Human experimentation in the United States
Encyclopedia
There have been numerous experiments performed on human test subjects in the United States that have been considered unethical
, and were often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent
, or informed consent
of the test subjects.
The experiments include: the deliberate infection of people with deadly or debilitating diseases, exposure of people to biological and chemical weapons, human radiation experiments
, injection of people with toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation
/torture
experiments, tests involving mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of others. Many of these tests were performed on children, the sick, and mentally disabled individuals, often under the guise of "medical treatment". In many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor
racial minorities or prisoners
.
Funding for many of the experiments was provided by United States government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency
, United States military and federal or military corporations. The human research programs were usually highly secretive, and in many cases information about them was not released until many years after the studies had been performed.
The ethical, professional, and legal implications of this in the United States medical and scientific community were quite significant, and led to many institutions and policies
that attempted to ensure that future human subject research in the United States would be ethical and legal. Public outcry over the discovery of government experiments on human subjects led to numerous congressional investigations and hearings, including the Church Committee
, Rockefeller Commission
, and Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
, amongst others.
, who is often referred to as "the father of gynecology", performed surgical experiments on enslaved
African women, without anaesthesia. The women—one of whom was operated on 30 times—regularly died from infections resulting from the experiments. In order to test one of his theories about the causes of trismus
in infants, Sims performed experiments where he used a shoemaker's awl
to move around the skull bones of the babies of enslaved women.
In 1874, Mary Rafferty, an Irish servant woman, came to Dr. Roberts Bartholow of the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati for treatment of her cancer. Seeing a research opportunity, he cut open her head, and inserted needle electrodes into her exposed brain matter. He described the experiment as follows:
Bartholow and his team of physicians discontinued with experimentation when her condition worsened. She died a few days later; Bartholow concluded that her death was a result of her cancer.
In 1896, Dr. Arthur Wentworth performed spinal taps
on 29 young children, without the knowledge or consent of their parents, at the Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to discover if doing so would be harmful.
From 1913 to 1951, Dr. Leo Stanley, chief surgeon at the San Quentin Prison, performed a wide variety of experiments on hundreds of prisoners at San Quentin. Many of the experiments involved testicular implants, where Stanley would take the testicles out of executed prisoners and surgically implant them into living prisoners. In other experiments, he attempted to implant the testicles of rams, goats, and boars into living prisoners. Stanley also performed various eugenics
experiments, and forced sterilizations on San Quentin prisoners. Stanley believed that his experiments would rejuvenate old men, control crime (which he believed had biological causes), and prevent the "unfit" from reproducing.
, a California physician working at a hospital for lepers
injected twelve young girls under the age of 12 with syphilis.
In 1895, the New York
pediatrician Henry Heiman intentionally infected two "idiots" (mentally disabled boys)—one 4-year-old and one 16-year old—with gonorrhea
as part of a medical experiment. A review of the medical literature of the late 19th and early 20th century found that there were more than forty reports of experimental infections with gonorrheal culture, including some where gonorrheal organisms were applied to the eyes of sick children.
In 1900, U.S Army doctors in the Philippines
infected five prisoners with bubonic plague
and induced beriberi
in 29 prisoners; four of the test subjects died as a result. In 1906, Professor Richard Strong of Harvard University intentionally infected 24 Filipino prisoners with cholera
, which had somehow become infected with plague. He did this without the consent of the patients, and without informing them of what he was doing. All of the subjects became sick and thirteen died.
In 1908, three Philadelphia researchers infected dozens of children with tuberculin
at the St. Vincent's House orphanage in Philadelphia, causing permanent blindness in some of the children and painful lesions and inflammation of the eyes in many of the others. In the study they refer to the children as "material used".
In 1909, F. C. Knowles released a study describing how he had deliberately infected two children in an orphanage with Molluscum contagiosum
after an outbreak in the orphanage, in order to study the disease.
In 1911, Dr. Hideyo Noguchi
of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research injected 146 hospital patients (some of whom were children) with syphilis. He was later sued by the parents of some of the child subjects, who allegedly contracted syphilis as a result of his experiments.
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was a clinical study
conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama
, by the U.S. Public Health Service. In the experiment, 400 impoverished black males who had syphilis were offered "treatment" by the researchers, who told the test subjects that they were treating them for the disease, but in reality did nothing—even though they possessed penicillin
, which was known to cure the deadly disease at the time—so that they could observe the effects of syphilis on the human body. By the end of the study in 1972, only 74 of the test subjects were alive. Twenty-eight of the original 399 men had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected
, and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis
. The study was not shut down until 1972, when its existence was leaked to the press, forcing the researchers to stop in the face of a public outcry.
In 1941, at the University of Michigan
, doctors Francis and Jonas Salk
and other researchers deliberately infected patients at several Michigan mental institutions with the influenza
virus by spraying the virus into their nasal
passages. Francis Rous, editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine wrote the following to Francis regarding the experiments:
In 1941 Dr. William C. Black inoculated
a twelve month old baby "offered as a volunteer" with herpes. He submitted his research to The Journal of Experimental Medicine and it was rejected on ethical grounds. The editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Francis Payton Rous, called the experiment "an abuse of power, an infringement of the rights of an individual, and not excusable because the illness which followed had implications for science." It was later published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study
was the site of a controlled study of the effects of malaria
on the prisoners of Stateville Penitentiary
near Joliet, Illinois beginning in the 1940s. The study was conducted by the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago in conjunction with the United States Army and the State Department. At the Nuremberg trials
, Nazi doctors cited the malaria experiments as part of their defense. The study continued at Stateville Penitentiary for 29 years. In related studies from 1944 to 1946, Dr. Alf Alving, a professor at the University of Chicago
Medical School, purposely infected psychiatric patients at the Illinois State Hospital with malaria
, so that he could test experimental malaria treatments on them.
In a 1946 to 1948 study in Guatemala
, U.S. researchers used prostitutes to infect prison inmates, insane asylum patients, and Guatemalan soldiers with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, in order to test the effectiveness of penicillin in treating sexually transmitted diseases. They later tried infecting people with "direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured into the men's penises and on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded . . . or in a few cases through spinal punctures". Approximately 700 people were infected as part of the study (including orphan
children). The study was sponsored by the Public Health Service, the National Institutes of Health and the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the World Health Organization
's Pan American Health Organization) and the Guatemalan government. The team was led by John Charles Cutler
, who later participated in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Cutler chose to do the study in Guatemala because he would not have been permitted to do it in the United States.
In 1950, in order to conduct a simulation of a biological warfare attack, the US Navy used airplanes to spray large quantities of the bacteria Serratia marcescens
- considered harmless at this time - over the city of San Francisco, California
, which caused numerous citizens to contract pneumonia-like illnesses, and killed at least one person. The family of the man who was killed sued for gross negligence, but a federal judge ruled in favor of the government in 1981. Serratia tests were continued until at least 1969.
Also in 1950, Dr. Joseph Stokes of the University of Pennsylvania
deliberately infected 200 female prisoners with viral hepatitis
.
From the 1950s to 1972, mentally disabled children at the Willowbrook State School
in Staten Island, New York were intentionally infected with viral hepatitis, in research whose purpose was to help discover a vaccine
. From 1963 to 1966, Saul Krugman
of New York University
promised the parents of mentally disabled children that their children would be enrolled into Willowbrook in exchange for signing a consent form for procedures that he claimed were "vaccinations." In reality, the procedures involved deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis
by feeding
them an extract made from the feces
of patients infected with the disease.
In 1952, Sloan-Kettering Institute researcher Chester M. Southam injected live cancer cells into prisoners at the Ohio State Prison. Half of the prisoners in this NIH-sponsored study were black - the other half weren't. Also at Sloan-Kettering, 300 healthy women were injected with live cancer cells without being told. The doctors stated that they knew at the time that it might cause cancer.
In 1955, the CIA conducted a biological warfare
experiment (despite the Fourth Geneva Convention
) where they released whooping cough bacteria from boats outside of Tampa Bay, Florida, causing a whooping cough epidemic in the city, and killing at least 12 people.
In 1956 and 1957, several U.S. Army biological warfare experiments were conducted on the cities of Savannah, Georgia
and Avon Park, Florida
. In the experiments, Army bio-warfare researchers released millions of infected mosquitoes on the two towns, in order to see if the insects could potentially spread yellow fever
and dengue fever
. Hundreds of residents contracted a wide array of illnesses, including fevers, respiratory problems, stillbirths, encephalitis
, and typhoid. Army researchers pretended to be public health workers, so that they could photograph and perform medical tests on the victims. Several people died as a result of the experiments.
In 1962, twenty-two elderly patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn, New York were injected with live cancer cells by Chester M. Southam, who in 1952 had done the same to prisoners at the Ohio State Prison, in order to "discover the secret of how healthy bodies fight the invasion of malignant cells". The administration of the hospital attempted to cover the study up, but the New York State medical licensing board ultimately placed Southam on probation for one year. Two years later, the American Cancer Society
elected him as their Vice President.
In 1966, the U.S. Army released the harmless Bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the New York subway system as part of a field study called A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents. The Chicago subway system was also subject to a similar experiment by the Army.
to determine the effects of atomic radiation and radioactive contamination
on the human body, generally on people who were poor, sick, or powerless. Most of these tests were performed, funded, or supervised by the United States military, Atomic Energy Commission
, or various other US federal government agencies.
The experiments included a wide array of studies, involving things like feeding radioactive food to mentally disabled children or conscientious objectors, inserting radium
rods into the noses of soldiers, deliberately releasing radioactive chemicals over U.S. and Canadian cities, measuring the health effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests, injecting pregnant women and babies with radioactive chemicals, and irradiating the testicles of prison inmates, amongst other things.
Ultimately, public outcry over the experiments led to the 1994 Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
.
. In one study, researchers gave pregnant women from 100 to 200 microcuries of iodine-131, in order to study the women's aborted embryos
in an attempt to discover at what stage, and to what extent, radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In another study, they gave 25 newborn babies (who were under 36 hours old and weighed from 5.5 to 8.5 lbs) iodine-131, either by oral administration or through an injection, so that they could measure the amount of iodine in their thyroid glands.
In another AEC study, researchers at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine fed iodine-131 to 28 healthy infants through a gastric tube to test the concentration of iodine in the infants' thyroid glands.
In a 1949 operation called the "Green Run
," the AEC released iodine-131 and xenon-133 to the atmosphere which contaminated an 500000 acres (2,023.4 km²) area containing three small towns near the Hanford site
in Washington.
In 1953, the AEC sponsored a study to discover if radioactive iodine affected premature
babies differently from full-term babies. In the experiment, researchers from Harper Hospital in Detroit orally administered iodine-131 to 65 premature and full-term infants who weighed from 2.1 to 5.5 lb (2.5 kg).
In 1962, the Hanford site again released I-131, stationing test subjects along its path to record its effect on them. The AEC also recruited Hanford volunteers to ingest milk contaminated with I-131 during this time.
injected uranium-234 and uranium-235
in dosages ranging from 6.4 to 70.7 micrograms per kilogram
of body weight
into six people to study how much uranium their kidneys could tolerate before becoming damaged.
Between 1953 and 1957, at the Massachusetts General Hospital
, Dr. William Sweet injected eleven terminally ill, comatose and semi-comatose patients with uranium in an experiment to determine, among other things, its viability as a chemotherapy
treatment against brain tumors, which all but one of the patients had (one being a mis-diagnosis). Dr. Sweet, who died in 2001, maintained that consent had been obtained from the patients and next of kin.
, three patients at Billings Hospital at the University of Chicago
were injected with plutonium.
In 1946, six employees of a Chicago metallurgical lab were given water that was contaminated with plutonium-239
, so that researchers could study how plutonium is absorbed into the digestive tract.
gave 829 pregnant mothers in Tennessee what they were told were "vitamin drinks" that would improve the health of their babies, but were, in fact, mixtures containing radioactive iron, to determine how fast the radioisotope crossed into the placenta
. At least three children are known to have died from the experiments, from cancers and leukemias. Four of the women's babies died from cancers as a result of the experiments, and the women experienced rashes, bruises, anemia, hair/tooth loss, and cancer.
From 1946 to 1953, at the Walter E. Fernald State School
in Massachusetts, in an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Quaker Oats corporation, 73 mentally disabled children were fed oatmeal
containing radioactive calcium
and other radioisotope
s, in order to track "how nutrients were digested". The children were not told that they were being fed radioactive chemicals and were told by hospital staff and researchers that they were joining a "science club".
In the 1950s, researchers at the Medical College of Virginia performed experiments on severe burn victims, most of them poor and black, without their knowledge or consent, with funding from the Army and in collaboration with the AEC. In the experiments, the subjects were exposed to additional burning, experimental antibiotic treatment, and injections of radioactive isotopes. The amount of radioactive phosphorus-32
injected into some of the patients, 500 microcuries, was 50 times the "acceptable" dose for a healthy individual; for people with severe burns, this likely led to significantly increased death rates.
Between 1948 and 1954, funded by the federal government, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Hospital
inserted radium rods into the noses of 582 Baltimore, Maryland schoolchildren as an alternative to adenoidectomy
. Similar experiments were performed on over 7,000 U.S. Army and Navy personnel during World War II. It went on to become a standard medical treatment and was used in over two and a half million Americans.
In another study at the Walter E. Fernald State School, in 1956, researchers gave mentally disabled children radioactive calcium orally and intravenously. They also injected radioactive chemicals into malnourished babies and then pushed needles through their skulls, into their brains, through their necks, and into their spines to collect cerebrospinal fluid
for analysis.
An eighteen-year-old woman at an upstate New York hospital, expecting to be treated for a pituitary gland
disorder, was injected with plutonium
.
In 1961 and 1962, ten Utah State Prison inmates had blood samples taken which were then mixed with radioactive chemicals and reinjected back into their bodies.
In a 1967 study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, pregnant women were injected with radioactive cortisol
to see if it would cross the placental barrier and affect the fetuses.
In 1954, American scientists conducted fallout
exposure research on the citizens of the Marshall Islands
after they were inadvertently irradiated by the Castle Bravo
nuclear test in Project 4.1
. The Bravo test was detonated upwind of Rongelap Atoll
and the residents were exposed to serious radiation levels, up to 180 rads. Of the 236 Marshallese exposed, some developed severe radiation sickness
and one died, and long term effects included birth defects, "jellyfish" babies, and thyroid problems.
In 1957, atmospheric nuclear explosions in Nevada, which were part of Operation Plumbbob
were later determined to have released enough radiation to have caused from 11,000 to 212,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer
amongst U.S. citizens who were exposed to fallout
from the explosions, leading to between 1,100 and 21,000 deaths.
Early in the Cold War
, in studies known as Project GABRIEL
and Project SUNSHINE
, researchers in the United States, the United Kingdom
, and Australia
attempted to determine just how much nuclear fallout would be required to make the Earth uninhabitable. They realized that atmospheric nuclear testing
had provided them an opportunity to investigate this. Such tests had dispersed radioactive contamination
worldwide, and examination of human bodies could reveal how readily it was taken up and hence how much damage it caused. Of particular interest was strontium
-90 in the bones. Infants were the primary focus, as they would have had a full opportunity to absorb the new contaminants.
As a result of this conclusion, researchers began a program to collect human bodies and bones from all over the world, with a particular focus on infants. The bones were cremated and the ashes analyzed for radioisotopes. This project was kept secret primarily because it would be a public relations
disaster; as a result parents and family were not told what was being done with the body parts of their relatives.
From 1960 to 1971, Dr. Eugene Saenger, funded by the Defense Atomic Support Agency, performed whole body radiation experiments on more than 90 poor, black, terminally ill cancer patients with inoperable tumors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He forged consent forms, and did not inform them of the risks of irradiation. The patients were given 100 or more rads of whole-body radiation, which in many caused intense pain and vomiting. Critics have questioned the medical rationale for this study, and contend that the main purpose of the research was to study the acute effects of radiation exposure.
From 1963 to 1973, a leading endocrinologist, Dr. Carl Heller, irradiated
the testicles of Oregon
and Washington prisoners. In return for their participation, he gave them $5 a month, and $100 when they had to receive a vasectomy
upon conclusion of the trial. The surgeon who sterilized the men said that it was necessary to "keep from contaminating the general population with radiation-induced mutant
s". One of the researchers who had worked with Keller on the experiments, Dr. Joseph Hamilton, said that the experiments "had a little of the Buchenwald touch".
In 1963, University of Washington
researchers irradiated
the testes of 232 prisoners to determine the effects of radiation on testicular function. When these inmates later left prison and had children, at least four of them had offspring born with birth defects. The exact number is unknown because researchers never followed up on the status of the subjects.
From 1950 through 1953, the US Army sprayed toxic chemicals over six cities in the United States and Canada, in order to test dispersal patterns of chemical weapons. Army records stated that the chemicals which were sprayed on the city of Winnipeg, Canada, included zinc cadmium sulfide
.
To test whether or not sulfuric acid
, which is used in making molasses
, was harmful as a food additive, the Louisiana State Board of Health commissioned a study to feed "Negro prisoners" nothing but molasses for five weeks. One report stated that prisoners didn't "object to submitting themselves to the test, because it would not do any good if they did".
A 1953 article in the medical/scientific journal Clinical Science described a medical experiment in which researchers intentionally blistered the skin on the abdomens of 41 children, who ranged in age from 8 to 14, using cantharide. The study was performed to determine how severely the substance injures/irritates the skin of children. After the studies, the children's blistered skin was removed with scissors and swabbed with peroxide.
From approximately 1951 to 1974, the Holmesburg State Prison
in Pennsylvania
was the site of extensive dermatological research operations, using prisoners as subjects. Led by Dr. Albert M. Kligman of the University of Pennsylvania
, the studies were performed on behalf of Dow Chemical Company
, the U.S. Army, and Johnson & Johnson
. In one of the studies, for which Dow Chemical paid Kligman $10,000, Kligman injected dioxin—a highly toxic, carcinogenic component of Agent Orange
, which Dow was manufacturing for use in Vietnam at the time—into 70 prisoners (most of them black). The prisoners developed severe lesions which went untreated for seven months. Dow Chemical wanted to study the health effects of dioxin and other herbicides, and how they affect human skin, because workers at their chemical plants were developing chloracne
. In the study, Kligman applied roughly the amount of dioxin Dow employees were being exposed to. In 1980 and 1981, some of the people who were used in this study sued Professor Kligman for a variety of health problems, including lupus
and psychological damage.
Kligman later continued his dioxin studies, increasing the dosage of dioxin he applied to 10 prisoners' skin to 7,500 micrograms of dioxin, which is 468 times the dosage that the Dow Chemical official Gerald K. Rowe had authorized him to administer. As a result, the prisoners developed inflammatory pustules and papules.
The Holmesburg program also paid hundreds of inmates a nominal stipend to test a wide range of cosmetic products and chemical compounds, whose health effects were unknown at the time. Upon his arrival at Holmesberg, Kligman is claimed to have said "All I saw before me were acres of skin ... It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time". It was reported in a 1964 issue of Medical News that 9 out of 10 prisoners at Holmesburg Prison were medical test subjects.
In 1967, the U.S. Army paid Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to the faces and backs of inmates at Holmesburg to, in Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process."
era. Many of these experiments were performed to help develop more effective torture
and interrogation
techniques for the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and to develop techniques for resisting torture at the hands of enemy nations and organizations.
In studies running from 1947 to 1953, which were known as Project Chatter
, the U.S. Navy began identifying and testing truth serums, which they hoped could be used during interrogations of Soviet spies. Some of the chemicals tested on human subjects included mescaline
and the anticholinergic
drug scopolamine
.
Shortly thereafter, in 1950, the CIA initiated Project Bluebird, later renamed Project Artichoke
, whose stated purpose was to develop "the means to control individuals through special interrogation techniques", "way[s] to prevent the extraction of information from CIA agents", and "offensive uses of unconventional techniques, such as hypnosis and drugs". The purpose of the project was outlined in a memo dated January 1952 that stated, "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self preservation?" The project studied the use of hypnosis
, forced morphine
addiction
and subsequent forced withdrawal, and the use of other chemicals, among other methods, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects. In order to "perfect techniques for the abstraction of information from individuals, whether willing or not", Project Bluebird researchers experimented with a wide variety of psychoactive substances, including LSD
, heroin, marijuana, cocaine
, PCP
, mescaline
, and ether
. Project Bluebird researchers dosed over 7,000 U.S. military personnel with LSD
, without their knowledge or consent, at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland
. More than 1,000 of these soldiers suffered from several psychiatric illnesses, including depression and epilepsy
, as a result of the tests. Many of them tried to commit suicide
.
In 1952, professional tennis player Harold Blauer
died when injected with a fatal dose of a mescaline derivative at the New York State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University
, by Dr. James Cattell. The United States Department of Defense
, which sponsored the injection, worked in collusion with the Department of Justice, and the New York State Attorney General to conceal evidence of its involvement for 23 years. Cattell claimed that he did not know what the army had given him to inject into Blauer, saying: "We didn't know whether it was dog piss or what we were giving him."
In 1953, the CIA placed several of its interrogation and mind-control programs under the direction of a single program, known by the code name MKULTRA, after CIA director Allen Dulles complained about not having enough "human guinea pigs to try these extraordinary techniques". The MKULTRA project was under the direct command of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb of the Technical Services Division. The project received over $25 million, and involved hundreds of experiments on human subjects at eighty different institutions.
In a memo describing the purpose of one MKULTRA program subprogram, Richard Helms said:
In 1954, the CIA's Project QKHILLTOP was created to study Chinese brainwashing techniques, and to develop effective methods of interrogation. Most of the early studies are believed to have been performed by the Cornell University
Medical School's human ecology study programs, under the direction of Dr. Harold Wolff. Wolff requested that the CIA provide him any information they could find regarding "threats, coercion, imprisonment, deprivation, humiliation, torture, 'brainwashing', 'black psychiatry', and hypnosis, or any combination of these, with or without chemical agents". According to Wolff, the research team would then:
Another of the MKULTRA subprojects, Operation Midnight Climax
, consisted of a web of CIA-run safehouses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York which were established in order to study the effects of LSD on unconsenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass. Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations.
In 1957, with funding from a CIA front organization, Dr. Ewan Cameron of the Allan Memorial Institute
in Montreal, Canada began MKULTRA Subproject 68. His experiments were designed to first "depattern" individuals, erasing their minds and memories—reducing them to the mental level of an infant—and then to "rebuild" their personality in a manner of his choosing. To achieve this, Cameron placed patients under his "care" into drug-induced comas for up to 88 days, and applied numerous high voltage electric shocks to them over the course of weeks or months, often administering up to 360 shocks per person. He would then perform what he called "psychic driving" experiments on the subjects, where he would repetitively play recorded statements, such as "You are a good wife and mother and people enjoy your company", through speakers he had implanted into blacked-out football helmets that he bound to the heads of the test subjects (for sensory deprivation
purposes). The patients could do nothing but listen to these messages, played for 16–20 hours a day, for weeks at a time. In one case, Cameron forced a person to listen to a message non-stop for 101 days. Using CIA funding, Cameron converted the horse stables behind Allen Memorial into an elaborate isolation and sensory deprivation chamber which he kept patients locked in for weeks at a time. Cameron also induced insulin
comas in his subjects by giving them large injections of insulin, twice a day for up to two months at a time. Several of the children who Cameron experimented on were sexually abused, in at least one case by several men. One of the children was filmed numerous times performing sexual acts with high-ranking federal government officials, in a scheme set up by Cameron and other MKULTRA researchers, to blackmail the officials to ensure further funding for the experiments.
The CIA leadership had serious concerns about their unethical and illegal behavior, as evidenced in a 1957 Inspector General Report, which stated:
In 1957, Dr. Robert Heath of Tulane University
performed experiments on schizophrenic patients, which were funded by the U.S. Army. In the studies, he dosed them with high levels of LSD, and then implanted "deep electrodes" in their brains to take EEG readings.
MKULTRA activities continued until 1973 when CIA director Richard Helms
, fearing that they would be exposed to the public, ordered the project terminated, and all of the files destroyed. However, a clerical error had sent many of the documents to the wrong office, so when CIA workers were destroying the files, some of them remained, and were later released under a Freedom of Information Act request by investigative journalist John Marks. Many people in the American public were outraged when they learned of the experiments, and several congressional investigations took place including the Church Committee
and the Rockefeller Commission
.
In 1963, CIA had synthesized many of the findings from its psychological research into what became known as the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation handbook, which cited the MKULTRA studies, and other secret research programs as the scientific basis for their interrogation methods Cameron regularly traveled around the U.S. teaching military personnel about his techniques (hooding of prisoners for sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, humiliation, etc.), and how they could be used in interrogations. Latin American paramilitary groups working for the CIA and U.S. military received training in these psychological techniques at places like the School of the Americas, and even today, many of the torture techniques developed in the MKULTRA studies and other programs are being used at U.S. military and CIA prisons such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib
. In the aftermath of the Congressional hearings, major news media mainly focused on sensationalistic stories related to LSD, "mind-control", and "brainwashing", and rarely used the word "torture". This put off the image that CIA researchers were, as one author put it "a bunch of bumbling sci-fi buffoons", rather than a rational group of men who had run torture laboratories and medical experiments in major U.S. universities, and who had tortured, raped, and psychologically abused young children, driving many of them permanently insane.
From 1964 to 1968, the U.S. Army paid $386,486 to professors Albert Kligman and Herbert W. Copelan to perform experiments with mind-altering drugs on 320 inmates of Holmesburg Prison
. The goal of the study was to determine the minimum effective dose of each drug needed to disable 50 percent of any given population. Kligman and Copelan initially claimed that they were unaware of any long-term health effects the drugs could have on prisoners, however, documents later revealed that this was not the case.
Medical professionals gathered and collected data on the CIA’s use of torture
techniques on detainees, in order to refine those techniques, and to "to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies", according to a report by Physicians for Human Rights
. The report stated that: “Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large-volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results.” As a result of the waterboarding experiments, doctors recommended adding saline
to the water “to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water.” Sleep deprivation tests were performed on over a dozen prisoners, in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. Doctors also collected data intended to help them judge the emotional and physical impact of the techniques so as to “calibrate the level of pain experienced by detainees during interrogation" and to determine if using certain types of techniques would increase a subject's "susceptibility to severe pain.". The CIA denied the allegations, claiming they never performed any experiments, and saying "The report is just wrong"; however, the U.S. government never investigated the claims.
In August 2010, the U.S. weapons manufacturer Raytheon
announced that it had partnered with a jail in Castaic, California
in order to use prisoners as test subjects for a new non-lethal weapon system that "fires an invisible heat beam capable of causing unbearable pain."
, twenty-two children were the subjects of the so-called "monster" experiment
. This experiment attempted to use psychological abuse to induce children who spoke normally to stutter. The experiment was designed by Dr. Wendell Johnson, one of the nation's most prominent speech pathologists, for the purpose of testing one of his theories on the cause of stuttering.
In 1961, in response to the Nuremberg Trials
, the Yale
psychologist
Stanley Milgram
performed his study "Obedience to Authority Study", also known as the Milgram Experiment
, in order to determine if it was possible that the Nazi genocide could have resulted from millions of people who were "just following orders". The Milgram Experiment raised questions about the ethics
of scientific experimentation because of the extreme emotional stress suffered by the participants, who were told, as part of the experiment, to apply electric shocks to test subjects (who were actually actors not really receiving electric shocks).
, a synthetic estrogen
, on pregnant women at the Lying-In Hospital of the University of Chicago. The women experienced an abnormally high number of miscarriages and babies with low birth weight. None of the women were told that they were being experimented on.
Researchers at the Laurel Children's Center in Maryland tested experimental acne
medications on children, and continued their tests even after half of the children developed severe liver
damage from the medications.
From 1988 to 2008, the number of overseas clinical trials for drugs intended for American consumption increased by 2,000%, to approximately 6,500 trials. These trials are often conducted in areas with large numbers of poor and illiterate people who grant their consent by signing an "X" or making a thumb print on a form. These tests are rarely monitored by the FDA, and have in some cases proved deadly, such as a case where 49 babies died in New Delhi, India
during a 30-month trial. The cost of testing in countries without safety regulations is much lower; and, due to lax or nonexistent oversight, pharmaceutical corporations (or research companies they've contracted out to) are able to more easily suppress research that demonstrates harmful effects and only report positive results.
, at four-hour intervals, because he thought that this might "cure" the disease by "stimulating the capillaries".
From early 1940 until 1953, Dr. Lauretta Bender
, a highly respected pediatric neuropsychiatrist who practiced at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, performed electroshock experiments on at least 100 children. The children's ages ranged from 3–12 years. Some reports indicate that she may have performed such experiments on more than 200. Electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, including Bender's experiments, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children's Service from 1956 to 1969. Publicly, Bender claimed that the results of the "therapy" were positive, but in private memos, she expressed frustration over mental health issues caused by the treatments. Bender would sometimes shock schizophrenic children (some less than 3 years old) twice per day, for 20 consecutive days. Several of the children became violent and suicidal as a result of the treatments.
At Willowbrook State School for the mentally retarded in Staten Island, NY, a hightly controversial medical study was carried out there between 1963 and 1966 by medical researchers Saul Krugman and Robert W. McCollum. Healthy children who were mentally retarded, were secretly intentionally inoculated, orally and by injection, with the virus that causes the Hepatitis disease, then monitored to gauge the effects of gamma globulin in combating it.[3] A public outcry forced the study to be discontinued after it was exposed and condemnend by Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
NYS Senator Robert Kennedy and a television crew visit Willowbrook State school in Staten Island NY. "He likens the conditions at Willowbrook to that of a “snake pit,” and states that the residents of these institutions were “denied access to education and are deprived of their civil liberties.” Later that same year, he addressed a joint session of the NYS Legislature on the “dehumanizing conditions” of the State’s institutions.
In 1942, the Harvard University
biochemist
Edward Cohn injected 64 Massachusetts
prisoners with cow blood, as part of an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Navy.
In 1950, researchers at the Cleveland City Hospital ran experiments to study changes in cerebral blood flow where they injected people with spinal anesthesia
, and inserted needles into their jugular veins and brachial arteries to extract large quantities of blood, and after massive blood loss which caused paralysis
and fainting, measured their blood pressure
. The experiment was often performed multiple times on the same subject.
In a series of studies which were published in the medical journal Pediatrics, researchers from the University of California
Department of Pediatrics performed experiments on 113 newborns ranging in age from 1 hour to 3 days, where they studied changes in blood pressure and blood flow. In one of the studies, researchers forced a catheter
through the babies' umbilical arteries and into their aortas, and then submerged their feet in ice water. In another of the studies, they strapped 50 newborn babies to a circumcision
board, and then turned them upside down so that all of their blood rushed into their heads.
From 1963 to 1969 as part of Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), the U.S. Army performed tests which involved spraying several U.S. ships with various biological and chemical warfare agents, while thousands of U.S. military personnel were aboard the ships. The personnel were not notified of the tests, and were not given any protective clothing. Chemicals tested on the U.S. military personnel included the nerve gases VX
and Sarin
, toxic chemicals such as zinc cadmium sulfide
and sulfur dioxide
, and a variety of biological agents.
The San Antonio Contraceptive Study was a clinical research study about the side effects of oral contraceptives published in 1971. Women came to a clinic in San Antonio for preventing pregnancies and were not told they were participating in a research study or receiving placebos. 10 of the women became pregnant while on placebos.
In the 2000s, artificial blood was transfused into research subjects across the United States without their consent by Northfield Labs. Later studies showed the artificial blood caused a significant increase in the risk of heart attacks and death.
, several of the Nazi doctors and scientists who were being tried for their human experiments claimed that the inspiration for their studies had come from studies that they had seen performed in the United States. In 1945, as part of Operation Paperclip
, the United States government recruited 1,600 Nazi scientists, many of whom had performed horrific human experimentation in Nazi concentration camps. The scientists were offered immunity from any war crimes they had committed during the course of their work for the Nazi government, in return for doing research for the United States government. Many of the Nazi scientists continued their human experimentation when they arrived in the United States.
A secret AEC document dated April 17, 1947, titled Medical Experiments in Humans stated: "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. Documents covering such fieldwork should be classified Secret."
At the same time, the Public Health Service was instructed to tell citizens downwind from bomb tests that the increases in cancers were due to neurosis
, and that women with radiation sickness, hair loss, and burned skin were suffering from "housewife syndrome".
In 1964, the World Medical Association
passed the Declaration of Helsinki
, a set of ethical principles for the medical community regarding human experimentation.
In 1966, the National Institutes of Health
(NIH) Office for Protection of Research Subjects (OPRR) was created, and issued its Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects which recommended establishing independent review bodies, which were later called institutional review boards.
In 1969, Kentucky Court of Appeals
Judge Samuel Steinfeld
dissented in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d 145, and made the first judicial suggestion that the Nuremberg Code
should be applied to American jurisprudence
.
In 1974 the National Research Act
established the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects, and mandated that the Public Health Service to come up with regulations that would protect the rights of human research subjects.
Project MK-ULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee
, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission
.
In 1975, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW) created regulation which included the recommendations laid out in the NIH's 1966 Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects. Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations
, known as "The Common Rule," requires the appointment and utilization of institutional review boards (IRBs) in experiments using human subjects.
On April 18, 1979, prompted by an investigative journalist's public disclosure of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (later renamed to Health and Human Services) released a report entitled "Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research," authored by Dan Harms, which laid out many modern guidelines for ethical medical research.
In 1987 the United States Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Stanley
, 483 U.S. 669, that a U.S. serviceman who was given LSD
without his consent, as part of military experiments, could not sue the U.S. Army for damages.
Dissenting the verdict in U.S. v. Stanley, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
stated:
On January 15, 1994, President Bill Clinton formed the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
(ACHRE). This committee was created to investigate and report the use of human beings as test subjects in experiments involving the effects of ionizing radiation in federally funded research. The committee attempted to determine the causes of the experiments, and reasons why the proper oversight did not exist, and made several recommendations to help prevent future occurrences of similar events.
As of 2007, not a single U.S. government researcher had been prosecuted for human experimentation, and many of the victims of U.S. government experiments have not received compensation, or in many cases, acknowledgment of what was done to them.
Medical ethics
Medical ethics is a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. As a scholarly discipline, medical ethics encompasses its practical application in clinical settings as well as work on its history, philosophy, theology, and sociology.-History:Historically,...
, and were often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent
Consent
Consent refers to the provision of approval or agreement, particularly and especially after thoughtful consideration.- Types of consent :*Implied consent is a controversial form of consent which is not expressly granted by a person, but rather inferred from a person's actions and the facts and...
, or informed consent
Informed consent
Informed consent is a phrase often used in law to indicate that the consent a person gives meets certain minimum standards. As a literal matter, in the absence of fraud, it is redundant. An informed consent can be said to have been given based upon a clear appreciation and understanding of the...
of the test subjects.
The experiments include: the deliberate infection of people with deadly or debilitating diseases, exposure of people to biological and chemical weapons, human radiation experiments
Human radiation experiments
Since the discovery of ionizing radiation, a number of human radiation experiments have been performed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, specifically with the element plutonium....
, injection of people with toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation
Interrogation
Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...
/torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
experiments, tests involving mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of others. Many of these tests were performed on children, the sick, and mentally disabled individuals, often under the guise of "medical treatment". In many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor
Poverty
Poverty is the lack of a certain amount of material possessions or money. Absolute poverty or destitution is inability to afford basic human needs, which commonly includes clean and fresh water, nutrition, health care, education, clothing and shelter. About 1.7 billion people are estimated to live...
racial minorities or prisoners
Incarceration
Incarceration is the detention of a person in prison, typically as punishment for a crime .People are most commonly incarcerated upon suspicion or conviction of committing a crime, and different jurisdictions have differing laws governing the function of incarceration within a larger system of...
.
Funding for many of the experiments was provided by United States government, especially the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
, United States military and federal or military corporations. The human research programs were usually highly secretive, and in many cases information about them was not released until many years after the studies had been performed.
The ethical, professional, and legal implications of this in the United States medical and scientific community were quite significant, and led to many institutions and policies
Human subject research legislation in the United States
Human subject research legislation in the United States can be traced to the early 20th century. Human subject research in the United States was mostly unregulated until the 20th century, as it was throughout the world, until the establishment of various governmental and professional regulations...
that attempted to ensure that future human subject research in the United States would be ethical and legal. Public outcry over the discovery of government experiments on human subjects led to numerous congressional investigations and hearings, including the Church Committee
Church Committee
The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...
, Rockefeller Commission
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
, and Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was established in 1994 to investigate questions of the record of the United States government with respect to human radiation experiments. The special committee was created by President Bill Clinton in Executive Order 12891, issued January 15,...
, amongst others.
Surgical experiments
Throughout the 1840s, J. Marion SimsJ. Marion Sims
J. Marion Sims, born James Marion Sims was a surgical pioneer, considered the father of American gynecology. Modern historians argue about his legacy as Sims used slaves as experimental subjects.-Early career:...
, who is often referred to as "the father of gynecology", performed surgical experiments on enslaved
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
African women, without anaesthesia. The women—one of whom was operated on 30 times—regularly died from infections resulting from the experiments. In order to test one of his theories about the causes of trismus
Trismus
-Common causes:*Pericoronitis is the most common cause of trismus.*Inflammation of muscles of mastication. It is a frequent sequel to surgical removal of mandibular third molars . The condition is usually resolved on its own in 10–14 days, during which time eating and oral hygiene are compromised...
in infants, Sims performed experiments where he used a shoemaker's awl
Stitching awl
A stitching awl is a simple tool with which holes can be punctured in a variety of materials, or existing holes can be enlarged. It is also used for sewing heavy materials, such as leather or canvas. It is a thin, tapered metal shaft, coming to a sharp point, either straight or slightly bent....
to move around the skull bones of the babies of enslaved women.
In 1874, Mary Rafferty, an Irish servant woman, came to Dr. Roberts Bartholow of the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati for treatment of her cancer. Seeing a research opportunity, he cut open her head, and inserted needle electrodes into her exposed brain matter. He described the experiment as follows:
Bartholow and his team of physicians discontinued with experimentation when her condition worsened. She died a few days later; Bartholow concluded that her death was a result of her cancer.
In 1896, Dr. Arthur Wentworth performed spinal taps
Lumbar puncture
A lumbar puncture is a diagnostic and at times therapeutic procedure that is performed in order to collect a sample of cerebrospinal fluid for biochemical, microbiological, and cytological analysis, or very rarely as a treatment to relieve increased intracranial pressure.-Indications:The...
on 29 young children, without the knowledge or consent of their parents, at the Children's Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts to discover if doing so would be harmful.
From 1913 to 1951, Dr. Leo Stanley, chief surgeon at the San Quentin Prison, performed a wide variety of experiments on hundreds of prisoners at San Quentin. Many of the experiments involved testicular implants, where Stanley would take the testicles out of executed prisoners and surgically implant them into living prisoners. In other experiments, he attempted to implant the testicles of rams, goats, and boars into living prisoners. Stanley also performed various eugenics
Eugenics
Eugenics is the "applied science or the bio-social movement which advocates the use of practices aimed at improving the genetic composition of a population", usually referring to human populations. The origins of the concept of eugenics began with certain interpretations of Mendelian inheritance,...
experiments, and forced sterilizations on San Quentin prisoners. Stanley believed that his experiments would rejuvenate old men, control crime (which he believed had biological causes), and prevent the "unfit" from reproducing.
Pathogens, disease, and biological warfare agents
In the 1880s, in HawaiiHawaii
Hawaii is the newest of the 50 U.S. states , and is the only U.S. state made up entirely of islands. It is the northernmost island group in Polynesia, occupying most of an archipelago in the central Pacific Ocean, southwest of the continental United States, southeast of Japan, and northeast of...
, a California physician working at a hospital for lepers
Leprosy
Leprosy or Hansen's disease is a chronic disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and Mycobacterium lepromatosis. Named after physician Gerhard Armauer Hansen, leprosy is primarily a granulomatous disease of the peripheral nerves and mucosa of the upper respiratory tract; skin lesions...
injected twelve young girls under the age of 12 with syphilis.
In 1895, the New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
pediatrician Henry Heiman intentionally infected two "idiots" (mentally disabled boys)—one 4-year-old and one 16-year old—with gonorrhea
Gonorrhea
Gonorrhea is a common sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium Neisseria gonorrhoeae. The usual symptoms in men are burning with urination and penile discharge. Women, on the other hand, are asymptomatic half the time or have vaginal discharge and pelvic pain...
as part of a medical experiment. A review of the medical literature of the late 19th and early 20th century found that there were more than forty reports of experimental infections with gonorrheal culture, including some where gonorrheal organisms were applied to the eyes of sick children.
In 1900, U.S Army doctors in the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
infected five prisoners with bubonic plague
Bubonic plague
Plague is a deadly infectious disease that is caused by the enterobacteria Yersinia pestis, named after the French-Swiss bacteriologist Alexandre Yersin. Primarily carried by rodents and spread to humans via fleas, the disease is notorious throughout history, due to the unrivaled scale of death...
and induced beriberi
Beriberi
Beriberi is a nervous system ailment caused by a thiamine deficiency in the diet. Thiamine is involved in the breakdown of energy molecules such as glucose and is also found on the membranes of neurons...
in 29 prisoners; four of the test subjects died as a result. In 1906, Professor Richard Strong of Harvard University intentionally infected 24 Filipino prisoners with cholera
Cholera
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...
, which had somehow become infected with plague. He did this without the consent of the patients, and without informing them of what he was doing. All of the subjects became sick and thirteen died.
In 1908, three Philadelphia researchers infected dozens of children with tuberculin
Tuberculin
Tuberculin is the name given to extracts of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, M. bovis, or M. avium that is used in skin testing in animals and humans to identify a tuberculosis infection. Several types of tuberculin have been used for this, of which purified protein derivative is the most important....
at the St. Vincent's House orphanage in Philadelphia, causing permanent blindness in some of the children and painful lesions and inflammation of the eyes in many of the others. In the study they refer to the children as "material used".
In 1909, F. C. Knowles released a study describing how he had deliberately infected two children in an orphanage with Molluscum contagiosum
Molluscum contagiosum
Molluscum contagiosum is a viral infection of the skin or occasionally of the mucous membranes. It is caused by a DNA poxvirus called the molluscum contagiosum virus . MCV has no animal reservoir, infecting only humans. There are four types of MCV, MCV-1 to -4; MCV-1 is the most prevalent and...
after an outbreak in the orphanage, in order to study the disease.
In 1911, Dr. Hideyo Noguchi
Hideyo Noguchi
, also known as , was a prominent Japanese bacteriologist who discovered the agent of syphilis as the cause of progressive paralytic disease in 1911.-Early life:...
of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research injected 146 hospital patients (some of whom were children) with syphilis. He was later sued by the parents of some of the child subjects, who allegedly contracted syphilis as a result of his experiments.
Clinical trial
Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...
conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama
Tuskegee, Alabama
Tuskegee is a city in Macon County, Alabama, United States. At the 2000 census the population was 11,846 and is designated a Micropolitan Statistical Area. Tuskegee has been an important site in various stages of African American history....
, by the U.S. Public Health Service. In the experiment, 400 impoverished black males who had syphilis were offered "treatment" by the researchers, who told the test subjects that they were treating them for the disease, but in reality did nothing—even though they possessed penicillin
Penicillin
Penicillin is a group of antibiotics derived from Penicillium fungi. They include penicillin G, procaine penicillin, benzathine penicillin, and penicillin V....
, which was known to cure the deadly disease at the time—so that they could observe the effects of syphilis on the human body. By the end of the study in 1972, only 74 of the test subjects were alive. Twenty-eight of the original 399 men had died of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected
Sexually transmitted disease
Sexually transmitted disease , also known as a sexually transmitted infection or venereal disease , is an illness that has a significant probability of transmission between humans by means of human sexual behavior, including vaginal intercourse, oral sex, and anal sex...
, and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis
Congenital syphilis
Congenital syphilis is syphilis present in utero and at birth, and occurs when a child is born to a mother with secondary syphilis. Untreated syphilis results in a high risk of a bad outcome of pregnancy, including mulberry molars in the fetus. Syphilis can cause miscarriages, premature births,...
. The study was not shut down until 1972, when its existence was leaked to the press, forcing the researchers to stop in the face of a public outcry.
In 1941, at the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
, doctors Francis and Jonas Salk
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine. He was born in New York City to parents from Ashkenazi Jewish Russian immigrant families...
and other researchers deliberately infected patients at several Michigan mental institutions with the influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
virus by spraying the virus into their nasal
Human nose
The visible part of the human nose is the protruding part of the face that bears the nostrils. The shape of the nose is determined by the ethmoid bone and the nasal septum, which consists mostly of cartilage and which separates the nostrils...
passages. Francis Rous, editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine wrote the following to Francis regarding the experiments:
In 1941 Dr. William C. Black inoculated
Inoculation
Inoculation is the placement of something that will grow or reproduce, and is most commonly used in respect of the introduction of a serum, vaccine, or antigenic substance into the body of a human or animal, especially to produce or boost immunity to a specific disease...
a twelve month old baby "offered as a volunteer" with herpes. He submitted his research to The Journal of Experimental Medicine and it was rejected on ethical grounds. The editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine, Francis Payton Rous, called the experiment "an abuse of power, an infringement of the rights of an individual, and not excusable because the illness which followed had implications for science." It was later published in the Journal of Pediatrics.
The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study
Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study
The Stateville Penitentiary malaria study was a controlled study of the effects of malaria on the prisoners of Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet, Illinois in the 1940s. The study was conducted by the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago in conjunction with the United States Army...
was the site of a controlled study of the effects of malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
on the prisoners of Stateville Penitentiary
Stateville Correctional Center
Stateville Correctional Center is a maximum security state prison for men in Crest Hill, Illinois, USA.-History:Opened in 1925, Stateville was built to accommodate 1,506 inmates. Parts of the prison were designed according to the panopticon concept proposed by the British philosopher and prison...
near Joliet, Illinois beginning in the 1940s. The study was conducted by the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago in conjunction with the United States Army and the State Department. At the Nuremberg trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, Nazi doctors cited the malaria experiments as part of their defense. The study continued at Stateville Penitentiary for 29 years. In related studies from 1944 to 1946, Dr. Alf Alving, a professor at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
Medical School, purposely infected psychiatric patients at the Illinois State Hospital with malaria
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease of humans and other animals caused by eukaryotic protists of the genus Plasmodium. The disease results from the multiplication of Plasmodium parasites within red blood cells, causing symptoms that typically include fever and headache, in severe cases...
, so that he could test experimental malaria treatments on them.
In a 1946 to 1948 study in Guatemala
Guatemala syphilis experiment
The syphilis experiments in Guatemala were United States-led human experiments conducted in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, during the administration of President Truman and President Juan José Arévalo with the cooperation of some Guatemalan health ministries and officials...
, U.S. researchers used prostitutes to infect prison inmates, insane asylum patients, and Guatemalan soldiers with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases, in order to test the effectiveness of penicillin in treating sexually transmitted diseases. They later tried infecting people with "direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured into the men's penises and on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded . . . or in a few cases through spinal punctures". Approximately 700 people were infected as part of the study (including orphan
Orphan
An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...
children). The study was sponsored by the Public Health Service, the National Institutes of Health and the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau (now the World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
's Pan American Health Organization) and the Guatemalan government. The team was led by John Charles Cutler
John Charles Cutler
John Charles Cutler, M.D. was a senior surgeon, and the acting chief of the venereal disease program in the United States Public Health Service....
, who later participated in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments. Cutler chose to do the study in Guatemala because he would not have been permitted to do it in the United States.
In 1950, in order to conduct a simulation of a biological warfare attack, the US Navy used airplanes to spray large quantities of the bacteria Serratia marcescens
Serratia marcescens
Serratia marcescens is a species of Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium in the family Enterobacteriaceae. A human pathogen, S. marcescens is involved in nosocomial infections, particularly catheter-associated bacteremia, urinary tract infections and wound infections, and is responsible for 1.4% of...
- considered harmless at this time - over the city of San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, which caused numerous citizens to contract pneumonia-like illnesses, and killed at least one person. The family of the man who was killed sued for gross negligence, but a federal judge ruled in favor of the government in 1981. Serratia tests were continued until at least 1969.
Also in 1950, Dr. Joseph Stokes of the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
deliberately infected 200 female prisoners with viral hepatitis
Viral hepatitis
Viral hepatitis is liver inflammation due to a viral infection. It may present in acute or chronic forms. The most common causes of viral hepatitis are the five unrelated hepatotropic viruses Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis D, and Hepatitis E...
.
From the 1950s to 1972, mentally disabled children at the Willowbrook State School
Willowbrook State School
Willowbrook State School was a state-supported institution for children with intellectual disabilities located in the Willowbrook neighborhood of Staten Island in New York City from the 1930s until 1987....
in Staten Island, New York were intentionally infected with viral hepatitis, in research whose purpose was to help discover a vaccine
Vaccine
A vaccine is a biological preparation that improves immunity to a particular disease. A vaccine typically contains an agent that resembles a disease-causing microorganism, and is often made from weakened or killed forms of the microbe or its toxins...
. From 1963 to 1966, Saul Krugman
Saul Krugman
Not to be confused with Paul Krugman.Saul Krugman was a medical researcher who discovered a vaccine against hepatitis B.-Early Years and Education:The son of Russian Jewish immigrants, Krugman was born in the Bronx in 1911...
of New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
promised the parents of mentally disabled children that their children would be enrolled into Willowbrook in exchange for signing a consent form for procedures that he claimed were "vaccinations." In reality, the procedures involved deliberately infecting children with viral hepatitis
Viral hepatitis
Viral hepatitis is liver inflammation due to a viral infection. It may present in acute or chronic forms. The most common causes of viral hepatitis are the five unrelated hepatotropic viruses Hepatitis A, Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, Hepatitis D, and Hepatitis E...
by feeding
Feeding
Feeding is the process by which organisms, typically animals, obtain food. Terminology often uses either the suffix -vore from Latin vorare, meaning 'to devour', or phagy, from Greek φαγειν, meaning 'to eat'.-Evolutionary history:...
them an extract made from the feces
Feces
Feces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...
of patients infected with the disease.
In 1952, Sloan-Kettering Institute researcher Chester M. Southam injected live cancer cells into prisoners at the Ohio State Prison. Half of the prisoners in this NIH-sponsored study were black - the other half weren't. Also at Sloan-Kettering, 300 healthy women were injected with live cancer cells without being told. The doctors stated that they knew at the time that it might cause cancer.
In 1955, the CIA conducted a biological warfare
Biological warfare
Biological warfare is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and fungi with intent to kill or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war...
experiment (despite the Fourth Geneva Convention
Geneva Conventions
The Geneva Conventions comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of the victims of war...
) where they released whooping cough bacteria from boats outside of Tampa Bay, Florida, causing a whooping cough epidemic in the city, and killing at least 12 people.
In 1956 and 1957, several U.S. Army biological warfare experiments were conducted on the cities of Savannah, Georgia
Savannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
and Avon Park, Florida
Avon Park, Florida
Avon Park is a city in Highlands County, Florida, United States. The U.S. Census Bureau estimated the city's population in 2009 at 8,824. It is the oldest city in Highlands County, and was named after Stratford-upon-Avon, England.-History:...
. In the experiments, Army bio-warfare researchers released millions of infected mosquitoes on the two towns, in order to see if the insects could potentially spread yellow fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
and dengue fever
Dengue fever
Dengue fever , also known as breakbone fever, is an infectious tropical disease caused by the dengue virus. Symptoms include fever, headache, muscle and joint pains, and a characteristic skin rash that is similar to measles...
. Hundreds of residents contracted a wide array of illnesses, including fevers, respiratory problems, stillbirths, encephalitis
Encephalitis
Encephalitis is an acute inflammation of the brain. Encephalitis with meningitis is known as meningoencephalitis. Symptoms include headache, fever, confusion, drowsiness, and fatigue...
, and typhoid. Army researchers pretended to be public health workers, so that they could photograph and perform medical tests on the victims. Several people died as a result of the experiments.
In 1962, twenty-two elderly patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn, New York were injected with live cancer cells by Chester M. Southam, who in 1952 had done the same to prisoners at the Ohio State Prison, in order to "discover the secret of how healthy bodies fight the invasion of malignant cells". The administration of the hospital attempted to cover the study up, but the New York State medical licensing board ultimately placed Southam on probation for one year. Two years later, the American Cancer Society
American Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society is the "nationwide community-based voluntary health organization" dedicated, in their own words, "to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy, and...
elected him as their Vice President.
In 1966, the U.S. Army released the harmless Bacillus globigii into the tunnels of the New York subway system as part of a field study called A Study of the Vulnerability of Subway Passengers in New York City to Covert Attack with Biological Agents. The Chicago subway system was also subject to a similar experiment by the Army.
Human radiation experiments
Researchers in the United States have performed thousands of human radiation experimentsHuman radiation experiments
Since the discovery of ionizing radiation, a number of human radiation experiments have been performed to understand the effects of ionizing radiation and radioactive contamination on the human body, specifically with the element plutonium....
to determine the effects of atomic radiation and radioactive contamination
Radioactive contamination
Radioactive contamination, also called radiological contamination, is radioactive substances on surfaces, or within solids, liquids or gases , where their presence is unintended or undesirable, or the process giving rise to their presence in such places...
on the human body, generally on people who were poor, sick, or powerless. Most of these tests were performed, funded, or supervised by the United States military, Atomic Energy Commission
United States Atomic Energy Commission
The United States Atomic Energy Commission was an agency of the United States government established after World War II by Congress to foster and control the peace time development of atomic science and technology. President Harry S...
, or various other US federal government agencies.
The experiments included a wide array of studies, involving things like feeding radioactive food to mentally disabled children or conscientious objectors, inserting radium
Radium
Radium is a chemical element with atomic number 88, represented by the symbol Ra. Radium is an almost pure-white alkaline earth metal, but it readily oxidizes on exposure to air, becoming black in color. All isotopes of radium are highly radioactive, with the most stable isotope being radium-226,...
rods into the noses of soldiers, deliberately releasing radioactive chemicals over U.S. and Canadian cities, measuring the health effects of radioactive fallout from nuclear bomb tests, injecting pregnant women and babies with radioactive chemicals, and irradiating the testicles of prison inmates, amongst other things.
Ultimately, public outcry over the experiments led to the 1994 Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was established in 1994 to investigate questions of the record of the United States government with respect to human radiation experiments. The special committee was created by President Bill Clinton in Executive Order 12891, issued January 15,...
.
Radioactive iodine experiments
In 1953, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) ran several studies on the health effects of radioactive iodine in newborns and pregnant women at the University of IowaUniversity of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
. In one study, researchers gave pregnant women from 100 to 200 microcuries of iodine-131, in order to study the women's aborted embryos
Miscarriage
Miscarriage or spontaneous abortion is the spontaneous end of a pregnancy at a stage where the embryo or fetus is incapable of surviving independently, generally defined in humans at prior to 20 weeks of gestation...
in an attempt to discover at what stage, and to what extent, radioactive iodine crosses the placental barrier. In another study, they gave 25 newborn babies (who were under 36 hours old and weighed from 5.5 to 8.5 lbs) iodine-131, either by oral administration or through an injection, so that they could measure the amount of iodine in their thyroid glands.
In another AEC study, researchers at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine fed iodine-131 to 28 healthy infants through a gastric tube to test the concentration of iodine in the infants' thyroid glands.
In a 1949 operation called the "Green Run
Green Run
The "Green Run" was a secret U.S. Government release of radioactive fission products on December 2–3, 1949, at the Hanford Site plutonium production facility. Radioisotopes released at that time were supposed to be detected by U.S. Air Force reconnaissance. Freedom of Information Act requests to...
," the AEC released iodine-131 and xenon-133 to the atmosphere which contaminated an 500000 acres (2,023.4 km²) area containing three small towns near the Hanford site
Hanford Site
The Hanford Site is a mostly decommissioned nuclear production complex on the Columbia River in the U.S. state of Washington, operated by the United States federal government. The site has been known by many names, including Hanford Works, Hanford Engineer Works or HEW, Hanford Nuclear Reservation...
in Washington.
In 1953, the AEC sponsored a study to discover if radioactive iodine affected premature
Premature birth
In humans preterm birth refers to the birth of a baby of less than 37 weeks gestational age. The cause for preterm birth is in many situations elusive and unknown; many factors appear to be associated with the development of preterm birth, making the reduction of preterm birth a challenging...
babies differently from full-term babies. In the experiment, researchers from Harper Hospital in Detroit orally administered iodine-131 to 65 premature and full-term infants who weighed from 2.1 to 5.5 lb (2.5 kg).
In 1962, the Hanford site again released I-131, stationing test subjects along its path to record its effect on them. The AEC also recruited Hanford volunteers to ingest milk contaminated with I-131 during this time.
Uranium experiments
Between 1946 and 1947, researchers at the University of RochesterUniversity of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
injected uranium-234 and uranium-235
Uranium-235
- References :* .* DOE Fundamentals handbook: Nuclear Physics and Reactor theory , .* A piece of U-235 the size of a grain of rice can produce energy equal to that contained in three tons of coal or fourteen barrels of oil. -External links:* * * one of the earliest articles on U-235 for the...
in dosages ranging from 6.4 to 70.7 micrograms per kilogram
Kilogram
The kilogram or kilogramme , also known as the kilo, is the base unit of mass in the International System of Units and is defined as being equal to the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram , which is almost exactly equal to the mass of one liter of water...
of body weight
Body weight
The term body weight is used in daily English speech as well as in the contexts of biological and medical sciences to describe the mass of an organism's body. Body weight is measured in kilograms throughout the world, although in some countries it is still measured in pounds or stones and pounds...
into six people to study how much uranium their kidneys could tolerate before becoming damaged.
Between 1953 and 1957, at the Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital
Massachusetts General Hospital is a teaching hospital and biomedical research facility in the West End neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts...
, Dr. William Sweet injected eleven terminally ill, comatose and semi-comatose patients with uranium in an experiment to determine, among other things, its viability as a chemotherapy
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy is the treatment of cancer with an antineoplastic drug or with a combination of such drugs into a standardized treatment regimen....
treatment against brain tumors, which all but one of the patients had (one being a mis-diagnosis). Dr. Sweet, who died in 2001, maintained that consent had been obtained from the patients and next of kin.
Plutonium experiments
In 1945, as part of the Manhattan ProjectManhattan Project
The Manhattan Project was a research and development program, led by the United States with participation from the United Kingdom and Canada, that produced the first atomic bomb during World War II. From 1942 to 1946, the project was under the direction of Major General Leslie Groves of the US Army...
, three patients at Billings Hospital at the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
were injected with plutonium.
In 1946, six employees of a Chicago metallurgical lab were given water that was contaminated with plutonium-239
Plutonium-239
Plutonium-239 is an isotope of plutonium. Plutonium-239 is the primary fissile isotope used for the production of nuclear weapons, although uranium-235 has also been used and is currently the secondary isotope. Plutonium-239 is also one of the three main isotopes demonstrated usable as fuel in...
, so that researchers could study how plutonium is absorbed into the digestive tract.
Experiments involving other radioactive materials
Immediately after World War II, researchers at Vanderbilt UniversityVanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
gave 829 pregnant mothers in Tennessee what they were told were "vitamin drinks" that would improve the health of their babies, but were, in fact, mixtures containing radioactive iron, to determine how fast the radioisotope crossed into the placenta
Placenta
The placenta is an organ that connects the developing fetus to the uterine wall to allow nutrient uptake, waste elimination, and gas exchange via the mother's blood supply. "True" placentas are a defining characteristic of eutherian or "placental" mammals, but are also found in some snakes and...
. At least three children are known to have died from the experiments, from cancers and leukemias. Four of the women's babies died from cancers as a result of the experiments, and the women experienced rashes, bruises, anemia, hair/tooth loss, and cancer.
From 1946 to 1953, at the Walter E. Fernald State School
Walter E. Fernald State School
The Walter E. Fernald State School, now the Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center, located in Waltham, Massachusetts, is the Western hemisphere's oldest publicly funded institution serving people with developmental disabilities. Originally a Victorian sanatorium, it became a "poster child" for...
in Massachusetts, in an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and the Quaker Oats corporation, 73 mentally disabled children were fed oatmeal
Oatmeal
Oatmeal is ground oat groats , or a porridge made from oats . Oatmeal can also be ground oat, steel-cut oats, crushed oats, or rolled oats....
containing radioactive calcium
Calcium
Calcium is the chemical element with the symbol Ca and atomic number 20. It has an atomic mass of 40.078 amu. Calcium is a soft gray alkaline earth metal, and is the fifth-most-abundant element by mass in the Earth's crust...
and other radioisotope
Radionuclide
A radionuclide is an atom with an unstable nucleus, which is a nucleus characterized by excess energy available to be imparted either to a newly created radiation particle within the nucleus or to an atomic electron. The radionuclide, in this process, undergoes radioactive decay, and emits gamma...
s, in order to track "how nutrients were digested". The children were not told that they were being fed radioactive chemicals and were told by hospital staff and researchers that they were joining a "science club".
In the 1950s, researchers at the Medical College of Virginia performed experiments on severe burn victims, most of them poor and black, without their knowledge or consent, with funding from the Army and in collaboration with the AEC. In the experiments, the subjects were exposed to additional burning, experimental antibiotic treatment, and injections of radioactive isotopes. The amount of radioactive phosphorus-32
Phosphorus-32
Phosphorus-32 is a radioactive isotope of phosphorus. The nucleus of phosphorus-32 contains 15 protons and 17 neutrons, one more neutron than the most common isotope of phosphorus, phosphorus-31...
injected into some of the patients, 500 microcuries, was 50 times the "acceptable" dose for a healthy individual; for people with severe burns, this likely led to significantly increased death rates.
Between 1948 and 1954, funded by the federal government, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Hospital
Johns Hopkins Hospital
The Johns Hopkins Hospital is the teaching hospital and biomedical research facility of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, located in Baltimore, Maryland . It was founded using money from a bequest by philanthropist Johns Hopkins...
inserted radium rods into the noses of 582 Baltimore, Maryland schoolchildren as an alternative to adenoidectomy
Adenoidectomy
Adenoidectomy is the surgical removal of the adenoids. They may be removed for several reasons, including impaired breathing through the nose and chronic infections or earaches. The surgery is less common for adults. It is most often done on an outpatient basis under general anesthesia....
. Similar experiments were performed on over 7,000 U.S. Army and Navy personnel during World War II. It went on to become a standard medical treatment and was used in over two and a half million Americans.
In another study at the Walter E. Fernald State School, in 1956, researchers gave mentally disabled children radioactive calcium orally and intravenously. They also injected radioactive chemicals into malnourished babies and then pushed needles through their skulls, into their brains, through their necks, and into their spines to collect cerebrospinal fluid
Cerebrospinal fluid
Cerebrospinal fluid , Liquor cerebrospinalis, is a clear, colorless, bodily fluid, that occupies the subarachnoid space and the ventricular system around and inside the brain and spinal cord...
for analysis.
An eighteen-year-old woman at an upstate New York hospital, expecting to be treated for a pituitary gland
Pituitary gland
In vertebrate anatomy the pituitary gland, or hypophysis, is an endocrine gland about the size of a pea and weighing 0.5 g , in humans. It is a protrusion off the bottom of the hypothalamus at the base of the brain, and rests in a small, bony cavity covered by a dural fold...
disorder, was injected with plutonium
Plutonium
Plutonium is a transuranic radioactive chemical element with the chemical symbol Pu and atomic number 94. It is an actinide metal of silvery-gray appearance that tarnishes when exposed to air, forming a dull coating when oxidized. The element normally exhibits six allotropes and four oxidation...
.
In 1961 and 1962, ten Utah State Prison inmates had blood samples taken which were then mixed with radioactive chemicals and reinjected back into their bodies.
In a 1967 study that was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, pregnant women were injected with radioactive cortisol
Cortisol
Cortisol is a steroid hormone, more specifically a glucocorticoid, produced by the adrenal gland. It is released in response to stress and a low level of blood glucocorticoids. Its primary functions are to increase blood sugar through gluconeogenesis; suppress the immune system; and aid in fat,...
to see if it would cross the placental barrier and affect the fetuses.
Fallout research
Nuclear fallout
Fallout is the residual radioactive material propelled into the upper atmosphere following a nuclear blast, so called because it "falls out" of the sky after the explosion and shock wave have passed. It commonly refers to the radioactive dust and ash created when a nuclear weapon explodes...
exposure research on the citizens of the Marshall Islands
Marshall Islands
The Republic of the Marshall Islands , , is a Micronesian nation of atolls and islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, just west of the International Date Line and just north of the Equator. As of July 2011 the population was 67,182...
after they were inadvertently irradiated by the Castle Bravo
Castle Bravo
Castle Bravo was the code name given to the first U.S. test of a dry fuel thermonuclear hydrogen bomb device, detonated on March 1, 1954 at Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands, as the first test of Operation Castle. Castle Bravo was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated by the United States ,...
nuclear test in Project 4.1
Project 4.1
Project 4.1 was the designation for a medical study conducted by the United States of those residents of the Marshall Islands exposed to radioactive fallout from the March 1, 1954 Castle Bravo nuclear test at Bikini Atoll, which had an unexpectedly large yield...
. The Bravo test was detonated upwind of Rongelap Atoll
Rongelap Atoll
Rongelap Atoll or Namorik Atoll is a coral atoll of 61 islands in the Pacific Ocean, and forms a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its total land area is only , but it encloses a lagoon with an area of...
and the residents were exposed to serious radiation levels, up to 180 rads. Of the 236 Marshallese exposed, some developed severe radiation sickness
Radiation Sickness
Radiation Sickness is a VHS by the thrash metal band Nuclear Assault. The video is a recording of a concert at the Hammersmith Odeon, London in 1988. It was released in 1991...
and one died, and long term effects included birth defects, "jellyfish" babies, and thyroid problems.
In 1957, atmospheric nuclear explosions in Nevada, which were part of Operation Plumbbob
Operation Plumbbob
Operation Plumbbob was a series of nuclear tests conducted between May 28 and October 7, 1957, at the Nevada Test Site, following Operation Redwing, and preceding Operation Hardtack I...
were later determined to have released enough radiation to have caused from 11,000 to 212,000 excess cases of thyroid cancer
Thyroid cancer
Thyroid neoplasm is a neoplasm or tumor of the thyroid. It can be a benign tumor such as thyroid adenoma, or it can be a malignant neoplasm , such as papillary, follicular, medullary or anaplastic thyroid cancer. Most patients are 25 to 65 years of age when first diagnosed; women are more affected...
amongst U.S. citizens who were exposed to fallout
Fallout
Fallout or nuclear fallout is the residual radiation hazard from a nuclear explosion.Fallout may also refer to:*Fallout , a 1997 post-apocalyptic computer role-playing game released by Interplay Entertainment...
from the explosions, leading to between 1,100 and 21,000 deaths.
Early in the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, in studies known as Project GABRIEL
Project GABRIEL
Project GABRIEL refers to an investigation by the United States Atomic Energy Commission to gauge the impact of radioactive fallout resulting from nuclear warfare. GABRIEL surmised that radioactive isotope Strontium-90 presented the greatest hazard to life globally...
and Project SUNSHINE
Project SUNSHINE
Project SUNSHINE was a series of research studies to ascertain the impact of radioactive fallout on the world's population. Commissioned jointly by the United States Atomic Energy Commission and USAF Project Rand, SUNSHINE sought to examine the long-term effects of nuclear radiation on the...
, researchers in the United States, the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
attempted to determine just how much nuclear fallout would be required to make the Earth uninhabitable. They realized that atmospheric nuclear testing
Nuclear testing
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the effectiveness, yield and explosive capability of nuclear weapons. Throughout the twentieth century, most nations that have developed nuclear weapons have tested them...
had provided them an opportunity to investigate this. Such tests had dispersed radioactive contamination
Radioactive contamination
Radioactive contamination, also called radiological contamination, is radioactive substances on surfaces, or within solids, liquids or gases , where their presence is unintended or undesirable, or the process giving rise to their presence in such places...
worldwide, and examination of human bodies could reveal how readily it was taken up and hence how much damage it caused. Of particular interest was strontium
Strontium
Strontium is a chemical element with the symbol Sr and the atomic number 38. An alkaline earth metal, strontium is a soft silver-white or yellowish metallic element that is highly reactive chemically. The metal turns yellow when exposed to air. It occurs naturally in the minerals celestine and...
-90 in the bones. Infants were the primary focus, as they would have had a full opportunity to absorb the new contaminants.
As a result of this conclusion, researchers began a program to collect human bodies and bones from all over the world, with a particular focus on infants. The bones were cremated and the ashes analyzed for radioisotopes. This project was kept secret primarily because it would be a public relations
Public relations
Public relations is the actions of a corporation, store, government, individual, etc., in promoting goodwill between itself and the public, the community, employees, customers, etc....
disaster; as a result parents and family were not told what was being done with the body parts of their relatives.
Irradiation experiments
Between 1960 and 1971, the Department of Defense funded non-consensual whole body radiation experiments on poor, black cancer patients, who were not told what was being done to them. Patients were told that they were receiving a "treatment" that might cure their cancer, but in reality the Pentagon was attempting to determine the effects of high levels of radiation on the human body. One of the doctors involved in the experiments, Robert Stone, was worried about litigation by the patients, so he only referred to them by their initials on the medical reports. He did this so that, in his words, "there will be no means by which the patients can ever connect themselves up with the report", in order to prevent "either adverse publicity or litigation".From 1960 to 1971, Dr. Eugene Saenger, funded by the Defense Atomic Support Agency, performed whole body radiation experiments on more than 90 poor, black, terminally ill cancer patients with inoperable tumors at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. He forged consent forms, and did not inform them of the risks of irradiation. The patients were given 100 or more rads of whole-body radiation, which in many caused intense pain and vomiting. Critics have questioned the medical rationale for this study, and contend that the main purpose of the research was to study the acute effects of radiation exposure.
From 1963 to 1973, a leading endocrinologist, Dr. Carl Heller, irradiated
Irradiation
Irradiation is the process by which an object is exposed to radiation. The exposure can originate from various sources, including natural sources. Most frequently the term refers to ionizing radiation, and to a level of radiation that will serve a specific purpose, rather than radiation exposure to...
the testicles of Oregon
Oregon
Oregon is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is located on the Pacific coast, with Washington to the north, California to the south, Nevada on the southeast and Idaho to the east. The Columbia and Snake rivers delineate much of Oregon's northern and eastern...
and Washington prisoners. In return for their participation, he gave them $5 a month, and $100 when they had to receive a vasectomy
Vasectomy
Vasectomy is a surgical procedure for male sterilization and/or permanent birth control. During the procedure, the vasa deferentia of a man are severed, and then tied/sealed in a manner such to prevent sperm from entering into the seminal stream...
upon conclusion of the trial. The surgeon who sterilized the men said that it was necessary to "keep from contaminating the general population with radiation-induced mutant
Mutant
In biology and especially genetics, a mutant is an individual, organism, or new genetic character, arising or resulting from an instance of mutation, which is a base-pair sequence change within the DNA of a gene or chromosome of an organism resulting in the creation of a new character or trait not...
s". One of the researchers who had worked with Keller on the experiments, Dr. Joseph Hamilton, said that the experiments "had a little of the Buchenwald touch".
In 1963, University of Washington
University of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
researchers irradiated
Irradiation
Irradiation is the process by which an object is exposed to radiation. The exposure can originate from various sources, including natural sources. Most frequently the term refers to ionizing radiation, and to a level of radiation that will serve a specific purpose, rather than radiation exposure to...
the testes of 232 prisoners to determine the effects of radiation on testicular function. When these inmates later left prison and had children, at least four of them had offspring born with birth defects. The exact number is unknown because researchers never followed up on the status of the subjects.
Chemical experiments
From 1942 to 1944, the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service conducted experiments which exposed thousands of U.S. military personnel to mustard gas, in order to test the effectiveness of gas masks and protective clothing.From 1950 through 1953, the US Army sprayed toxic chemicals over six cities in the United States and Canada, in order to test dispersal patterns of chemical weapons. Army records stated that the chemicals which were sprayed on the city of Winnipeg, Canada, included zinc cadmium sulfide
Zinc cadmium sulfide
Zinc cadmium sulfide is a mixture of zinc sulfide and cadmium sulfide . It is used for its fluorescent properties.-Use:Operation LAC , was a Chemical Corps operation in 1957 and 1958 which dispersed microscopic zinc cadmium sulfide particles over much of the United States...
.
To test whether or not sulfuric acid
Sulfuric acid
Sulfuric acid is a strong mineral acid with the molecular formula . Its historical name is oil of vitriol. Pure sulfuric acid is a highly corrosive, colorless, viscous liquid. The salts of sulfuric acid are called sulfates...
, which is used in making molasses
Molasses
Molasses is a viscous by-product of the processing of sugar cane, grapes or sugar beets into sugar. The word molasses comes from the Portuguese word melaço, which ultimately comes from mel, the Latin word for "honey". The quality of molasses depends on the maturity of the sugar cane or sugar beet,...
, was harmful as a food additive, the Louisiana State Board of Health commissioned a study to feed "Negro prisoners" nothing but molasses for five weeks. One report stated that prisoners didn't "object to submitting themselves to the test, because it would not do any good if they did".
A 1953 article in the medical/scientific journal Clinical Science described a medical experiment in which researchers intentionally blistered the skin on the abdomens of 41 children, who ranged in age from 8 to 14, using cantharide. The study was performed to determine how severely the substance injures/irritates the skin of children. After the studies, the children's blistered skin was removed with scissors and swabbed with peroxide.
From approximately 1951 to 1974, the Holmesburg State Prison
Holmesburg Prison
Holmesburg Prison is part of the City of Philadelphia Prison System. Built in 1896 and in continuous use until 1995, the facility is located at 8215 Torresdale Ave in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the site of a controversial decades-long dermatological,...
in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
was the site of extensive dermatological research operations, using prisoners as subjects. Led by Dr. Albert M. Kligman of the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, the studies were performed on behalf of Dow Chemical Company
Dow Chemical Company
The Dow Chemical Company is a multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. As of 2007, it is the second largest chemical manufacturer in the world by revenue and as of February 2009, the third-largest chemical company in the world by market capitalization .Dow...
, the U.S. Army, and Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson
Johnson & Johnson is an American multinational pharmaceutical, medical devices and consumer packaged goods manufacturer founded in 1886. Its common stock is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the company is listed among the Fortune 500....
. In one of the studies, for which Dow Chemical paid Kligman $10,000, Kligman injected dioxin—a highly toxic, carcinogenic component of Agent Orange
Agent Orange
Agent Orange is the code name for one of the herbicides and defoliants used by the U.S. military as part of its herbicidal warfare program, Operation Ranch Hand, during the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1971. Vietnam estimates 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and 500,000 children born with birth...
, which Dow was manufacturing for use in Vietnam at the time—into 70 prisoners (most of them black). The prisoners developed severe lesions which went untreated for seven months. Dow Chemical wanted to study the health effects of dioxin and other herbicides, and how they affect human skin, because workers at their chemical plants were developing chloracne
Chloracne
Chloracne is an acne-like eruption of blackheads, cysts, and pustules associated with over-exposure to certain halogenated aromatic compounds, such as chlorinated dioxins and dibenzofurans...
. In the study, Kligman applied roughly the amount of dioxin Dow employees were being exposed to. In 1980 and 1981, some of the people who were used in this study sued Professor Kligman for a variety of health problems, including lupus
Systemic lupus erythematosus
Systemic lupus erythematosus , often abbreviated to SLE or lupus, is a systemic autoimmune disease that can affect any part of the body. As occurs in other autoimmune diseases, the immune system attacks the body's cells and tissue, resulting in inflammation and tissue damage...
and psychological damage.
Kligman later continued his dioxin studies, increasing the dosage of dioxin he applied to 10 prisoners' skin to 7,500 micrograms of dioxin, which is 468 times the dosage that the Dow Chemical official Gerald K. Rowe had authorized him to administer. As a result, the prisoners developed inflammatory pustules and papules.
The Holmesburg program also paid hundreds of inmates a nominal stipend to test a wide range of cosmetic products and chemical compounds, whose health effects were unknown at the time. Upon his arrival at Holmesberg, Kligman is claimed to have said "All I saw before me were acres of skin ... It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time". It was reported in a 1964 issue of Medical News that 9 out of 10 prisoners at Holmesburg Prison were medical test subjects.
In 1967, the U.S. Army paid Kligman to apply skin-blistering chemicals to the faces and backs of inmates at Holmesburg to, in Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process."
U.S. government research
The United States government funded and performed numerous psychological experiments, especially during the Cold WarCold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
era. Many of these experiments were performed to help develop more effective torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and interrogation
Interrogation
Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...
techniques for the U.S. military and intelligence agencies, and to develop techniques for resisting torture at the hands of enemy nations and organizations.
In studies running from 1947 to 1953, which were known as Project Chatter
Project CHATTER
Project CHATTER was a United States Navy program beginning in the fall of 1947 focusing on the identification and testing of drugs in interrogations and the recruitment of agents. Their search included laboratory experiments on both animal and human subjects...
, the U.S. Navy began identifying and testing truth serums, which they hoped could be used during interrogations of Soviet spies. Some of the chemicals tested on human subjects included mescaline
Mescaline
Mescaline or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class used mainly as an entheogen....
and the anticholinergic
Anticholinergic
An anticholinergic agent is a substance that blocks the neurotransmitter acetylcholine in the central and the peripheral nervous system. An example of an anticholinergic is dicycloverine, and the classic example is atropine....
drug scopolamine
Scopolamine
Scopolamine, also known as levo-duboisine, and hyoscine, is a tropane alkaloid drug with muscarinic antagonist effects. It is among the secondary metabolites of plants from Solanaceae family of plants, such as henbane, jimson weed and Angel's Trumpets , and corkwood...
.
Shortly thereafter, in 1950, the CIA initiated Project Bluebird, later renamed Project Artichoke
Project ARTICHOKE
Project ARTICHOKE was a CIA project that researched interrogation methods and arose from Project BLUEBIRD on August 20, 1951, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence...
, whose stated purpose was to develop "the means to control individuals through special interrogation techniques", "way
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...
, forced morphine
Morphine
Morphine is a potent opiate analgesic medication and is considered to be the prototypical opioid. It was first isolated in 1804 by Friedrich Sertürner, first distributed by same in 1817, and first commercially sold by Merck in 1827, which at the time was a single small chemists' shop. It was more...
addiction
Substance dependence
The section about substance dependence in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders does not use the word addiction at all. It explains:...
and subsequent forced withdrawal, and the use of other chemicals, among other methods, to produce amnesia and other vulnerable states in subjects. In order to "perfect techniques for the abstraction of information from individuals, whether willing or not", Project Bluebird researchers experimented with a wide variety of psychoactive substances, including LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
, heroin, marijuana, cocaine
Cocaine
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. The name comes from "coca" in addition to the alkaloid suffix -ine, forming cocaine. It is a stimulant of the central nervous system, an appetite suppressant, and a topical anesthetic...
, PCP
Phencyclidine
Phencyclidine , commonly initialized as PCP and known colloquially as angel dust, is a recreational dissociative drug...
, mescaline
Mescaline
Mescaline or 3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine is a naturally occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class used mainly as an entheogen....
, and ether
Ether
Ethers are a class of organic compounds that contain an ether group — an oxygen atom connected to two alkyl or aryl groups — of general formula R–O–R'. A typical example is the solvent and anesthetic diethyl ether, commonly referred to simply as "ether"...
. Project Bluebird researchers dosed over 7,000 U.S. military personnel with LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
, without their knowledge or consent, at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
. More than 1,000 of these soldiers suffered from several psychiatric illnesses, including depression and epilepsy
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...
, as a result of the tests. Many of them tried to commit suicide
Suicide
Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...
.
In 1952, professional tennis player Harold Blauer
Harold Blauer
Harold Blauer was an American tennis player who died as a result of injections of 450 mg 3,4-Methylenedioxyamphetamine as part of Project MKULTRA, a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence.-Tennis:Blauer lost in the...
died when injected with a fatal dose of a mescaline derivative at the New York State Psychiatric Institute of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, by Dr. James Cattell. The United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
, which sponsored the injection, worked in collusion with the Department of Justice, and the New York State Attorney General to conceal evidence of its involvement for 23 years. Cattell claimed that he did not know what the army had given him to inject into Blauer, saying: "We didn't know whether it was dog piss or what we were giving him."
In 1953, the CIA placed several of its interrogation and mind-control programs under the direction of a single program, known by the code name MKULTRA, after CIA director Allen Dulles complained about not having enough "human guinea pigs to try these extraordinary techniques". The MKULTRA project was under the direct command of Dr. Sidney Gottlieb of the Technical Services Division. The project received over $25 million, and involved hundreds of experiments on human subjects at eighty different institutions.
In a memo describing the purpose of one MKULTRA program subprogram, Richard Helms said:
In 1954, the CIA's Project QKHILLTOP was created to study Chinese brainwashing techniques, and to develop effective methods of interrogation. Most of the early studies are believed to have been performed by the Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
Medical School's human ecology study programs, under the direction of Dr. Harold Wolff. Wolff requested that the CIA provide him any information they could find regarding "threats, coercion, imprisonment, deprivation, humiliation, torture, 'brainwashing', 'black psychiatry', and hypnosis, or any combination of these, with or without chemical agents". According to Wolff, the research team would then:
Another of the MKULTRA subprojects, Operation Midnight Climax
Operation Midnight Climax
Operation Midnight Climax was an operation initially established by Sidney Gottlieb and placed under the direction of Narcotics Bureau officer George Hunter White under the alias of Morgan Hall for the CIA as a sub-project of Project MKULTRA, the CIA mind-control research program that began in the...
, consisted of a web of CIA-run safehouses in San Francisco, Marin, and New York which were established in order to study the effects of LSD on unconsenting individuals. Prostitutes on the CIA payroll were instructed to lure clients back to the safehouses, where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances, including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass. Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations.
In 1957, with funding from a CIA front organization, Dr. Ewan Cameron of the Allan Memorial Institute
Allan Memorial Institute
The Allan Memorial Institute , located in Montreal, Quebec, houses the Psychiatry Department of the Royal Victoria Hospital, part of the McGill University Health Centre. Although currently a respected psychiatric hospital, the institute is known for its role in the Project MKULTRA by the CIA...
in Montreal, Canada began MKULTRA Subproject 68. His experiments were designed to first "depattern" individuals, erasing their minds and memories—reducing them to the mental level of an infant—and then to "rebuild" their personality in a manner of his choosing. To achieve this, Cameron placed patients under his "care" into drug-induced comas for up to 88 days, and applied numerous high voltage electric shocks to them over the course of weeks or months, often administering up to 360 shocks per person. He would then perform what he called "psychic driving" experiments on the subjects, where he would repetitively play recorded statements, such as "You are a good wife and mother and people enjoy your company", through speakers he had implanted into blacked-out football helmets that he bound to the heads of the test subjects (for sensory deprivation
Sensory deprivation
Sensory deprivation or perceptual isolation is the deliberate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses. Simple devices such as blindfolds or hoods and earmuffs can cut off sight and hearing respectively, while more complex devices can also cut off the sense of smell, touch,...
purposes). The patients could do nothing but listen to these messages, played for 16–20 hours a day, for weeks at a time. In one case, Cameron forced a person to listen to a message non-stop for 101 days. Using CIA funding, Cameron converted the horse stables behind Allen Memorial into an elaborate isolation and sensory deprivation chamber which he kept patients locked in for weeks at a time. Cameron also induced insulin
Insulin
Insulin is a hormone central to regulating carbohydrate and fat metabolism in the body. Insulin causes cells in the liver, muscle, and fat tissue to take up glucose from the blood, storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscle....
comas in his subjects by giving them large injections of insulin, twice a day for up to two months at a time. Several of the children who Cameron experimented on were sexually abused, in at least one case by several men. One of the children was filmed numerous times performing sexual acts with high-ranking federal government officials, in a scheme set up by Cameron and other MKULTRA researchers, to blackmail the officials to ensure further funding for the experiments.
The CIA leadership had serious concerns about their unethical and illegal behavior, as evidenced in a 1957 Inspector General Report, which stated:
In 1957, Dr. Robert Heath of Tulane University
Tulane University
Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...
performed experiments on schizophrenic patients, which were funded by the U.S. Army. In the studies, he dosed them with high levels of LSD, and then implanted "deep electrodes" in their brains to take EEG readings.
MKULTRA activities continued until 1973 when CIA director Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
, fearing that they would be exposed to the public, ordered the project terminated, and all of the files destroyed. However, a clerical error had sent many of the documents to the wrong office, so when CIA workers were destroying the files, some of them remained, and were later released under a Freedom of Information Act request by investigative journalist John Marks. Many people in the American public were outraged when they learned of the experiments, and several congressional investigations took place including the Church Committee
Church Committee
The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...
and the Rockefeller Commission
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
.
In 1963, CIA had synthesized many of the findings from its psychological research into what became known as the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation handbook, which cited the MKULTRA studies, and other secret research programs as the scientific basis for their interrogation methods Cameron regularly traveled around the U.S. teaching military personnel about his techniques (hooding of prisoners for sensory deprivation, prolonged isolation, humiliation, etc.), and how they could be used in interrogations. Latin American paramilitary groups working for the CIA and U.S. military received training in these psychological techniques at places like the School of the Americas, and even today, many of the torture techniques developed in the MKULTRA studies and other programs are being used at U.S. military and CIA prisons such as Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib
Abu Ghraib
The city of Abu Ghraib in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq is located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000. The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib...
. In the aftermath of the Congressional hearings, major news media mainly focused on sensationalistic stories related to LSD, "mind-control", and "brainwashing", and rarely used the word "torture". This put off the image that CIA researchers were, as one author put it "a bunch of bumbling sci-fi buffoons", rather than a rational group of men who had run torture laboratories and medical experiments in major U.S. universities, and who had tortured, raped, and psychologically abused young children, driving many of them permanently insane.
From 1964 to 1968, the U.S. Army paid $386,486 to professors Albert Kligman and Herbert W. Copelan to perform experiments with mind-altering drugs on 320 inmates of Holmesburg Prison
Holmesburg Prison
Holmesburg Prison is part of the City of Philadelphia Prison System. Built in 1896 and in continuous use until 1995, the facility is located at 8215 Torresdale Ave in the Holmesburg section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the site of a controversial decades-long dermatological,...
. The goal of the study was to determine the minimum effective dose of each drug needed to disable 50 percent of any given population. Kligman and Copelan initially claimed that they were unaware of any long-term health effects the drugs could have on prisoners, however, documents later revealed that this was not the case.
Medical professionals gathered and collected data on the CIA’s use of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
techniques on detainees, in order to refine those techniques, and to "to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies", according to a report by Physicians for Human Rights
Physicians for Human Rights
Physicians for Human Rights was founded in 1986 by a small group of doctors who believed the unique scientific expertise and authority of health professionals could bring human rights violations to light and provide justice for victims...
. The report stated that: “Research and medical experimentation on detainees was used to measure the effects of large-volume waterboarding and adjust the procedure according to the results.” As a result of the waterboarding experiments, doctors recommended adding saline
Saline
Saline may refer to:* Salinity, the salt content of a solution** Saline water, water containing significant concentration of salts* Soil salinity, salt content of soil* Saline , a liquid with salt content to match the human body...
to the water “to prevent putting detainees in a coma or killing them through over-ingestion of large amounts of plain water.” Sleep deprivation tests were performed on over a dozen prisoners, in 48-, 96- and 180-hour increments. Doctors also collected data intended to help them judge the emotional and physical impact of the techniques so as to “calibrate the level of pain experienced by detainees during interrogation" and to determine if using certain types of techniques would increase a subject's "susceptibility to severe pain.". The CIA denied the allegations, claiming they never performed any experiments, and saying "The report is just wrong"; however, the U.S. government never investigated the claims.
In August 2010, the U.S. weapons manufacturer Raytheon
Raytheon
Raytheon Company is a major American defense contractor and industrial corporation with core manufacturing concentrations in weapons and military and commercial electronics. It was previously involved in corporate and special-mission aircraft until early 2007...
announced that it had partnered with a jail in Castaic, California
Castaic, California
Castaic, California, is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Los Angeles County, California, north of Santa Clarita and a few miles from Six Flags Magic Mountain amusement park. It is approximately 39 miles from the downtown Los Angeles Civic Center. As of the 2010...
in order to use prisoners as test subjects for a new non-lethal weapon system that "fires an invisible heat beam capable of causing unbearable pain."
Academic research
In 1939, at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Davenport, IowaDavenport, Iowa
Davenport is a city located along the Mississippi River in Scott County, Iowa, United States. Davenport is the county seat of and largest city in Scott County. Davenport was founded on May 14, 1836 by Antoine LeClaire and was named for his friend, George Davenport, a colonel during the Black Hawk...
, twenty-two children were the subjects of the so-called "monster" experiment
The Monster Study
The Monster Study is the name given to a stuttering experiment performed on twenty-two orphan children in Davenport, Iowa in 1939. It was conducted by Wendell Johnson at the University of Iowa. Johnson chose one of his graduate students, Mary Tudor, to conduct the experiment and he supervised her...
. This experiment attempted to use psychological abuse to induce children who spoke normally to stutter. The experiment was designed by Dr. Wendell Johnson, one of the nation's most prominent speech pathologists, for the purpose of testing one of his theories on the cause of stuttering.
In 1961, in response to the Nuremberg Trials
Nuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, the Yale
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
psychologist
Psychologist
Psychologist is a professional or academic title used by individuals who are either:* Clinical professionals who work with patients in a variety of therapeutic contexts .* Scientists conducting psychological research or teaching psychology in a college...
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram
Stanley Milgram was an American social psychologist most notable for his controversial study known as the Milgram Experiment. The study was conducted in the 1960s during Milgram's professorship at Yale...
performed his study "Obedience to Authority Study", also known as the Milgram Experiment
Milgram experiment
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
, in order to determine if it was possible that the Nazi genocide could have resulted from millions of people who were "just following orders". The Milgram Experiment raised questions about the ethics
Ethics
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality—that is, concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime, etc.Major branches of ethics include:...
of scientific experimentation because of the extreme emotional stress suffered by the participants, who were told, as part of the experiment, to apply electric shocks to test subjects (who were actually actors not really receiving electric shocks).
Pharmacological research
At Harvard University, in the late 1940s, researchers began performing experiments where they tested diethylstilbestrolDiethylstilbestrol
Diethylstilbestrol is a synthetic nonsteroidal estrogen that was first synthesized in 1938. Human exposure to DES occurred through diverse sources, such as dietary ingestion from supplemented cattle feed and medical treatment for certain conditions, including breast and prostate cancers...
, a synthetic estrogen
Estrogen
Estrogens , oestrogens , or œstrogens, are a group of compounds named for their importance in the estrous cycle of humans and other animals. They are the primary female sex hormones. Natural estrogens are steroid hormones, while some synthetic ones are non-steroidal...
, on pregnant women at the Lying-In Hospital of the University of Chicago. The women experienced an abnormally high number of miscarriages and babies with low birth weight. None of the women were told that they were being experimented on.
Researchers at the Laurel Children's Center in Maryland tested experimental acne
Acne
Acne is a general term used for acneiform eruptions. It is usually used as a synonym for acne vulgaris, but may also refer to:*Acne aestivalis*Acne conglobata*Acne cosmetica*Acne fulminans*Acne keloidalis nuchae*Acne mechanica...
medications on children, and continued their tests even after half of the children developed severe liver
Liver
The liver is a vital organ present in vertebrates and some other animals. It has a wide range of functions, including detoxification, protein synthesis, and production of biochemicals necessary for digestion...
damage from the medications.
From 1988 to 2008, the number of overseas clinical trials for drugs intended for American consumption increased by 2,000%, to approximately 6,500 trials. These trials are often conducted in areas with large numbers of poor and illiterate people who grant their consent by signing an "X" or making a thumb print on a form. These tests are rarely monitored by the FDA, and have in some cases proved deadly, such as a case where 49 babies died in New Delhi, India
New Delhi
New Delhi is the capital city of India. It serves as the centre of the Government of India and the Government of the National Capital Territory of Delhi. New Delhi is situated within the metropolis of Delhi. It is one of the nine districts of Delhi Union Territory. The total area of the city is...
during a 30-month trial. The cost of testing in countries without safety regulations is much lower; and, due to lax or nonexistent oversight, pharmaceutical corporations (or research companies they've contracted out to) are able to more easily suppress research that demonstrates harmful effects and only report positive results.
Other experiments
The 1846 journals of Dr. Walter F. Jones of Petersburg, Virginia describe how he poured boiling water onto the backs of naked slaves afflicted with typhoid pneumoniaPneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
, at four-hour intervals, because he thought that this might "cure" the disease by "stimulating the capillaries".
From early 1940 until 1953, Dr. Lauretta Bender
Lauretta Bender
Lauretta Bender, M.D. was a child neuropsychiatrist, best known as the creator ofthe Bender-Gestalt Test.- Early life :Bender began to be interested in the development of language disorders and learning problems, and their causes, when she was in third grade, around the age of eight...
, a highly respected pediatric neuropsychiatrist who practiced at Bellevue Hospital in New York City, performed electroshock experiments on at least 100 children. The children's ages ranged from 3–12 years. Some reports indicate that she may have performed such experiments on more than 200. Electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, including Bender's experiments, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children's Service from 1956 to 1969. Publicly, Bender claimed that the results of the "therapy" were positive, but in private memos, she expressed frustration over mental health issues caused by the treatments. Bender would sometimes shock schizophrenic children (some less than 3 years old) twice per day, for 20 consecutive days. Several of the children became violent and suicidal as a result of the treatments.
At Willowbrook State School for the mentally retarded in Staten Island, NY, a hightly controversial medical study was carried out there between 1963 and 1966 by medical researchers Saul Krugman and Robert W. McCollum. Healthy children who were mentally retarded, were secretly intentionally inoculated, orally and by injection, with the virus that causes the Hepatitis disease, then monitored to gauge the effects of gamma globulin in combating it.[3] A public outcry forced the study to be discontinued after it was exposed and condemnend by Senator Robert F. Kennedy.
NYS Senator Robert Kennedy and a television crew visit Willowbrook State school in Staten Island NY. "He likens the conditions at Willowbrook to that of a “snake pit,” and states that the residents of these institutions were “denied access to education and are deprived of their civil liberties.” Later that same year, he addressed a joint session of the NYS Legislature on the “dehumanizing conditions” of the State’s institutions.
In 1942, the Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
biochemist
Biochemist
Biochemists are scientists who are trained in biochemistry. Typical biochemists study chemical processes and chemical transformations in living organisms. The prefix of "bio" in "biochemist" can be understood as a fusion of "biological chemist."-Role:...
Edward Cohn injected 64 Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
prisoners with cow blood, as part of an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Navy.
In 1950, researchers at the Cleveland City Hospital ran experiments to study changes in cerebral blood flow where they injected people with spinal anesthesia
Anesthesia
Anesthesia, or anaesthesia , traditionally meant the condition of having sensation blocked or temporarily taken away...
, and inserted needles into their jugular veins and brachial arteries to extract large quantities of blood, and after massive blood loss which caused paralysis
Paralysis
Paralysis is loss of muscle function for one or more muscles. Paralysis can be accompanied by a loss of feeling in the affected area if there is sensory damage as well as motor. A study conducted by the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, suggests that about 1 in 50 people have been diagnosed...
and fainting, measured their blood pressure
Blood pressure
Blood pressure is the pressure exerted by circulating blood upon the walls of blood vessels, and is one of the principal vital signs. When used without further specification, "blood pressure" usually refers to the arterial pressure of the systemic circulation. During each heartbeat, BP varies...
. The experiment was often performed multiple times on the same subject.
In a series of studies which were published in the medical journal Pediatrics, researchers from the University of California
University of California
The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...
Department of Pediatrics performed experiments on 113 newborns ranging in age from 1 hour to 3 days, where they studied changes in blood pressure and blood flow. In one of the studies, researchers forced a catheter
Catheter
In medicine, a catheter is a tube that can be inserted into a body cavity, duct, or vessel. Catheters thereby allow drainage, administration of fluids or gases, or access by surgical instruments. The process of inserting a catheter is catheterization...
through the babies' umbilical arteries and into their aortas, and then submerged their feet in ice water. In another of the studies, they strapped 50 newborn babies to a circumcision
Circumcision
Male circumcision is the surgical removal of some or all of the foreskin from the penis. The word "circumcision" comes from Latin and ....
board, and then turned them upside down so that all of their blood rushed into their heads.
From 1963 to 1969 as part of Project Shipboard Hazard and Defense (SHAD), the U.S. Army performed tests which involved spraying several U.S. ships with various biological and chemical warfare agents, while thousands of U.S. military personnel were aboard the ships. The personnel were not notified of the tests, and were not given any protective clothing. Chemicals tested on the U.S. military personnel included the nerve gases VX
VX (nerve agent)
VX, IUPAC name O-ethyl S-[2-ethyl] methylphosphonothioate, is an extremely toxic substance whose only application is in chemical warfare as a nerve agent. As a chemical weapon, it is classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the United Nations in UN Resolution 687...
and Sarin
Sarin
Sarin, or GB, is an organophosphorus compound with the formula [2CHO]CH3PF. It is a colorless, odorless liquid, which is used as a chemical weapon. It has been classified as a weapon of mass destruction in UN Resolution 687...
, toxic chemicals such as zinc cadmium sulfide
Zinc cadmium sulfide
Zinc cadmium sulfide is a mixture of zinc sulfide and cadmium sulfide . It is used for its fluorescent properties.-Use:Operation LAC , was a Chemical Corps operation in 1957 and 1958 which dispersed microscopic zinc cadmium sulfide particles over much of the United States...
and sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide
Sulfur dioxide is the chemical compound with the formula . It is released by volcanoes and in various industrial processes. Since coal and petroleum often contain sulfur compounds, their combustion generates sulfur dioxide unless the sulfur compounds are removed before burning the fuel...
, and a variety of biological agents.
The San Antonio Contraceptive Study was a clinical research study about the side effects of oral contraceptives published in 1971. Women came to a clinic in San Antonio for preventing pregnancies and were not told they were participating in a research study or receiving placebos. 10 of the women became pregnant while on placebos.
In the 2000s, artificial blood was transfused into research subjects across the United States without their consent by Northfield Labs. Later studies showed the artificial blood caused a significant increase in the risk of heart attacks and death.
Legal, academic and professional policy
During the Nuremberg trialsNuremberg Trials
The Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
, several of the Nazi doctors and scientists who were being tried for their human experiments claimed that the inspiration for their studies had come from studies that they had seen performed in the United States. In 1945, as part of Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...
, the United States government recruited 1,600 Nazi scientists, many of whom had performed horrific human experimentation in Nazi concentration camps. The scientists were offered immunity from any war crimes they had committed during the course of their work for the Nazi government, in return for doing research for the United States government. Many of the Nazi scientists continued their human experimentation when they arrived in the United States.
A secret AEC document dated April 17, 1947, titled Medical Experiments in Humans stated: "It is desired that no document be released which refers to experiments with humans that might have an adverse reaction on public opinion
Public opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
or result in legal suits. Documents covering such fieldwork should be classified Secret."
At the same time, the Public Health Service was instructed to tell citizens downwind from bomb tests that the increases in cancers were due to neurosis
Neurosis
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving distress but neither delusions nor hallucinations, whereby behavior is not outside socially acceptable norms. It is also known as psychoneurosis or neurotic disorder, and thus those suffering from it are said to be neurotic...
, and that women with radiation sickness, hair loss, and burned skin were suffering from "housewife syndrome".
In 1964, the World Medical Association
World Medical Association
The World Medical Association is an international and independent confederation of free professional Medical Associations, therefore representing physicians worldwide...
passed the Declaration of Helsinki
Declaration of Helsinki
The Declaration of Helsinki is a set of ethical principles regarding human experimentation developed for the medical community by the World Medical Association . It is widely regarded as the cornerstone document of human research ethics...
, a set of ethical principles for the medical community regarding human experimentation.
In 1966, the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
(NIH) Office for Protection of Research Subjects (OPRR) was created, and issued its Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects which recommended establishing independent review bodies, which were later called institutional review boards.
In 1969, Kentucky Court of Appeals
Kentucky Court of Appeals
The Kentucky Court of Appeals is the lower of Kentucky's two appellate courts, under the Kentucky Supreme Court. Prior to a 1975 amendment to the Kentucky Constitution the Kentucky Court of Appeals was the only appellate court in Kentucky....
Judge Samuel Steinfeld
Samuel Steinfeld
Samuel Steinfeld was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky. He was elected to the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1966 and became chief justice in 1972; when the Kentucky courts were reformed in 1975, he became the first chief justice of the newly formed state Supreme Court.-References:...
dissented in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d 145, and made the first judicial suggestion that the Nuremberg Code
Nuremberg Code
The Nuremberg Code is a set of research ethics principles for human experimentation set as a result of the Subsequent Nuremberg Trials at the end of the Second World War.-Background:...
should be applied to American jurisprudence
Jurisprudence
Jurisprudence is the theory and philosophy of law. Scholars of jurisprudence, or legal theorists , hope to obtain a deeper understanding of the nature of law, of legal reasoning, legal systems and of legal institutions...
.
In 1974 the National Research Act
National Research Act
The National Research Act was enacted by the 93rd United States Congress. It created the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research to oversee and regulate the use of human experimentation in medicine. It was partly a response to the infamous...
established the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects, and mandated that the Public Health Service to come up with regulations that would protect the rights of human research subjects.
Project MK-ULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee
Church Committee
The Church Committee is the common term referring to the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a U.S. Senate committee chaired by Senator Frank Church in 1975. A precursor to the U.S...
, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission
United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States
The U.S. President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States...
.
In 1975, the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (DHEW) created regulation which included the recommendations laid out in the NIH's 1966 Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects. Title 45 of the Code of Federal Regulations
Code of Federal Regulations
The Code of Federal Regulations is the codification of the general and permanent rules and regulations published in the Federal Register by the executive departments and agencies of the Federal Government of the United States.The CFR is published by the Office of the Federal Register, an agency...
, known as "The Common Rule," requires the appointment and utilization of institutional review boards (IRBs) in experiments using human subjects.
On April 18, 1979, prompted by an investigative journalist's public disclosure of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (later renamed to Health and Human Services) released a report entitled "Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research," authored by Dan Harms, which laid out many modern guidelines for ethical medical research.
In 1987 the United States Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Stanley
United States v. Stanley
In United States v. Stanley , the United States Supreme Court found that a serviceman could not file a tort action against the federal government, even though the government secretly administered doses of LSD to the serviceman as part of an experimental program, because his injuries were found by...
, 483 U.S. 669, that a U.S. serviceman who was given LSD
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide, abbreviated LSD or LSD-25, also known as lysergide and colloquially as acid, is a semisynthetic psychedelic drug of the ergoline family, well known for its psychological effects which can include altered thinking processes, closed and open eye visuals, synaesthesia, an...
without his consent, as part of military experiments, could not sue the U.S. Army for damages.
Dissenting the verdict in U.S. v. Stanley, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor
Sandra Day O'Connor is an American jurist who was the first female member of the Supreme Court of the United States. She served as an Associate Justice from 1981 until her retirement from the Court in 2006. O'Connor was appointed by President Ronald Reagan in 1981...
stated:
No judicially crafted rule should insulate from liability the involuntary and unknowing human experimentation alleged to have occurred in this case. Indeed, as Justice Brennan observes, the United States played an instrumental role in the criminal prosecutionCriminal justiceCriminal Justice is the system of practices and institutions of governments directed at upholding social control, deterring and mitigating crime, or sanctioning those who violate laws with criminal penalties and rehabilitation efforts...
of NaziNazismNazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
officials who experimented with human subjectsNazi human experimentationNazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...
during the Second World War, and the standards that the Nuremberg Military TribunalsNuremberg TrialsThe Nuremberg Trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the victorious Allied forces of World War II, most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, and economic leadership of the defeated Nazi Germany....
developed to judge the behavior of the defendants stated that the 'voluntary consent of the human subject is absolutely essential ... to satisfy moral, ethical, and legal concepts.' If this principle is violated, the very least that society can do is to see that the victims are compensated, as best they can be, by the perpetrators.
On January 15, 1994, President Bill Clinton formed the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments was established in 1994 to investigate questions of the record of the United States government with respect to human radiation experiments. The special committee was created by President Bill Clinton in Executive Order 12891, issued January 15,...
(ACHRE). This committee was created to investigate and report the use of human beings as test subjects in experiments involving the effects of ionizing radiation in federally funded research. The committee attempted to determine the causes of the experiments, and reasons why the proper oversight did not exist, and made several recommendations to help prevent future occurrences of similar events.
As of 2007, not a single U.S. government researcher had been prosecuted for human experimentation, and many of the victims of U.S. government experiments have not received compensation, or in many cases, acknowledgment of what was done to them.
See also
- Eugenics in the United States
- Tuskegee syphilis experiment
- Guatemala syphilis experimentGuatemala syphilis experimentThe syphilis experiments in Guatemala were United States-led human experiments conducted in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948, during the administration of President Truman and President Juan José Arévalo with the cooperation of some Guatemalan health ministries and officials...
- Nazi human experimentationNazi human experimentationNazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners by the Nazi German regime in its concentration camps mainly in the early 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Prisoners were coerced into participating: they did not willingly volunteer and there...
- Japanese human experimentation
- Human subject research
- Human rights in the United StatesHuman rights in the United StatesHuman rights in the United States are legally protected by the Constitution of the United States and amendments, conferred by treaty, and enacted legislatively through Congress, state legislatures, and plebiscites...
- North Korean human experimentation
- Operation MKULTRA
- Operation May DayOperation May DayOperation May Day was a series of entomological warfare tests conducted by the U.S. military in Savannah, Georgia in 1956.-Operation:Operation May Day involved a series of EW tests from April to November 1956. The tests were designed to reveal information about the dispersal of yellow fever...
- Stateville Penitentiary Malaria StudyStateville Penitentiary Malaria StudyThe Stateville Penitentiary malaria study was a controlled study of the effects of malaria on the prisoners of Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet, Illinois in the 1940s. The study was conducted by the Department of Medicine at the University of Chicago in conjunction with the United States Army...
- Research involving prisoners
- Belmont ReportBelmont ReportThe Belmont Report is a report created by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. Its full title is the Belmont Report: Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects of Research, Report of the National Commission...
- Operation LACOperation LACOperation LAC , was a U.S. Army Chemical Corps operation which dispersed microscopic zinc cadmium sulfide particles over much of the United States. The purpose was to determine the dispersion and geographic range of biological or chemical agents.-Earlier tests:There were tests that occurred prior...
- Operation DewOperation DewOperation Dew refers to two separate field trials conducted by the United States in the 1950s. The tests were designed to study the behavior of aerosol-released biological agents.-General description:...
- Operation Big BuzzOperation Big BuzzOperation Big Buzz was a U.S. military entomological warfare field test conducted in the U.S. state of Georgia in 1955. The tests involved dispersing over 300,000 yellow fever mosquitoes from aircraft and through ground dispersal methods.-Operation:...
- Operation Drop KickOperation Drop KickOperation Drop Kick was a 1956 U.S. entomological warfare field testing program that deployed Aedes aegypti mosquitoes to carry a biological warfare agent...
- Henry Cotton (doctor)Henry Cotton (doctor)Henry Andrews Cotton, MD was an American psychiatrist and the medical director of New Jersey State Hospital at Trenton in Trenton, New Jersey between 1907 and 1930...
- Animal research
- Operation CrossroadsOperation CrossroadsOperation Crossroads was a series of nuclear weapon tests conducted by the United States at Bikini Atoll in mid-1946. It was the first test of a nuclear weapon after the Trinity nuclear test in July 1945...
- VivisectionVivisectionVivisection is defined as surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure...
General
- Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After, Roberta KalechofskyRoberta KalechofskyRoberta Kalechofsky is an American writer, feminist and animal rights activist, focusing on the issue of animal rights within Judaism and the promotion of vegetarianism within the Jewish community...
Biological warfare and disease/pathogen experiments
- Bibliography of Chemical and Biological Warfare documents
- The History of Bioterrorism in America, Richard Sanders, Race and History, Sunday, November 24, 2002 (accessed: 02/18/2010)
- Biological Weapons – Federation of American Scientists
- Franz, et al., The U.S. Biological Warfare and Biological Defense Programs
- US Army Activities in the US Biological Warfare Program, 1977 Congressional report
- Christopher et al., "Biological warfare. A historical perspective", Journal of the American Medical Association. 6 August 1997;278(5):412-7.
- Years Ago, The Military Sprayed Germs on U.S. Cities", Wall Street Journal, October 22, 2001, via American Patriot Friends Network, accessed November 13, 2008.
Books
- Killing Our Own: The disaster of America's experience with atomic radiation, by Harvey Wasserman, Delacorte Press, c1992, ISBN 978-0440045670
- The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical ExperimentsThe Plutonium FilesThe Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War is a 1999 book by Eileen Welsome.It is a history of U.S. government-engineered radiation experiments on unwitting Americans, based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning series Welsome wrote for the Albuquerque Tribune.The purpose of...
, by Eileen WelsomeEileen WelsomeEileen Welsome is an American journalist. She received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1994 while a reporter for The Albuquerque Tribune. She was awarded the prize for her articles about the government's human radiation experiments conducted on unwilling and unknowing Americans during...
, The Dial Press, 1999, ISBN 978-0385314022 - The Treatment: The Story of Those Who Died in the Cincinnati Radiation Tests, by Martha Stephens, Duke UniversityDuke UniversityDuke University is a private research university located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present day town of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco industrialist James B...
Press, c2002, Durham, N.C., ISBN 0-8223-2811-9 - Bravo for the Marshallese: Regaining Control in a Post-Nuclear, Post-Colonial World, by Holly M. Barker, Wadsworth, 2004. ISBN 0-534-61326-8
Government documents
- Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE) – National Security Archives
- http://books.google.com/books?id=X_LIVk92QtkC&dq=%22operation+plumbbob%22+OR+nevada+atmospheric+%22thyroid+cancer%22&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_navlinks_sExposure of the American population to radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons tests: a review of the CDC-NCI draft report on a feasibility study of the health consequences to the American population from nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States and other nations], National Research Council (U.S.). Committee to Review the CDC-NCI Feasibility Study of the Health Consequences from Nuclear Weapons Tests, National Academies Press, 2003 ISBN 9780309087131
Journals
- "'A Little Touch of Buchenwald': America's Secret Radiation Experiments", Reviews in American History - Volume 28, Number 4, December 2000, pp. 601–606
- Chair's Perspective on the Work of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments by Ruth FadenRuth FadenRuth R. Faden, M.P.H., Ph.D., is the Philip Franklin Wagley Professor of Biomedical Ethics and Executive Director of The Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics at Johns Hopkins University. She is also a Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University.She has...
Psychological/torture/interrogation experiments
- Bibliography of U.S. interrogation/torture research
- Truth, torture, and the American way, Jennifer HarburyJennifer HarburyJennifer K. Harbury is an American lawyer, author, and human rights activist.Her personal story, writing, and activism are significant in revealing the complicity of the CIA in human rights abuses, particularly in Central America....
- Biderman, A. Social-Psychological Needs and "Involuntary" Behavior as Illustrated by Compliance in Interrogation, Sociometry, Vol. 23, No. 2 (Jun., 1960), pp. 120–147
- The CIA: Mind-Bending Disclosures – Time Magazine, Monday, Aug. 15, 1977 (accessed: 02/18/2010)
- Resources on Drug Experimentation and Related Mind Control Experiments by the U.S. Government
Video
- MKULTRA Victim Testimony A – 1977 MKULTRA Congressional Hearings
- MKULTRA Victim Testimony B – 1977 MKULTRA Congressional Hearings
- MKULTRA Victim Testimony C – 1977 MKULTRA Congressional Hearings
- President Clinton apologizes to MKULTRA victims
- Physicians for Human Rights Accuses CIA of Carrying Out Illegal Human Experimentation - video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...
- The Dark History of Medical Experimentation from the Nazis to Tuskegee to Puerto Rico - video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...