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by Dani Veracity
March 06, 2006
from
NaturalNews Website
Spanish version
Introduction by the
Health Ranger
The United States claims to be the
world leader in medicine.
But there's a dark side to western
medicine that few want to acknowledge: The horrifying medical
experiments performed on impoverished people and their children
all in the name of scientific progress. Many of these medical
experiments were conducted on people without their knowledge,
and most were conducted as part of an effort to seek profits
from newly approved drugs or medical technologies.
Today, the medical experiments continue on the U.S. population
and its children. From the mass drugging of children diagnosed
with fictitious behavioral disorders invented by psychiatry to
the FDA's approval of mass-marketed drugs that have undergone no
legitimate clinical trials, our population is right now being
subjected to medical experiments on a staggering scale.
Today,
nearly 50% of Americans are on a least one prescription drug,
and nearly 20% of schoolchildren are on mind-altering
amphetamines like Ritalin or antidepressants like Prozac. This
mass medication of our nation is, in every way, a grand medical
experiment taking place right now.
But to truly understand how this mass experimentation on modern
Americans came into being, you have to take a close look at the
horrifying history of conventional medicine's exploitation of
people for cruel medical experiments.
WARNING
What you are about to read is truly
shocking. You have never been told this information by the
American Medical Association, nor drug companies, nor the
evening news.
You were never taught the truth about conventional
medicine in public school, or even at any university. This is
the dark secret of the U.S. system of medicine, and once you
read the true accounts reported here, you may never trust drug
companies again.
These images are deeply disturbing. We print
them here not as a form of entertainment, but as a stern warning
against what might happen to us and our children if we do not
rein in the horrifying, inhumane actions of Big Pharma and
modern-day psychiatry.
Now, I introduce this shocking timeline, researched and authored
by Dani Veracity, one of our many talented staff writers here at
Truth Publishing.
Read at your own risk.
The Health Ranger
The true U.S. history
of human medical experimentation
Human experimentation - that is, subjecting live human beings to
science experiments that are sometimes cruel, sometimes painful,
sometimes deadly and always a risk - is a major part of U.S. history
that you won't find in most history or science books.
The United
States is undoubtedly responsible for some of the most amazing
scientific breakthroughs. These advancements, especially in the
field of medicine, have changed the lives of billions of people
around the world - sometimes for the better, as in the case of
finding a cure for malaria and other epidemic diseases, and
sometimes for the worse (consider modern "psychiatry" and the
drugging of schoolchildren).
However, these breakthroughs come with a hefty price tag: The human
beings used in the experiments that made these advancements
possible. Over the last two centuries, some of these test subjects
have been compensated for the damage done to their emotional and
physical health, but most have not.
Many have lost their lives
because of the experiments they often unwillingly and sometimes even
unwittingly participated in, and they of course can never be
compensated for losing their most precious possession of all: Their
health.
As you read through these science experiments, you'll learn the
stories of newborns injected with radioactive substances, mentally
ill people placed in giant refrigerators, military personnel exposed
to chemical weapons by the very government they served and mentally
challenged children being purposely infected with hepatitis.
These
stories are facts, not fiction: Each account, no matter how
horrifying, is backed up with a link or citation to a reputable
source.
These stories must be heard because human experimentation is still
going on today. The reasons behind the experiments may be different,
but the usual human guinea pigs are still the same - members of
minority groups, the poor and the disadvantaged.
These are the lives
that were put on the line in the name of "scientific" medicine.
Part 1
(1833)
Dr. William Beaumont, an army
surgeon physician, pioneers gastric medicine with his study of a
patient with a permanently open gunshot wound to the abdomen and
writes a human medical experimentation code that asserts the
importance of experimental treatments, but also lists
requirements stipulating that human subjects must give
voluntary, informed consent and be able to end the experiment
when they want. Beaumont's Code lists verbal, rather than just
written, consent as permissible (Berdon).
(1845 - 1849)
J. Marion Sims, later hailed as the
"father of gynecology," performs medical experiments on enslaved
African women without anesthesia. These women would usually die
of infection soon after surgery. Based on his belief that the
movement of newborns' skull bones during protracted births
causes trismus, he also uses a shoemaker's awl, a pointed tool
shoemakers use to make holes in leather, to practice moving the
skull bones of babies born to enslaved mothers (Brinker).
(1895)
New York pediatrician Henry
Heiman infects a 4-year-old boy whom he calls "an idiot with
chronic epilepsy" with gonorrhea as part of a medical experiment
("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and After").
(1896)
Dr. Arthur Wentworth turns 29
children at Boston's Children's Hospital into human guinea pigs
when he performs spinal taps on them, just to test whether the
procedure is harmful (Sharav).
(1900)
U.S. Army doctors working in
the Philippines infect five Filipino prisoners with plague and
withhold proper nutrition to create Beriberi in 29 prisoners;
four test subjects die (Merritte, et al.; Cockburn and St.
Clair, eds.).
Under commission from the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Walter Reed
goes to Cuba and uses 22 Spanish immigrant workers to prove that
yellow fever is contracted through mosquito bites. Doing so, he
introduces the practice of using healthy test subjects, and also
the concept of a written contract to confirm informed consent of
these subjects.
While doing this study, Dr. Reed clearly tells
the subjects that, though he will do everything he can to help
them, they may die as a result of the experiment. He pays them
$100 in gold for their participation, plus $100 extra if they
contract yellow fever (Berdon, Sharav).
(1906)
Harvard professor Dr. Richard
Strong infects prisoners in the Philippines with cholera to
study the disease; 13 of them die. He compensates survivors with
cigars and cigarettes. During the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors
cite this study to justify their own medical experiments (Greger,
Sharav).
(1911)
Dr. Hideyo Noguchi of the
Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research publishes data on
injecting an inactive syphilis preparation into the skin of 146
hospital patients and normal children in an attempt to develop a
skin test for syphilis. Later, in 1913, several of these
children's parents sue Dr. Noguchi for allegedly infecting their
children with syphilis ("Reviews and Notes: History of Medicine:
Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before
the Second World War").
(1913)
Medical experimenters "test"
15 children at the children's home St. Vincent's House in
Philadelphia with tuberculin, resulting in permanent blindness
in some of the children. Though the Pennsylvania House of
Representatives records the incident, the researchers are not
punished for the experiments ("Human Experimentation: Before the
Nazi Era and After").
(1915)
Dr. Joseph Goldberger, under
order of the U.S. Public Health Office, produces Pellagra, a
debilitating disease that affects the central nervous system, in
12 Mississippi inmates to try to find a cure for the disease.
One test subject later says that he had been through "a thousand
hells." In 1935, after millions die from the disease, the
director of the U.S. Public Health Office would finally admit
that officials had known that it was caused by a niacin
deficiency for some time, but did nothing about it because it
mostly affected poor African-Americans. During the Nuremberg
Trials, Nazi doctors used this study to try to justify their
medical experiments on concentration camp inmates (Greger;
Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1918)
In response to the Germans'
use of chemical weapons during World War I, President Wilson
creates the Chemical Warfare Service (CWS) as a branch of the
U.S. Army. Twenty-four years later, in 1942, the CWS would begin
performing mustard gas and lewisite experiments on over 4,000
members of the armed forces (Global Security, Goliszek).
(1919 - 1922)
Researchers perform testicular
transplant experiments on inmates at San Quentin State Prison in
California, inserting the testicles of recently executed inmates
and goats into the abdomens and scrotums of living prisoners (Greger).
(1931)
Cornelius Rhoads, a
pathologist from the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research,
purposely infects human test subjects in Puerto Rico with cancer
cells; 13 of them die. Though a Puerto Rican doctor later
discovers that Rhoads purposely covered up some of details of
his experiment and Rhoads himself gives a written testimony
stating he believes that all Puerto Ricans should be killed, he
later goes on to establish the U.S. Army Biological Warfare
facilities in Maryland, Utah and Panama, and is named to the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, where he begins a series of
radiation exposure experiments on American soldiers and civilian
hospital patients (Sharav; Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1931 - 1933)
Mental patients at Elgin State
Hospital in Illinois are injected with radium-266 as an
experimental therapy for mental illness (Goliszek).
(1932-1972)
The U.S. Public Health Service in
Tuskegee, Ala. (see
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment) diagnoses 400 poor, black sharecroppers with
syphilis but never tells them of their illness nor treats them;
instead researchers use the men as human guinea pigs to follow
the symptoms and progression of the disease. They all eventually
die from syphilis and their families are never told that they
could have been treated (Goliszek, University of Virginia Health
System Health Sciences Library).
(1937)
Scientists at Cornell
University Medical School publish an angina drug study that uses
both placebo and blind assessment techniques on human test
subjects. They discover that the subjects given the placebo
experienced more of an improvement in symptoms than those who
were given the actual drug. This is first account of the placebo
effect published in the United States ("Placebo Effect").
(1939)
In order to test his theory
on the roots of stuttering, prominent speech pathologist Dr.
Wendell Johnson performs his famous "Monster Experiment" on 22
children at the Iowa Soldiers' Orphans' Home in Davenport. Dr.
Johnson and his graduate students put the children under intense
psychological pressure, causing them to switch from speaking
normally to stuttering heavily. At the time, some of the
students reportedly warn Dr. Johnson that, "in the aftermath of
World War II, observers might draw comparisons to Nazi
experiments on human subjects, which could destroy his career"
(Alliance for Human Research Protection).
(1941)
Dr. William C. Black infects
a 12-month-old baby with herpes as part of a medical experiment.
At the time, the editor of the Journal of Experimental Medicine,
Francis Payton Rous, calls it "an abuse of power, an
infringement of the rights of an individual, and not excusable
because the illness which followed had implications for science"
(Sharav).
An article in a 1941 issue of Archives of Pediatrics describes
medical studies of the severe gum disease Vincent's angina in
which doctors transmit the disease from sick children to healthy
children with oral swabs (Goliszek).
Drs. Francis and Salk and other researchers at the University of
Michigan spray large amounts of wild influenza virus directly
into the nasal passages of "volunteers" from mental institutions
in Michigan. The test subjects develop influenza within a very
short period of time (Meiklejohn).
Researchers give 800 poverty-stricken pregnant women at a
Vanderbilt University prenatal clinic "cocktails" including
radioactive iron in order to determine the iron requirements of
pregnant women (Pacchioli).
(1942)
The United States creates
Fort Detrick, a 92-acre facility, employing nearly 500
scientists working to create biological weapons and develop
defensive measures against them. Fort Detrick's main objectives
include investigating whether diseases are transmitted by
inhalation, digestion or through skin absorption; of course,
these biological warfare experiments heavily relied on the use
of human subjects (Goliszek).
U.S. Army and Navy doctors infect 400 prison inmates in Chicago
with malaria to study the disease and hopefully develop a
treatment for it. The prisoners are told that they are helping
the war effort, but not that they are going to be infected with
malaria. During Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors later cite this
American study to defend their own medical experiments in
concentration camps like Auschwitz (Cockburn and St. Clair,
eds.).
The Chemical Warfare Service begins mustard gas and lewisite
experiments on 4,000 members of the U.S. military. Some test
subjects don't realize they are volunteering for chemical
exposure experiments, like 17-year-old Nathan Schnurman, who in
1944 thinks he is only volunteering to test "U.S. Navy summer
clothes" (Goliszek).
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Navy, Harvard biochemist
Edward Cohn injects 64 inmates of Massachusetts state prisons
with cow's blood (Sharav).
Merck Pharmaceuticals President George Merck is named director
of the War Research Service (WRS), an agency designed to oversee
the establishment of a biological warfare program (Goliszek).
(1943)
In order to "study the effect
of frigid temperature on mental disorders," researchers at
University of Cincinnati Hospital keep 16 mentally disabled
patients in refrigerated cabinets for 120 hours at 30 degrees
Fahrenheit (Sharav).
(1944)
As part of the Manhattan
Project that would eventually create the atomic bomb,
researchers inject 4.7 micrograms of plutonium into soldiers at
the Oak Ridge facility, 20 miles west of Knoxville, Tenn.
("Manhattan Project: Oak Ridge").
Captain A. W. Frisch, an experienced microbiologist, begins
experiments on four volunteers from the state prison at
Dearborn, Mich., inoculating prisoners with hepatitis-infected
specimens obtained in North Africa. One prisoner dies; two
others develop hepatitis but live; the fourth develops symptoms
but does not actually develop the disease (Meiklejohn).
Laboratory workers at the University of Minnesota and University
of Chicago inject human test subjects with phosphorus-32 to
learn the metabolism of hemoglobin (Goliszek).
(1944 - 1946)
In order to quickly develop a cure
for malaria - a disease hindering Allied success in World War II
- University of Chicago Medical School professor Dr. Alf Alving
infects psychotic patients at Illinois State Hospital with the
disease through blood transfusions and then experiments malaria
cures on them (Sharav).
A captain in the medical corps addresses an April 1944 memo to
Col. Stanford Warren, head of the Manhattan Project's Medical
Section, expressing his concerns about atom bomb component
fluoride's central nervous system (CNS) effects and asking for
animal research to be done to determine the extent of these
effects:
"Clinical evidence suggests that uranium hexafluoride
may have a rather marked central nervous system effect... It
seems most likely that the F [code for fluoride] component
rather than the T [code for uranium] is the causative factor...
Since work with these compounds is essential, it will be
necessary to know in advance what mental effects may occur after
exposure."
The following year, the Manhattan Project would begin
human-based studies on fluoride's effects (Griffiths and
Bryson).
The Manhattan Project medical team, led by the now infamous
University of Rochester radiologist Col. Safford Warren, injects
plutonium into patients at the University's teaching hospital,
Strong Memorial (Burton Report).
(1945)
Continuing the Manhattan
Project, researchers inject plutonium into three patients at the
University of Chicago's Billings Hospital (Sharav).
The U.S. State Department, Army intelligence and the CIA begin
Operation Paperclip, offering Nazi scientists immunity and
secret identities in exchange for work on top-secret government
projects on aerodynamics and chemical warfare medicine in the
United States ("Project Paperclip").
Researchers infect 800 prisoners in Atlanta with malaria to
study the disease (Sharav).
(1945 - 1955)
In Newburgh, N.Y., researchers
linked to the Manhattan Project begin the most extensive
American study ever done on the health effects of fluoridating
public drinking water (Griffiths and Bryson).
(1946)
Gen. Douglas MacArthur
strikes a secret deal with Japanese physician Dr. Shiro Ishii to
turn over 10,000 pages of information gathered from human
experimentation in exchange for granting Ishii immunity from
prosecution for the horrific experiments he performed on
Chinese, Russian and American war prisoners, including
performing vivisections on live human beings (Goliszek, Sharav).
Male and female test subjects at Chicago's Argonne National
Laboratories are given intravenous injections of arsenic-76 so
that researchers can study how the human body absorbs,
distributes and excretes arsenic (Goliszek).
Continuing the Newburg study of 1945, the Manhattan Project
commissions the University of Rochester to study fluoride's
effects on animals and humans in a project codenamed "Program
F." With the help of the New York State Health Department,
Program F researchers secretly collect and analyze blood and
tissue samples from Newburg residents.
The studies are sponsored
by the Atomic Energy Commission and take place at the University
of Rochester Medical Center's Strong Memorial Hospital
(Griffiths and Bryson).
(1946 - 1947)
University of Rochester researchers
inject four male and two female human test subjects with
uranium-234 and uranium-235 in dosages ranging from 6.4 to 70.7
micrograms per one kilogram of body weight in order to study how
much uranium they could tolerate before their kidneys become
damaged (Goliszek).
Six male employees of a Chicago metallurgical laboratory are
given water contaminated with plutonium-239 to drink so that
researchers can learn how plutonium is absorbed into the
digestive tract (Goliszek).
Researchers begin using patients in VA hospitals as test
subjects for human medical experiments, cleverly worded as
"investigations" or "observations" in medical study reports to
avoid negative connotations and bad publicity (Sharav).
The American public finally learns of the biowarfare experiments
being done at Fort Detrick from a report released by the War
Department (Goliszek).
(1946 - 1953)
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
sponsors studies in which researchers from Harvard Medical
School, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Boston University
School of Medicine feed mentally disabled students at Fernald
State School Quaker Oats breakfast cereal spiked with
radioactive tracers every morning so that nutritionists can
study how preservatives move through the human body and if they
block the absorption of vitamins and minerals.
Later, MIT
researchers conduct the same study at Wrentham State School (Sharav,
Goliszek).
Human test subjects are given one to four injections of
arsenic-76 at the University of Chicago Department of Medicine.
Researchers take tissue biopsies from the subjects before and
after the injections (Goliszek).
(1947)
Col. E.E. Kirkpatrick of the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) issues a top-secret document
(707075) dated Jan. 8. In it, he writes that "certain
radioactive substances are being prepared for intravenous
administration to human subjects as a part of the work of the
contract" (Goliszek).
A secret AEC document dated April 17 reads,
"It is desired that
no document be released which refers to experiments with humans
that might have an adverse reaction on public opinion or result
in legal suits," revealing that the U.S. government was aware of
the health risks its nuclear tests posed to military personnel
conducting the tests or nearby civilians (Goliszek).
The CIA begins studying LSD's potential as a weapon by using
military and civilian test subjects for experiments without
their consent or even knowledge. Eventually, these LSD studies
will evolve into the
MKULTRA program in 1953 (Sharav).
(1947 - 1953)
The U.S. Navy begins Project Chatter
to identify and test so-called "truth serums," such as those
used by the Soviet Union to interrogate spies. Mescaline and the
central nervous system depressant scopolamine are among the many
drugs tested on human subjects (Goliszek).
(1948)
Based on the secret studies
performed on Newburgh, N.Y. residents beginning in 1945, Project
F researchers publish a report in the August 1948 edition of the
Journal of the American Dental Association, detailing fluoride's
health dangers. The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) quickly
censors it for "national security" reasons (Griffiths and
Bryson).
(1950 - 1953)
The CIA and later the Office of
Scientific Intelligence begin Project Bluebird (renamed Project
Artichoke in 1951) in order to find ways to "extract"
information from CIA agents, control individuals "through
special interrogation techniques," "enhance memory" and use
"unconventional techniques, including hypnosis and drugs" for
offensive measures (Goliszek).
(1950 - 1953)
The U.S. Army releases chemical
clouds over six American and Canadian cities. Residents in
Winnipeg, Canada, where a highly toxic chemical called cadmium
is dropped, subsequently experience high rates of respiratory
illnesses (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
In order to determine how susceptible an American city could be
to biological attack, the U.S. Navy sprays a cloud of Bacillus
globigii bacteria from ships over the San Francisco shoreline.
According to monitoring devices situated throughout the city to
test the extent of infection, the eight thousand residents of
San Francisco inhale five thousand or more bacteria particles,
many becoming sick with pneumonia-like symptoms (Goliszek).
Dr. Joseph Strokes of the University of Pennsylvania infects 200
female prisoners with viral hepatitis to study the disease (Sharav).
Doctors at the Cleveland City Hospital study changes in cerebral
blood flow by injecting test subjects with spinal anesthesia,
inserting needles in their jugular veins and brachial arteries,
tilting their heads down and, after massive blood loss causes
paralysis and fainting, measuring their blood pressure. They
often perform this experiment multiple times on the same subject
(Goliszek).
Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, later of MKULTRA infamy due to his 1957
to1964 experiments on Canadians, publishes an article in the
British Journal of Physical Medicine, in which he describes
experiments that entail forcing schizophrenic patients at
Manitoba's Brandon Mental Hospital to lie naked under 15- to
200-watt red lamps for up to eight hours per day.
His other
experiments include placing mental patients in an electric cage
that overheats their internal body temperatures to 103 degrees
Fahrenheit, and inducing comas by giving patients large
injections of insulin (Goliszek).
(1951)
The U.S. Navy's
Project
Bluebird is renamed Project Artichoke and begins human medical
experiments that test the effectiveness of LSD, sodium pentothal
and hypnosis for the interrogative purposes described in Project
Bluebird's objectives (1950) (Goliszek).
The U.S. Army secretly contaminates the Norfolk Naval Supply
Center in Virginia and Washington, D.C.'s National Airport with
a strain of bacteria chosen because African-Americans were
believed to be more susceptible to it than Caucasians. The
experiment causes food poisoning, respiratory problems and blood
poisoning (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
(1951 - 1952)
Researchers withhold insulin from
diabetic patients for up to two days in order to observe the
effects of diabetes; some test subjects go into diabetic comas (Goliszek).
(1951 - 1956)
Under contract with the Air Force's
School of Aviation Medicine (SAM), the University of Texas M.D.
Anderson Cancer Center in Houston begins studying the effects of
radiation on cancer patients - many of them members of minority
groups or indigents, according to sources - in order to
determine both radiation's ability to treat cancer and the
possible long-term radiation effects of pilots flying
nuclear-powered planes.
The study lasts until 1956, involving
263 cancer patients. Beginning in 1953, the subjects are
required to sign a waiver form, but it still does not meet the
informed consent guidelines established by the Wilson memo
released that year.
The TBI studies themselves would continue at
four different institutions - Baylor University College of
Medicine, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer
Research, the U.S. Naval Hospital in Bethesda and the University
of Cincinnati College of Medicine - until 1971 (U.S. Department
of Energy, Goliszek).
American, Canadian and British military and intelligence
officials gather a small group of eminent psychologists to a
secret meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Montreal about
Communist "thought-control techniques." They proposed a
top-secret research program on behavior modification - involving
testing drugs, hypnosis, electroshock and lobotomies on humans
(Barker).
(1952)
Military scientists use the
Dugway Proving Ground - which is located 87 miles southwest of
Salt Lake City, Utah - in a series of experiments to determine
how Brucella suis and Brucella melitensis spread in human
populations. Today, over a half-century later, some experts
claim that we are all infected with these agents as a result of
these experiments (Goliszek).
In a U.S. Department of Denfense-sponsored experiment, Henry
Blauer dies after he is injected with mescaline at Columbia
University's New York State Psychiatric Institute (Sharav).
At the famous Sloan-Kettering Institute, Chester M. Southam
injects live cancer cells into prisoners at the Ohio State
Prison to study the progression of the disease. Half of the
prisoners in this National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH)
study are black, awakening racial suspicions stemming from
Tuskegee, which was also an NIH-sponsored study (Merritte, et
al.).
(1953 - 1970)
The CIA begins
project MKNAOMI to,
"stockpile incapacitating and lethal materials, to develop
gadgetry for the disseminations of these materials, and to test
the effects of certain drugs on animals and humans."
As part of MKNAOMI, the CIA and the Special Operations Division of the Army
Biological Laboratory at Fort Detrick try to develop two suicide
pill alternatives to the standard cyanide suicide pill given to
CIA agents and U-2 pilots.
CIA agents and U-2 pilots are meant
to take these pills when they find themselves in situations in
which they (and all the information they hold in their brains)
are in enemy hands. They also develop a "microbioinoculator" - a
device that agents can use to fire small darts coated with
biological agents that can remain potent for weeks or even
months.
These darts can be fired through clothing and, most
significantly, are undetectable during autopsy. Eventually, by
the late 1960s, MKNAOMI enables the CIA to have a stockpile of
biological toxins - infectious viruses, paralytic shellfish
toxin, lethal botulism toxin, snake venom and the severe skin
disease-producing agent Mircosporum gypseum.
Of course, the
development of all of this "gadgetry" requires human
experimentation (Goliszek).
(1953 - 1974)
CIA Director Allen Dulles authorizes
the MKULTRA program to produce and test drugs and biological
agents that the CIA could use for mind control and behavior
modification. MKULTRA later becomes well known for its
pioneering studies on LSD, which are often performed on
prisoners or patrons of brothels set up and run by the CIA.
The
brothel experiments, known as "Operation Midnight Climax,"
feature two-way mirrors set up in the brothels so that CIA
agents can observe LSD's effects on sexual behavior. Ironically,
governmental figures sometimes slip LSD into each other's drinks
as part of the program, resulting in the LSD psychosis-induced
suicide of Dr. Frank Olson indirectly at the hands of MKULTRA's
infamous key player Dr. Sidney Gottlieb.
Of all the hundreds of
human test subjects used during MKULTRA, only 14 are ever
notified of the involvement and only one is ever compensated
($15,000). Most of the MKULTRA files are eventually destroyed in
1973 (Elliston; Merritte, et al.; Barker).
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) sponsors iodine studies
at the University of Iowa. In the first study, researchers give
pregnant women 100 to 200 microcuries of iodine-131 and then
study the women's aborted embryos in order to learn at what
stage and to what extent radioactive iodine crosses the
placental barrier.
In the second study, researchers give 12 male
and 13 female newborns under 36 hours old and weighing between
5.5 and 8.5 pounds iodine-131 either orally or via intramuscular
injection, later measuring the concentration of iodine in the
newborns' thyroid glands (Goliszek).
Secretary of Defense Charles Wilson issues the Wilson memo, a
top-secret document establishing the Nuremberg Code as
Department of Defense policy on human experimentation.
The
Wilson memo requires voluntary, written consent from a human
medical research subject after he or she has been informed of
"the nature, duration, and purpose of the experiment; the method
and means by which it is to be conducted; all inconveniences and
hazards reasonably to be expected; and effects upon his health
or person which may possibly come from his participation in the
experiment." It also insists that doctors only use experimental
treatments when other methods have failed (Berdon).
As part of an AEC study, researchers feed 28 healthy infants at
the University of Nebraska College of Medicine iodine-131
through a gastric tube and then test concentration of iodine in
the infants' thyroid glands 24 hours later (Goliszek).
(1953 - 1957)
Eleven patients at Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston are injected with uranium as part of
the Manhattan Project (Sharav).
In an AEC-sponsored study at the University of Tennessee,
researchers inject healthy two- to three-day-old newborns with
approximately 60 rads of iodine-131 (Goliszek).
Newborn Daniel Burton becomes blind when physicians at Brooklyn
Doctors Hospital perform an experimental high oxygen treatment
for Retrolental Fibroplasia, a retinal disorder affecting
premature infants, on him and other premature babies. The
physicians perform the experimental treatment despite earlier
studies showing that high oxygen levels cause blindness.
Testimony in Burton v. Brooklyn Doctors Hospital (452
N.Y.S.2d875) later reveals that researchers continued to give
Burton and other infants excess oxygen even after their eyes had
swelled to dangerous levels (Goliszek, Sharav).
The CIA begins
Project MKDELTA to study the use of biochemicals
"for harassment, discrediting and disabling purposes" (Goliszek).
A 1953 article in Clinical Science describes a medical
experiment in which researchers purposely blister the abdomens
of 41 children, ranging in age from eight to 14, with cantharide
in order to study how severely the substance irritates the skin
(Goliszek).
The AEC performs a series of field tests known as "Green Run,"
dropping radiodine 131 and xenon 133 over the Hanford, Wash.
site - 500,000 acres encompassing three small towns (Hanford,
White Bluffs and Richland) along the Columbia River (Sharav).
In an AEC-sponsored study to learn whether radioactive iodine
affects premature babies differently from full-term babies,
researchers at Harper Hospital in Detroit give oral doses of
iodine-131 to 65 premature and full-term infants weighing
between 2.1 and 5.5 pounds (Goliszek).
(1954)
The CIA begins Project
QKHILLTOP to study Chinese Communist Party brainwashing
techniques and use them to further the CIA's own interrogative
methods. Most experts speculate that the Cornell University
Medical School Human Ecology Studies Program conducted Project
QKHILLTOP's early experiments (Goliszek).
(1954 - 1975)
U.S. Air Force medical officers
assigned to Fort Detrick's Chemical Corps Biological Laboratory
begin Operation Whitecoat - experiments involving exposing human
test subjects to hepatitis A, plague, yellow fever, Venezuelan
equine encephalitis, Rift Valley fever, rickettsia and
intestinal microbes.
These test subjects include 2,300 Seventh
Day Adventist military personnel, who choose to become human
guinea pigs rather than potentially kill others in combat. Only
two of the 2,300 claim long-term medical complications from
participating in the study ("Operation Whitecoat".)
In a general memo to university researchers under contract with
the military, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army asserts the
human experimentation guidelines - including informed, written
consent - established in the classified Wilson memo (Goliszek).
(1955)
In U.S. Army-sponsored
experiments performed at Tulane University, mental patients are
given LSD and other drugs and then have electrodes implanted in
their brain to measure the levels (Barker, "The Cold War
Experiments").
(1955 - 1957)
In order to learn how cold weather
affects human physiology, researchers give a total of 200 doses
of iodine-131, a radioactive tracer that concentrates almost
immediately in the thyroid gland, to 85 healthy Eskimos and 17
Athapascan Indians living in Alaska. They study the tracer
within the body by blood, thyroid tissue, urine and saliva
samples from the test subjects. Due to the language barrier, no
one tells the test subjects what is being done to them, so there
is no informed consent (Goliszek).
(1955 - 1965)
As a result of their work with the
CIA's mind control experiments in Project QKHILLTOP, Cornell
neurologists Harold Wolff and Lawrence Hinkle begin the Society
for the Investigation of Human Ecology (later renamed the Human
Ecology Fund) to study "man's relation to his social environment
as perceived by him" (Goliszek).
(1956 - 1957)
U.S. Army covert biological weapons
researchers release mosquitoes infected with yellow fever and
dengue fever over Savannah, Ga., and Avon Park, Fla., to test
the insects' ability to carry disease. After each test, Army
agents pose as public health officials to test victims for
effects and take pictures of the unwitting test subjects. These
experiments result in a high incidence of fevers, respiratory
distress, stillbirths, encephalitis and typhoid among the two
cities' residents, as well as several deaths (Cockburn and St.
Clair, eds.).
(1957)
The U.S. military conducts
Operation Plumbbob at the Nevada Test Site, 65 miles northwest
of Las Vegas. Operation Pumbbob consists of 29 nuclear
detonations, eventually creating radiation expected to result in
a total 32,000 cases of thyroid cancer among civilians in the
area. Around 18,000 members of the U.S. military participate in
Operation Pumbbob's Desert Rock VII and VIII, which are designed
to see how the average foot soldier physiologically and mentally
responds to a nuclear battlefield ("Operation Plumbbob",
Goliszek).
(1957 - 1964)
As part of MKULTRA, the CIA pays
McGill University Department of Psychiatry founder Dr. D. Ewen
Cameron $69,000 to perform LSD studies and potentially lethal
experiments on Canadians being treated for minor disorders like
post-partum depression and anxiety at the Allan Memorial
Institute, which houses the Psychiatry Department of the Royal
Victoria Hospital in Montreal.
The CIA encourages Dr. Cameron to
fully explore his "psychic driving" concept of correcting
madness through completely erasing one's memory and rewriting
the psyche. These "driving" experiments involve putting human
test subjects into drug-, electroshock- and sensory
deprivation-induced vegetative states for up to three months,
and then playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive
statements for weeks or months in order to "rewrite" the
"erased" psyche.
Dr. Cameron also gives human test subjects
paralytic drugs and electroconvulsive therapy 30 to 40 times, as
part of his experiments. Most of Dr. Cameron's test subjects
suffer permanent damage as a result of his work (Goliszek,
"Donald Ewan Cameron").
In order to study how blood flows through children's brains,
researchers at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia perform the
following experiment on healthy children, ranging in age from
three to 11: They insert needles into each child's femoral
artery (thigh) and jugular vein (neck), bringing the blood down
from the brain. Then, they force each child to inhale a special
gas through a facemask.
In their subsequent Journal of Clinical
Investigation article on this study, the researchers note that,
in order to perform the experiment, they had to restrain some of
the child test subjects by bandaging them to boards (Goliszek).
(1958)
Approximately 300 members of
the U.S. Navy are exposed to radiation when the Navy destroyer
Mansfield detonates 30 nuclear bombs off the coasts of Pacific
Islands during Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).
The U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) drops radioactive
materials over Point Hope, Alaska, home to the Inupiats, in a
field test known under the codename "Project Chariot" (Sharav).
(1961)
In response to the Nuremberg
Trials, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram begins his famous
Obedience to Authority Study in order to answer his question,
"Could it be that (Adolf) Eichmann and his million accomplices
in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them
all accomplices?"
Male test subjects, ranging in age from 20 to
40 and coming from all education backgrounds, are told to give
"learners" electric shocks for every wrong answer the learners
give in response to word pair questions. In reality, the
learners are actors and are not receiving electric shocks, but
what matters is that the test subjects do not know that.
Astoundingly, they keep on following orders and continue to
administer increasingly high levels of "shocks," even after the
actor learners show obvious physical pain ("Milgram
Experiment").
(1962)
Researchers at the Laurel
Children's Center in Maryland test experimental acne antibiotics
on children and continue their tests even after half of the
young test subjects develop severe liver damage because of the
experimental medication (Goliszek). The U.S. Army's Deseret Test
Center begins Project 112.
This includes SHAD (Shipboard Hazard
and Defense), which exposes U.S. Navy and Army personnel to live
toxins and chemical poisons in order to determine naval ships'
vulnerability to chemical and biological weapons. Military
personnel are not test subjects; conducting the tests exposes
them. Many of these participants complain of negative health
effects at the time and, decades later, suffer from severe
medical problems as a result of their exposure (Goliszek,
Veterans Health Administration).
The FDA begins requiring that a new pharmaceutical undergo three
human clinical trials before it will approve it. From 1962 to
1980, pharmaceutical companies satisfy this requirement by
running Phase I trials, which determine a drug's toxicity, on
prison inmates, giving them small amounts of cash for
compensation (Sharav).
(1963)
Chester M. Southam, who
injected Ohio State Prison inmates with live cancer cells in
1952, performs the same procedure on 22 senile, African-American
female patients at the Brooklyn Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital
in order to watch their immunological response. Southam tells
the patients that they are receiving "some cells," but leaves
out the fact that they are cancer cells.
He claims he doesn't
obtain informed consent from the patients because he does not
want to frighten them by telling them what he is doing, but he
nevertheless temporarily loses his medical license because of
it. Ironically, he eventually becomes president of the American
Cancer Society (Greger, Merritte, et al.).
Researchers at the University of Washington directly irradiate
the testes of 232 prison inmates in order to determine
radiation's effects on testicular function. When these inmates
later leave prison and have children, at least four have babies
born with birth defects. The exact number is unknown because
researchers never follow up on the men to see the long-term
effects of their experiment (Goliszek).
In a National Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) study, a
researcher transplants a chimpanzee's kidney into a human. The
experiment fails (Sharav).
(1963 - 1966)
New York University researcher Saul Krugman promises parents with mentally disabled children
definite enrollment into the Willowbrook State School in Staten
Island, N.Y., a resident mental institution for mentally
retarded children, in exchange for their signatures on a consent
form for procedures presented as "vaccinations."
In reality, the
procedures involve deliberately infecting children with viral
hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of
infected patients, so that Krugman can study the course of viral
hepatitis as well the effectiveness of a hepatitis vaccine
(Hammer Breslow).
(1963 - 1971)
Leading endocrinologist Dr. Carl
Heller gives 67 prison inmates at Oregon State Prison in Salem
$5 per month and $25 per testicular tissue biopsy in
compensation for allowing him to perform irradiation experiments
on their testes. If they receive vasectomies at the end of the
study, the prisoners are given an extra $100 (Sharav, Goliszek).
Researchers inject a genetic compound called radioactive
thymidine into the testicles of more than 100 Oregon State
Penitentiary inmates to learn whether sperm production is
affected by exposure to steroid hormones (Greger).
In a study published in Pediatrics, researchers at the
University of California's Department of Pediatrics use 113
newborns ranging in age from one hour to three days old in a
series of experiments used to study changes in blood pressure
and blood flow.
In one study, doctors insert a catheter through
the newborns' umbilical arteries and into their aortas and then
immerse the newborns' feet in ice water while recording aortic
pressure. In another experiment, doctors strap 50 newborns to a
circumcision board, tilt the table so that all the blood rushes
to their heads and then measure their blood pressure (Goliszek).
(1964 - 1968)
The U.S. Army pays $386,486 (the
largest sum ever paid for human experimentation) to University
of Pennsylvania Professors Albert Kligman and Herbert W. Copelan
to run medical experiments on 320 inmates of Holmesburg Prison
to determine the effectiveness of seven mind-altering drugs.
The
researchers' objective is to determine the minimum effective
dose of each drug needed to disable 50 percent of any given
population (MED-50). Though Professors Kligman and Copelan claim
that they are unaware of any long-term effects the mind-altering
agents might have on prisoners, documents revealed later would
prove otherwise (Kaye).
(1964 - 1967)
The Dow Chemical Company pays
Professor Kligman $10,000 to learn how dioxin - a highly toxic,
carcinogenic component of
Agent Orange - and other herbicides
affect human skin because workers at the chemical plant have
been developing an acne-like condition called Chloracne and the
company would like to know whether the chemicals they are
handling are to blame.
As part of the study, Professor Kligman
applies roughly the amount of dioxin Dow employees are exposed
to on the skin 60 prisoners, and is disappointed when the
prisoners show no symptoms of Chloracne. In 1980 and 1981, the
human guinea pigs used in this study would begin suing Professor
Kligman for complications including lupus and psychological
damage (Kaye).
(1965)
The Department of Defense
uses human test subjects wearing rubber clothing and M9A1 masks
to conduct 35 trials near Fort Greely, Ala., as part of the Elk
Hunt tests, which are designed to measure the amount of VX nerve
agent put on the clothing of people moving through VX-contaminated
areas or touching contaminated vehicles, and the amount of VX
vapor rising from these areas.
After the tests, the subjects are
decontaminated using wet steam and high-pressure cold water (Goliszek).
As part of a test codenamed "Big Tom," the Department of Defense
sprays Oahu, Hawaii's most heavily populated island, with
Bacillus globigii in order to simulate an attack on an island
complex. Bacillus globigii causes infections in people with
weakened immune systems, but this was not known to scientists at
the time (Goliszek, Martin).
Part 2
(1966)
The CIA continues a limited
number of MKULTRA plans by beginning Project MKSEARCH to develop
and test ways of using biological, chemical and radioactive
materials in intelligence operations, and also to develop and
test drugs that are able to produce predictable changes in human
behavior and physiology (Goliszek).
Dr. Henry Beecher writes,
"The well-being, the health, even the
actual or potential life of all human beings, born or unborn,
depend upon the continuing experimentation in man. Proceed it
must; proceed it will. 'The proper study of mankind is man,'" in
his "exposé" on human medical experimentation Research and the
Individual.
("Human Experimentation: Before the Nazi Era and
After")
U.S. Army scientists drop light bulbs filled with Bacillus
subtilis through ventilation gates and into the New York City
subway system, exposing more than one million civilians to the
bacteria (Goliszek).
The National Commission for the Protection of Research Subjects
issues its Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects, which
eventually creates what we now know as institutional review
boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1967)
Continuing on his Dow
Chemical Company-sponsored dioxin study without the company's
knowledge or consent, University of Pennsylvania Professor
Albert Kligman increases the dosage of dioxin he applies to 10
prisoners' skin to 7,500 micrograms, 468 times the dosage Dow
official Gerald K. Rowe had authorized him to administer. As a
result, the prisoners experience acne lesions that develop into
inflammatory pustules and papules (Kaye).
The CIA places a chemical in the drinking water supply of the
FDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. to see whether it is
possible to spike drinking water with LSD and other substances
(Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
In a study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation,
researchers inject pregnant women with radioactive cortisol to
see if the radioactive material will cross the placentas and
affect the fetuses (Goliszek).
The U.S. Army pays Professor Kligman to apply skin-blistering
chemicals to Holmesburg Prison inmates' faces and backs, so as
to, in Professor Kligman's words, "learn how the skin protects
itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the
so-called hardening process," information which would have both
offensive and defensive applications for the U.S. military
(Kaye).
The CIA and Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories begin an
extensive program for developing drugs that can influence human
behavior. This program includes Project OFTEN - which studies
the toxicology, transmission and behavioral effects of drugs in
animal and human subjects - and Project CHICKWIT, which gathers
European and Asian drug development information (Goliszek).
Professor Kligman develops Retin-A as an acne cream (and
eventually a wrinkle cream), turning him into a
multi-millionaire (Kaye).
Researchers paralyze 64 prison inmates in California with a
neuromuscular compound called succinylcholine, which produces
suppressed breathing that feels similar to drowning. When five
prisoners refuse to participate in the medical experiment, the
prison's special treatment board gives researchers permission to
inject the prisoners with the drug against their will (Greger).
(1968)
Planned Parenthood of San
Antonio and South Central Texas and the Southwest Foundation for
Research and Education begin an oral contraceptive study on 70
poverty-stricken Mexican-American women, giving only half the
oral contraceptives they think they are receiving and the other
half a placebo. When the results of this study are released a
few years later, it stirs tremendous controversy among
Mexican-Americans (Sharav, Sauter).
(1969)
President Nixon ends the
United States' offensive biowarfare program, including human
experimentation done at Fort Detrick. By this time, tens of
thousands of civilians and members of the U.S. armed forces have
wittingly and unwittingly acted as participants in experiments
involving exposure to dangerous biological agents (Goliszek).
The U.S. military conducts DTC Test 69-12, which is an open-air
test of VX and sarin nerve agents at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal
in Maryland, likely exposing military personnel (Goliszek,
Martin).
Experimental drugs are tested on mentally disabled children in
Milledgeville, Ga., without any institutional approval
whatsoever (Sharav).
Dr. Donald MacArthur, the U.S. Department of Defense's Deputy
Director for Research and Technology, requests $10 million from
Congress to develop a synthetic biological agent that would be
resistant "to the immunological and therapeutic processes upon
which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious
disease" (Cockburn and St. Clair, eds.).
Judge Sam Steinfield's dissent in Strunk v. Strunk, 445 S.W.2d
145 marks the first time a judge has ever suggested that the
Nuremberg Code be applied in American court cases (Sharav).
(1970)
A year after his request,
under H.R. 15090, Dr. MacArthur receives funding to begin
CIA-supervised mycoplasma research with Fort Detrick's Special
Operations Division and hopefully create a synthetic
immunosuppressive agent. Some experts believe that this research
may have inadvertently created HIV, the virus that causes AIDS (Goliszek).
Under order from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which
also sponsored
the Tuskegee Experiment, the free childcare
program at Johns Hopkins University collects blood samples from
7,000 African-American youth, telling their parents that they
are checking for anemia but actually checking for an extra Y
chromosome (XYY), believed to be a biological predisposition to
crime.
The program director, Digamber Borganokar, does this
experiment without Johns Hopkins University's permission (Greger,
Merritte, et al.).
(1971)
President Nixon converts Fort
Detrick from an offensive biowarfare lab to the Frederick Cancer
Research and Development Center, now known as the National
Cancer Institute at Frederick. In addition to cancer research,
scientists study virology, immunology and retrovirology
(including HIV) there.
Additionally, the site is home to the
U.S. Army Medical Research Institute, which researches drugs,
vaccines and countermeasures for biological warfare, so the
former Fort Detrick does not move far away from its biowarfare
past (Goliszek).
Stanford University conducts the Stanford Prison Experiment on a
group of college students in order to learn the psychology of
prison life. Some students are given the role as prison guards,
while the others are given the role of prisoners. After only six
days, the proposed two-week study has to end because of its
psychological effects on the participants. The "guards" had
begun to act sadistic, while the "prisoners" started to show
signs of depression and severe psychological stress (University
of New Hampshire).
An article entitled "Viral Infections in Man Associated with
Acquired Immunological Deficiency States" appears in Federation
Proceedings. Dr. MacArthur and Fort Detrick's Special Operations
Division have, at this point, been conducting mycoplasma
research to create a synthetic immunosuppressive agent for about
one year, again suggesting that this research may have produced
HIV (Goliszek).
(1972)
In studies sponsored by the
U.S. Air Force, Dr. Amedeo Marrazzi gives LSD to mental patients
at the University of Missouri Institute of Psychiatry and the
University of Minnesota Hospital to study "ego strength"
(Barker).
(1973)
An Ad Hoc Advisory Panel
issues its Final Report on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, writing,
"Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing of
individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific
community" (Sharav).
(1974)
Congress enacts the National
Research Act, creating the National Commission for the
Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral
Research and finally setting standards for human experimentation
on children (Breslow).
(1975)
The Department of Health,
Education and Welfare gives the National Institutes of Health's
Policies for the Protection of Human Subjects (1966) regulatory
status. Title 45, known as "The Common Rule," officially creates
institutional review boards (IRBs) (Sharav).
(1977)
The Kennedy Hearing initiates
the process toward Executive Order 12333, prohibiting
intelligence agencies from experimenting on humans without
informed consent (Merritte, et al.).
The U.S. government issues an official apology and $400,000 to
Jeanne Connell, the sole survivor from Col. Warren's
now-infamous plutonium injections at Strong Memorial Hospital,
and the families of the other human test subjects (Burton
Report).
The National Urban League holds its National Conference on Human
Experimentation, stating, "We don't want to kill science but we
don't want science to kill, mangle and abuse us" (Sharav).
(1978)
The CDC begins experimental
hepatitis B vaccine trials in New York. Its ads for research
subjects specifically ask for promiscuous homosexual men.
Professor Wolf Szmuness of the Columbia University School of
Public Health had made the vaccine's infective serum from the
pooled blood serum of hepatitis-infected homosexuals and then
developed it in chimpanzees, the only animal susceptible to
hepatitis B, leading to the theory that HIV originated in
chimpanzees before being transferred over to humans via this
vaccine.
A few months after 1,083 homosexual men receive the
vaccine, New York physicians begin noticing cases of Kaposi's
sarcoma, Mycoplasma penetrans and a new strain of herpes virus
among New York's homosexual community - diseases not usually
seen among young, American men, but that would later be known as
common opportunistic diseases
associated with AIDS (Goliszek).
(1979)
The National Commission for
the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral
Research releases the Belmont Report, which establishes the
foundations for research experimentation on humans.
The Belmont
Report mandates that researchers follow three basic principles:
1. Respect the subjects as autonomous persons and protect those
with limited ability for independence (such as children)
2. Do
no harm
3. Choose test subjects justly - being sure not to
target certain groups because of they are easily accessible or
easily manipulated, rather than for reasons directly related to
the tests
(Berdon)
(1980)
A study reveals a high
incidence of leukemia among the 18,000 military personnel who
participated in 1957's
Operation Plumbbob.
According to blood samples tested years later for HIV, 20
percent of all New York homosexual men who participated in the
1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment are HIV-positive by this
point (Goliszek).
American doctors give experimental hormone shots to hundreds of
Haitian men confined to detention camps in Miami and Puerto
Rico, causing the men to develop a condition known as
gynecomastia, in which men develop full-sized breasts (Cockburn
and St. Clair, eds.).
The CDC continues its 1978 hepatitis B vaccine experiment in Los
Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, St. Louis and Denver,
recruiting over 7,000 homosexual men in San Francisco alone (Goliszek).
The FDA prohibits the use of prison inmates in pharmaceutical
drug trials, leading to the advent of the experimental drug
testing centers industry (Sharav).
The first AIDS case appears in San Francisco (Goliszek).
(1981 - 1993)
The Seattle-based Genetic Systems
Corporation begins an ongoing medical experiment called Protocol
No. 126, in which cancer patients at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer
Research Center in Seattle are given bone marrow transplants
that contain eight experimental proteins made by Genetic
Systems, rather than standard bone marrow transplants; 19 human
subjects die from complications directly related to the
experimental treatment (Goliszek).
A deep diving experiment at Duke University causes test subject
Leonard Whitlock to suffer permanent brain damage (Sharav).
The CDC acknowledges that a disease known as AIDS exists and
confirms 26 cases of the disease - all in previously healthy
homosexuals living in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles -
again supporting the speculation that AIDS originated from the
hepatitis B experiments from 1978 and 1980 (Goliszek).
(1982)
Thirty percent of the test
subjects used in the CDC's hepatitis B vaccine experiment are
HIV-positive by this point (Goliszek).
(1984)
SFBC Phase I research clinic
founded in Miami, Fla. By 2005, it would become the largest
experimental drug testing center in North America with centers
in Miami and Montreal, running Phase I to Phase IV clinical
trials (Drug Development-Technology.com).
(1985)
A former U.S. Army sergeant
tries to sue the Army for using drugs on him in without his
consent or even his knowledge in United States v. Stanley, 483
U.S. 669. Justice Antonin Scalia writes the decision, clearing
the U.S. military from any liability in past, present or future
medical experiments without informed consent (Merritte, et al..
(1987)
Philadelphia resident Doris
Jackson discovers that researchers have removed her son's brain
post mortem for medical study. She later learns that the state
of Pennsylvania has a doctrine of "implied consent," meaning
that unless a patient signs a document stating otherwise,
consent for organ removal is automatically implied (Merritte, et
al.).
(1988)
The U.S. Justice Department
pays nine Canadian survivors of the CIA and Dr. Cameron's
"psychic driving" experiments (1957 - 1964) $750,000 in
out-of-court settlements, to avoid any further investigations
into MKULTRA (Goliszek).
(1988 - 2001)
The New York City Administration for
Children's Services begins allowing foster care children living
in about two dozen children's homes to be used in National
Institutes of Health-sponsored (NIH) experimental AIDS drug
trials. These children - totaling 465 by the program's end -
experience serious side effects, including inability to walk,
diarrhea, vomiting, swollen joints and cramps.
Children's home
employees are unaware that they are giving the HIV-infected
children experimental drugs, rather than standard AIDS
treatments (New York City ACS, Doran).
(1990)
The United States sends 1.7
million members of the armed forces, 22 percent of whom are
African-American, to the Persian Gulf for the Gulf War ("Desert
Storm").
More than 400,000 of these soldiers are ordered to take
an experimental nerve agent medication called pyridostigmine,
which is later believed to be the cause of Gulf War Syndrome -
symptoms ranging from skin disorders, neurological disorders,
incontinence, uncontrollable drooling and vision problems -
affecting Gulf War veterans (Goliszek; Merritte, et al.).
The CDC and Kaiser Pharmaceuticals of Southern California inject
1,500 six-month-old black and Hispanic babies in Los Angeles
with an "experimental" measles
vaccine that had never been
licensed for use in the United States. Adding to the risk,
children less than a year old may not have an adequate amount of
myelin around their nerves, possibly resulting in impaired
neural development because of the vaccine. The CDC later admits
that parents were never informed that the vaccine being injected
into their children was experimental (Goliszek).
The FDA allows the U.S. Department of Defense to waive the
Nuremberg Code and use unapproved drugs and vaccines in
Operation Desert Shield (Sharav).
(1991)
In the May 27 issue of the
Los Angeles Times, former U.S. Navy radio operator Richard
Jenkins writes that he suffers from leukemia, chronic fatigue
and kidney and liver disease as a result of the radiation
exposure he received in 1958's
Operation Hardtack (Goliszek).
While participating in a UCLA study that withdraws
schizophrenics off of their medications, Tony LaMadrid commits
suicide (Sharav).
(1992)
Columbia University's New
York State Psychiatric Institute and the Mount Sinai School of
Medicine give 100 males - mostly African-American and Hispanic,
all between the ages of six and 10 and all the younger brothers
of juvenile delinquents - 10 milligrams of fenfluramine
(fen-fen) per kilogram of body weight in order to test the
theory that low serotonin levels are linked to violent or
aggressive behavior. Parents of the participants received $125
each, including a $25 Toys 'R' Us gift certificate (Goliszek).
(1993)
Researchers at the West Haven
VA in Connecticut give 27 schizophrenics - 12 inpatients and 15
functioning volunteers - a chemical called MCPP that
significantly increases their psychotic symptoms and, as
researchers note, negatively affects the test subjects on a
long-term basis ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
(1994)
In a double-blind experiment
at New York VA Hospital, researchers take 23 schizophrenic
inpatients off of their medications for a median of 30 days.
They then give 17 of them 0.5 mg/kg amphetamine and six a
placebo as a control, following up with PET scans at Brookhaven
Laboratories.
According to the researchers, the purpose of the
experiment was "to specifically evaluate metabolic effects in
subjects with varying degrees of amphetamine-induced psychotic
exacerbation" ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
Albuquerque Tribune reporter Eileen Welsome receives a Pulitzer
Prize for her investigative reporting into Col. Warren's
plutonium experiments on patients at Strong Memorial Hospital in
1945 (Burton Report).
In a federally funded experiment at New York VA Medical Center,
researchers give schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though
central nervous system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in
40 percent of schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo,
Ph.D.").
Researchers at Bronx VA Medical Center recruit 28 schizophrenic
veterans who are functioning in society and give them L-dopa in
order to deliberately induce psychotic relapse ("Testimony of
Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the Advisory Commission on Human
Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), which finally reveals the
horrific experiments conducted during the Cold War era in its
ACHRE Report.
(1995)
A 19-year-old University of
Rochester student named Nicole Wan dies from participating in an
MIT-sponsored experiment that tests airborne pollutant chemicals
on humans. The experiment pays $150 to human test subjects (Sharav).
In the Mar. 15 President's Advisory Committee on Human Radiation
Experiments (ACHRE), former human subjects, including those who
were used in experiments as children, give sworn testimonies
stating that they were subjected to radiation experiments and/or
brainwashed, hypnotized, drugged, psychologically tortured,
threatened and even raped during CIA experiments. These sworn
statements include:
Christina DeNicola's statement that, in Tucson, Ariz., from 1966
to 1976, "Dr. B" performed mind control experiments using drugs,
post-hypnotic injection and drama, and irradiation experiments
on her neck, throat, chest and uterus.
She was only four years
old when the experiments started.
Claudia Mullen's testimony that Dr.
Sidney Gottlieb (of
MKULTRA
fame) used chemicals, radiation, hypnosis, drugs, isolation in
tubs of water, sleep deprivation, electric shock, brainwashing
and emotional, sexual and verbal abuse as part of mind control
experiments that had the ultimate objective of turning her, who
was only a child at the time, into the "perfect spy."
She tells
the advisory committee that researchers justified this abuse by
telling her that she was serving her country "in their bold
effort to fight Communism."
Suzanne Starr's statement that,
"a physician, who was retired
from the military, got children from the mountains of Colorado
for experiments."
She says she was one of those children and
that she was the victim of experiments involving environmental
deprivation to the point of forced psychosis, spin programming,
injections, rape and frequent electroshock and mind control
sessions.
"I have fought self-destructive programmed messages to
kill myself, and I know what a programmed message is, and I
don’t act on them," she tells the advisory committee of the
experiments' long-lasting effects, even in her adulthood (Goliszek).
President Clinton publicly apologizes to the thousands of people
who were victims of MKULTRA and other mind-control experimental
programs (Sharav).
In Dr. Daniel P. van Kammen's study, "Behavioral vs. Biochemical
Prediction of Clinical Stability Following Haloperidol
Withdrawal in Schizophrenia," researchers recruit 88 veterans
who are stabilized by their medications enough to make them
functional in society, and hospitalize them for eight to 10
weeks.
During this time, the researchers stop giving the
veterans the medications that are enabling them to live in
society, placing them back on a two- to four-week regimen of the
standard dose of Haldol. Then, the veterans are "washed-out,"
given lumbar punctures and put under six-week observation to see
who would relapse and suffer symptomatic schizophrenia once
again; 50 percent do ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton appoints the National Bioethics Advisory
Committee (Sharav).
Justice Edward Greenfield of the New York State Supreme Court
rules that parents do not have the right to volunteer their
mentally incapacitated children for non-therapeutic medical
research studies and that no mentally incapacitated person
whatsoever can be used in a medical experiment without informed
consent (Sharav).
(1996)
Professor Adil E. Shamoo of
the University of Maryland and the organization Citizens for
Responsible Care and Research sends a written testimony on the
unethical use of veterans in medical research to the U.S.
Senate's Committee on Governmental Affairs, stating:
"This type
of research is on-going nationwide in medical centers and VA
hospitals supported by tens of millions of dollars of taxpayers
money.
These experiments are high risk and are abusive, causing
not only physical and psychic harm to the most vulnerable groups
but also degrading our society’s system of basic human values.
Probably tens of thousands of patients are being subjected to
such experiments".
("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.")
The Department of Defense admits that Gulf War soldiers were
exposed to chemical agents; however, 33 percent of all military
personnel afflicted with Gulf War Syndrome never left the United
States during the war, discrediting the popular mainstream
belief that these symptoms are a result of exposure to Iraqi
chemical weapons (Merritte, et al.).
In a federally funded experiment at West Haven VA in
Connecticut, Yale University researchers give schizophrenic
veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous system
stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of
schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
President Clinton issues a formal apology to the subjects of the
Tuskegee Syphilis Study and their families (Sharav).
(1997)
In order to expose unethical
medical experiments that provoke psychotic relapse in
schizophrenic patients, the Boston Globe publishes a four-part
series entitled "Doing Harm: Research on the Mentally Ill" (Sharav).
Researchers give 26 veterans at a VA hospital a chemical called
Yohimbine to purposely induce post-traumatic stress disorder
("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In order to create a "psychosis model," University of Cincinnati
researchers give 16 schizophrenic patients at Cincinnati VA
amphetamine in order to provoke repeats bouts of psychosis and
eventually produce "behavioral sensitization" (Sharav).
National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) researchers give
schizophrenic veterans amphetamine, even though central nervous
system stimulants worsen psychotic symptoms in 40 percent of
schizophrenics ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
In an experiment sponsored by the U.S. government, researchers
withhold medical treatment from HIV-positive African-American
pregnant women, giving them a placebo rather than AIDS
medication (Sharav).
Researchers give amphetamine to 13 schizophrenic patients in a
repetition of the 1994 "amphetamine challenge" at New York VA
Hospital. As a result, the patients experience psychosis,
delusions and hallucinations. The researchers claim to have
informed consent ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.").
On Sept. 18, victims of unethical medical experiments at major
U.S. research centers, including the National Institutes of
Mental Health (NIMH) testify before the National Bioethics
Advisory Committee (Sharav).
(1999)
Adil E. Shamoo, Ph.D.
testifies on "The Unethical Use of Human Beings in High-Risk
Research Experiments" before the U.S. House of Representatives'
House Committee on Veterans' Affairs, alerting the House on the
use of American veterans in VA Hospitals as human guinea pigs
and calling for national reforms ("Testimony of Adil E. Shamoo,
Ph.D.").
Doctors at the University of Pennsylvania inject 18-year-old
Jesse Gelsinger with an experimental gene therapy as part of an
FDA-approved clinical trial. He dies four days later and his
father suspects that he was not fully informed of the
experiment's risk (Goliszek)
During a clinical trial investigating the effectiveness of
Propulsid for infant acid reflux, nine-month-old Gage Stevens
dies at Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh (Sharav).
(2000)
The Department of Defense
begins declassifying the records of
Project 112, including SHAD,
and locating and assisting the veterans who were exposed to live
toxins and chemical agents as part of Project 112. Many of them
have already died (Goliszek).
President Clinton authorizes the Energy Employees Occupational
Illness Compensation Act, which compensates the Department of
Energy workers who sacrificed their health to build the United
States' nuclear defenses (Sharav).
The U.S. Air Force and rocket maker Lockheed Martin sponsor a
Loma Linda University study that pays 100 Californians $1,000 to
eat a dose of perchlorate - a toxic component of rocket fuel
that causes cancer, damages the thyroid gland and hinders normal
development in children and fetuses - every day for six months.
The dose eaten by the test subjects is 83 times the safe dose of perchlorate set by the State of California, which has
perchlorate in some of its drinking water. This Loma Linda study
is the first large-scale study to use human subjects to test the
harmful effects of a water pollutant and is "inherently
unethical," according to Environmental Working Group research
director Richard Wiles (Goliszek, Envirnomental Working Group).
(2001)
Healthy 27-year-old Ellen
Roche dies in a challenge study at Johns Hopkins University in
Maryland (Sharav).
On its website, the FDA admits that its policy to include
healthy children in human experiments "has led to an increasing
number of proposals for studies of safety and pharmacokinetics,
including those in children who do not have the condition for
which the drug is intended" (Goliszek).
During a tobacco industry-financed Alzheimer's experiment at
Case Western University in Cleveland, Elaine Holden-Able dies
after she drinks a glass of orange juice containing a dissolved
dietary supplement (Sharav).
Radiologist Scott Scheer of Pennsylvania dies from kidney
failure, severe anemia and possibly lupus - all caused by blood
pressure drugs he was taking as part of a five-year clinical
trial. After his death, his family sues the Institutional Review
Board of Main Line Hospitals, the hospital that oversaw the
study, and two doctors.
Investigators from the federal Office
for Human Research Protections, which is part of the Department
of Health and Human Services, later conclude in a Dec. 20, 2002
letter to Scheer's oldest daughter:
"Your father apparently was
not told about the risk of hydralazine-induced lupus… OHRP
found that certain unanticipated problems involving risks to
subjects or others were not promptly reported to appropriate
institutional officials".
(Willen and Evans, "Doctor Who Died in
Drug Test Was Betrayed by System He Trusted.")
In Higgins and Grimes v. Kennedy Krieger Institute The Maryland
Court of Appeals makes a landmark decision regarding the use of
children as test subjects, prohibiting non-therapeutic
experimentation on children on the basis of "best interest of
the individual child" (Sharav).
(2002)
President
George W. Bush
signs the Best Pharmaceuticals for Children Act (BPCA), offering
pharmaceutical companies six-month exclusivity in exchange for
running clinical drug trials on children. This will of course
increase the number of children used as human test subjects
(Hammer Breslow).
(2003)
Two-year-old Michael Daddio
of Delaware dies of congestive heart failure. After his death,
his parents learn that doctors had performed an experimental
surgery on him when he was five months old, rather than using
the established surgical method of repairing his congenital
heart defect that the parents had been told would be performed.
The established procedure has a 90- to 95-percent success rate,
whereas the inventor of the procedure performed on baby Daddio
would later be fired from his hospital in 2004 (Willen and
Evans, "Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't
Warned").
(2004)
In his BBC documentary
"Guinea Pig Kids" and BBC News article of the same name,
reporter Jamie Doran reveals that children involved in the New
York City foster care system were unwitting human subjects in
experimental AIDS drug trials from 1988 to, in his belief,
present times (Doran).
(2005)
In response to the BBC
documentary and article "Guinea Pig Kids" (above
video), the New York City
Administration of Children's Services (ACS) sends out an Apr. 22
press release admitting that foster care children were used in
experimental AIDS drug trials, but says that the last trial took
place in 2001 and thus the trials are not continuing, as BBC
reporter Jamie Doran claims.
The ACS gives the extent and
statistics of the experimental drug trials, based on its own
records, and contracts the Vera Institute of Justice to conduct
"an independent review of ACS policy and practice regarding the
enrollment of HIV-positive children in foster care in clinical
drug trials during the late 1980s and 1990s" (New York City
ACS).
In exchange for receiving $2 million from the American Chemical
Society, the EPA proposes the Children's Health Environmental
Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) to learn how children ranging
from infancy to three years old ingest, inhale and absorb
chemicals by exposing children from a poor, predominantly black
area of Duval County, Fla., to these toxins.
Due to pressure
from activist groups, negative media coverage and two Democratic
senators, the EPA eventually decides to drop the study on Apr.
8, 2005 (Organic Consumers Association).
Bloomberg releases a series of reports suggesting that SFBC, the
largest experimental drug testing center of its time, exploits
immigrant and other low-income test subjects and runs tests with
limited credibility due to violations of both the FDA's and
SFBC's own testing guidelines (Bloomberg).
Additional
Information
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- "Parents of Babies Who Died in Delaware Tests Weren't
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