U.S. WWII & Cold War Experiments

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…

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…

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…

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:…

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…

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…

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…

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…