1950–1952: DES a synthetic estrogen tested on pregnant women without their consent

DES (diethylstilbestrol) is a man-made form of estrogen which has proven to be very harmful to developing female fetuses in the womb. At the University of Chicago, every pregnant woman at the University’s Lying-In Hospital (1,646) was a test subject for a DES experiment without their knowledge or consent. Half…

1953–1954: Multi-Site NIH Cooperative Study of Premature Babies’ Survival

NIH Multi-Site Cooperative Study of Retrolental Fibroplasia (RLF, later called, ROP), a form of blindness in premature babies was conducted at 18 hospitals nationwide. The first recorded case of RLF in a premature baby was in 1942 in Boston, decades after premature babies had been routinely provided unrestricted oxygen during…

1950s: Drs. Jonas Salk & Thomas Francis tested their influenza vaccine in institutionalized mental patients

Dr. Jonas Salk and Dr. Thomas Francis tested their influenza vaccine in institutionalized mental patients and prisoners in Michigan; Dr. Albert Sabin tested his live virus polio vaccine in 133 prisoners at the Federal Reformatory in Ohio; Sloan-Kettering collaborated with Ohio State University, and conducted cancer experiments in which live…

1951–1974: Dr. Albert Kligman’s “supermarket” variety of experiments at Holmesburg Prison

From the 1950s through the 70s Holmesburg Prison became the “supermarket” or “kmart” for human medical experiments conducted by Dr. Albert Kligman, a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist. Under his direction hundreds of painful experiments were conducted involving nearly 1,000 inmates. He recalled his first visit to the prison: “All I…

1952–1964: Chester M. Southam, MD, injected live cancer cells into 14 patients and healthy convicts

Chester M. Southam, MD, a noted immunologist at Sloan-Kettering Institute sought to study the human immunity response to cancer. He obtained funding from the government and injected live cancer cells into 14 patients with advanced cancer and into healthy convicts at Ohio State Prison. The study in prisoners was designed…

1955–1963: Dark Side of Salk Polio Vaccine

Scientific evidence existed showing the vaccine was contaminated with a cancer causing monkey virus — simian virus 40 (SV40) — but public health officials refused to take precautionary action. An estimated 98 million Americans received the Salk Polio vaccine. “Few back then grasped that these vaccines might also be a…

1955–1970: Saul Krugman, MD, conducted despicable medical experiments at Willowbrook

Dr. Krugman deliberately infected mentally disabled children who were confined at Willowbrook School (NY) with hepatitis B. The school housed 6,000 children in abominable conditions. In one experiment, children were fed excrement containing live hepatitis B virus. In another experiment children were injected with live hepatitis virus in an effort…

1961: Public Health Officials’ Criminal Culpability in Contaminated Polio Vaccine Disaster

In July, 1961, Merck and Parke-Davis recalled their Salk vaccines — without mentioning the cancer risk. NIH officials concealed the SV40 cancer risk and never recalled the rest of the polio vaccine supply. Even after they knew that the vaccine was infected, they continued to expose millions of Americans to…

1964: SV40 Virus implanted into patients with cancer

A report by Dr. Fred Jensen, in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute describes an experiment performed in patients terminally ill with cancer. The researchers took tissue from the patients, exposed the tissue to SV40, then they implanted the infected tissue back into the patients. Result: these implants grew…