddio would
later be fired from his hospital in 2004 (
Willen and Evans, "Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't
Warned").
(2004)
In his BBC documentary "Guinea Pig Kids" and BBC News article of the same name,
reporter Jamie Doran reveals that children involved in the New York City foster
care system were unwitting human subjects in experimental AIDS drug trials from
1988 to, in his belief, present times (
Doran).
(2005)
In response to the BBC documentary and article
"Guinea Pig
Kids", the New York City Administration of Children's Services (
ACS) sends out an
Apr. 22 press release admitting that foster care children were used in
experimental AIDS drug trials, but says that the last trial took place in 2001
and thus the trials are not continuing, as BBC reporter Jamie Doran claims. The
ACS gives the extent and statistics of the experimental drug trials, based on
its own records, and contracts the Vera Institute of Justice to conduct "an
independent review of ACS policy and practice regarding the enrollment of
HIV-positive children in foster care in clinical drug trials during the late
1980s and 1990s" (
New York City
ACS).
In exchange for receiving $2 million from the American Chemical Society, the
EPA proposes the
Children's Health Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) to learn how
children ranging from infancy to three years old ingest, inhale and absorb
chemicals by exposing children from a poor, predominantly black area of Duval
County, Fla., to these toxins. Due to pressure from activist groups, negative
media coverage and two Democratic senators, the EPA eventually decides to drop
the study on Apr. 8, 2005 (Organic Consumers
Association).
Bloomberg releases a series of reports suggesting that SFBC, the largest
experimental drug testing center of its time, exploits immigrant and other
low-income test subjects and runs tests with limited credibility due to
violations of both the FDA's and SFBC's own testing guidelines (
Bloomberg).
Works cited:
Alliance for Human Research Protection. "'Monster Experiment' Taught
Orphans to Stutter.". June 11, 2001.
Barker, Allen. "The Cold War Experiments." Mind
Control.
Berdon, Victoria. "Codes of Medical and Human Experimentation Ethics." The Least of
My Brothers.
Brinker, Wendy. "James Marion Sims: Father Butcher." Seed Show.
Burton Report. "Human
Experimentation, Plutonium and Col. Stafford Warren."
Cockburn, Alexander and Jeffrey St. Clair, eds. "Germ War: The U.S. Record."
Counter
Punch.
"Donald Ewan [sic] Cameron." Wikipedia.
Doran, Jamie. "Guinea Pig Kids." BBC
News. 30 Nov. 2004.
Drug Development-Technology.com.
"SFBC."
Elliston, Jon. "MKULTRA: CIA Mind Control." Dossier: Paranormal
Government.
Environmental Working Group. "U.S.: Lockheed Martin's Tests on Humans." CorpWatch.
Global Security. Chemical
Corps. 2005.
Goliszek, Andrew. In the Name of Science. New York: St. Martin's,
2003.
Greger, Michael, M.D. Heart
Failure: Diary of a Third Year Medical Student.
Griffiths, Joel and Chris Bryson. "Toxic Secrets: Fluoride and the Atom
Bomb." Nexus Magazine
5:3. Apr. - May 1998.
Hammer Breslow, Lauren. "The Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act of 2002:
The Rise of the Voluntary Incentive Structure and Congressional Refusal to
Require Pediatric Testing." Harvard
Journal of Legislation Vol. 40.
"Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After." Micah
Books.
Kaye, Jonathan. "Retin-A's Wrinkled Past." Mind
Control. Orig. pub. Penn History Review Spring 1997.
"Manhattan Project: Oak Ridge." World Socialist
Web Site. Oct. 18, 2002.
Meiklejohn, Gordon N., M.D. "Commission on Influenza." Histories of
the Commissions. Ed. Theodore E. Woodward, M.D. The Armed Forced
Epidemiological Board. 1994.
Merritte, LaTasha, et al.. "The Banality of Evil: Human Medical
Experimentation in the United States."
The Public Law Online Journal. Spring 1999.
Milgram, Stanley. "Milgram Experiment." Wikipedia. 2006.
New York City Administration of Children's Services. Press release.
22 Apr. 2005.
"Operation Plumbbob." Wikipedia. 2005.
"Operation Whitecoat." Religion
and Ethics (Episode no. 708). Oct. 24, 2003.
Organic Consumers Association. "EPA and Chemical Industry
to Study the Effects of Known Toxic Chemicals on Children". 12 Apr.
2005.
Pacchioli, David. Subjected to Science. Mar.
1996.
"Placebo Effect."
Encyclopedia of Alternative Medicine. 2006.
"Project Paperclip." Wikipedia.
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Experimentation in America before the Second World War." Annals of Internal
Medicine 123:2. July 15, 1995.
Sharav, Vera Hassner. "Human Experiments: A Chronology of Human
Rsearch." Alliance for Human Research
Protection.
Sauter, Daniel. Guide to MS 83
[Planned Parenthood of San Antonio and South Central Texas Records, 1931 -
1999]. University of Texas Library. Apr. 2001.
"Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D." News
from the Joint Hearing on Suspension of Medical Research at West Los Angeles
and Sepulveda VA Medical Facilities and Informed Consent and Patient Safety in
VA Medical Research. 21 Apr. 1999.
University of New Hampshire. "Chronology of Cases Involving Unethical
Treatment of Human Subjects." Responsible Conduct of
Research.
University of Virginia Health System Health Sciences Library.
"Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study." 2004.
U.S. Department of Energy. "Chapter 8: Postwar TBI-Effects
Experimentation: Continued Reliance on Sick Patients in Place of Healthy
"Normals." Advisory Committee
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Veterans Health Administration. Project 112/Project SHAD. May 26,
2005.
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by System He Trusted."
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---. "Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't Warned."
Bloomberg. Nov. 2, 2005.
PageTOP ^
Disclaimer
Introduction by the Health Ranger: The United States claims to be the
world leader in medicine. But there's a dark side to western medicine that few
want to acknowledge: The horrifying medical experiments performed on
impoverished people and their children all in the name of scientific progress.
Many of these medical experiments were conducted on people without their
knowledge, and most were conducted as part of an effort to seek profits from
newly approved drugs or medical technologies.