U.S. WWII & Cold War Experiments
Introduction: Unconscionable U.S. Government-Funded Medical Experiments exposed human subjects to serious risk of harm without any intended benefit to the individual. They were conducted without voluntary, informed consent decades after the Nuremberg Code set ethical standards for civilized medical experiments. The human subjects were either coerced or unwitting: they included military troops, prisoners, mentally disabled persons, institutionalized children, and hospitalized patients. Thousands suffered irreparable harm and an untold number died.
1932–1972: Tuskegee Syphilis experiment
1932–1972: Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, “the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in the history of medicine,” continued unabated 25 years after Nuremberg. Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, “the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in the history of medicine” sponsored by the U.S. Public Health Service continued unabated until 1972 — 25 years after Nuremberg. More than…
Read More1939: “The Monster Experiment”
The “Monster Experiment” was conceived by and conducted under the supervision of Dr. Wendell Johnson, one of the nation’s most prominent speech pathologists. The experiment induced stuttering in twenty-two children living at the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Davenport. It was designed to test Dr. Johnson’s theory about the cause of stuttering, using psychological pressure…
Read More1942: The American Psychiatric Association debated legalizing murder (euthanasia)
In 1942, psychiatrists debated legalizing murder (“euthanasia”) at the American Psychiatric Association. Foster Kennedy, MD, advocated killing “feebleminded” “defective” children whom he called “Nature’s mistakes” “hopeless ones who should never have been born.” (Jay Joseph. The Missing Gene… 2006) He opposed euthanasia for normal, but severely ill adults. Dr. Leo Kanner argued against the validity…
Read More1940s: Fiendish “Refrigeration” experiments on mental patients at Harvard, U. of Cincinnati
A series of fiendish Hypothermia experiments subjected mental patients for prolonged periods to freezing temperatures. They were conducted by prominent psychiatrists at Harvard University’s McLean Hospital and the University of Cincinnati. DB Dill, MD, and WH Forbes, MD, described the procedure for freezing human beings in their published journal report: the naked and slightly anesthetized…
Read More1942: Edward Cohn, MD, a Harvard biochemist injected prisoners with beef blood
Edward Cohn, MD, a Harvard biochemist injected 64 Massachusetts prisoners with beef blood in an experiment sponsored by the U.S. Navy. The antigenic irritants in bovine serum albumin could not be purified away biochemically, dooming the medical utility of the bovine protein for the casualties of war. The rejection of the blood was catastrophic. (Pepper…
Read More1941–1958: Infectious disease experiments: institutionalized children “canaries in the mines”
1941–1945: U.S. Committee on Medical Research (CMR) was dedicated to wartime medicine; it funded and coordinated 137 institutions in the US that conducted research — including chemical warfare agents and prevention of infectious diseases tested on prisoners and children. CMR-funded infectious disease experiments: institutionalized children were used as “canaries in the mines” to test the…
Read More1942–1969: Dr. Lauretta Bender, child psychiatrist from Hell
Child psychiatrist, Dr. Lauretta Bender, began her experimental electroshock “treatments” in children in 1942 at Bellevue Hospital. She experimented extensively on helpless children whom she “diagnosed” with “autistic schizophrenia.” Some of the children were as young as 3 years of age. She used multiple electroshock (ECT) “treatments” at Bellevue Hospital (NYC) and then added LSD…
Read More1944: The largest malaria experiment involved 800 prisoners
US Army and State Department funded a crash program to develop new drugs against malaria. The largest single CMR malaria experiment involved 800 prisoners at federal penitentiary in Atlanta, New Jersey State Reformatory and Illinois State Penitentiary. A series of experiments were conducted at Stateville Penitentiary by medical researchers from the University of Chicago led…
Read More1945: Sterilization tally in the USA; in Nazi Germany
1945: “Sterilization of the Insane in the USA” a report in The Lancet based on information published in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that in the U.S. 77,878 people were sterilized: 20,063 (1907 to 1934); 15,815 (1935–1940); More than 42,000 (1941–1943) California led the pack with over 10,000 forced sterilizations. 1945: The…
Read MoreAugust 20, 1947: Judgment at Nuremberg
August 20, 1947: Judgment at Nuremberg: 16 out of 23 doctors were found guilty of crimes against humanity. The Nuremberg verdict also set forth the parameters of “Permissible Medical Experiments” known as the Nuremberg Code. The Nuremberg Code laid the foundation for biomedical ethics mandating that medical experiments conducted on human beings must conform to well-defined…
Read More1947: U.S. Government-Sponsored Human Experiments Disregard Nuremberg Standards
American public health officials and the medical community pretended that the Nuremberg Code did not apply to American medical researchers. The assumption was that the physicians who had conducted heinous experiments had been Nazi doctors in Germany; and they rationalized that most of the rogue doctors had been held accountable by the tribunals. (Lederer. Military…
Read More1946–1948: Syphilis Experiments in Guatemala
Syphilis experiments in Guatemala were funded by the US Public Health Service (PHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (later renamed Pan Am Health Org.) The US team of researchers in Guatemala was led by John Charles Cutler, MD of the PHS who had conducted a similar earlier…
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