Random Most Unethical US Government Experiments On Humans (13 items)

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  (#13) Tuskegee syphilis experiment

  • Disaster

  In 1932, researchers from the US Public Health Service and Alabama's Tuskegee Institute recruited 600 Black men of low socioeconomic status to study the natural progression of syphilis. The initial study comprised 399 infected patients and 201 without the disease. None had the opportunity to give informed consent; they thought they were simply being treated for “bad blood,” which colloquially at the time referred to anything from STDs to anemia to fatigue. As compensation, they received free medical exams, free food, and burial insurance.

  Penicillin became the gold standard for syphilis treatment by 1943, but researchers never offered it to the men in the Tuskegee study, many of whom didn't even know they were infected. The study continued for nearly 30 years more. 

  In 1972, the Associated Press broke the story of “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” and backlash was swift from the patients, the public, and the medical community. “I don’t know why the decision was made in 1946 not to stop the program,” remarked Don Prince, an official with the CDC. "I was unpleasantly surprised when I first came here and found out about it. It really puzzles me.”

  The patients filed a lawsuit and eventually shared a $9 million settlement. In May 1997, then-President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology, which included the passage: “I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist. That can never be allowed to happen again.”
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  (#9) An American Oncologist Infected Puerto Ricans With Cancer

  In the early 1930s, Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, an oncologist, was sponsored by the Rockefeller Institute to conduct experiments in Puerto Rico. He infected citizens with cancer cells, presumably to study the effects. Thirteen of them didn't survive. Even more striking is the doctor's lack of compassion: 

  They [Puerto Ricans] are beyond doubt the dirtiest, laziest, most degenerate and thievish race of men ever inhabiting this sphere. It makes you sick to inhabit the same island with them. They are even lower than Italians.

  It's not clear how someone of Rhoads's caliber was appointed to the US Atomic Energy Commission to study the effects of radiation - but it happened all the same. In the 1970s, the American Association for Cancer Research even created the annual Cornelius Rhoads award to recognize exemplary cancer researchers. In 2003, however, the program ceased.
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  (#5) The US Government Approved Spraying Deadly Chemicals Over American Cities

  Showing once again that the US tends to test worse-case scenarios by getting to them first, the US military and the CIA conducted a series of biochemical warfare simulations upon American cities to see how the effects would play out in the event of an actual chemical attack.

  They conducted the following campaigns, without public knowledge:
   

  • In 1950, the US Navy sprayed bacterial pathogens in the sky above San Francisco; it claimed the bacteria were harmless, but many people developed respiratory infections, with at least one fatal case.
  • The CIA released whooping cough virus in 1955 near Tampa, FL, using boats, and nearly caused an epidemic. Twelve people succumbed to the illness.
  • Between 1956 and 1958, the US Army unleashed millions of mosquitoes carrying the yellow fever virus in the vicinity of Savannah, GA, and Avon Park, FL. The resulting infections caused many people to suffer acute and chronic symptoms including fevers, bronchitis, encephalitis, and stillbirths. Adding insult to injury, Army personnel, posing as public health workers, arrived after each swarm to photograph, document, and test victims, after which they simply left.
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  (#10) The Pentagon Treated Black Cancer Patients With Extreme Radiation

  From 1960 to 1971, the US Department of Defense performed a series of irradiation experiments on nonconsenting, Black cancer patients of low socioeconomic status. Radiologist Dr. Eugene Saenger and colleagues simply told the patients they were receiving treatments that might be of benefit; no informed consent forms were involved.

  Some 88 patients were exposed to enough ionizing radiation in one hour to equal 20,000 medical X-rays. Most soon suffered from nausea, vomiting, gastrointestinal pain, appetite loss, and cognitive issues. Purportedly up to 25% of patients succumbed to radiation poisoning.
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  (#1) Project MKUltra, Subproject 68 Involved Child Abuse

  The CIA-run Project MKUltra (also written MK-Ultra) paid Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron for Subproject 68, AKA experiments involving mind-altering substances. The entire goal of the project was to look into methods of influencing and controlling people's minds and extracting information from resisting minds.

  To accomplish this, the doctor took patients admitted to the Royal Victoria Hospital's Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal (mostly for issues like bipolar disorder and anxiety disorders) and conducted "therapy" on them - treatment that was life-altering and scarring.

  Between 1957 and 1964, Cameron administered electroconvulsive therapy as frequently as twice daily, as opposed to the recommended limit of three times a week. He would put patients into drug-induced comas and play back tapes of simple statements or repetitive noises over and over again.

  The victims often lost the ability to speak, forgot about their parents, and suffered serious amnesia. All of this was performed on Canadian citizens because the CIA wasn’t willing to risk such operations on Americans. To ensure funding, Cameron experimented upon admitted children, and in one situation filmed a child engaging in intimate acts with high-ranking government officials, thus securing himself a valuable bargaining chip - blackmail.
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  (#2) US Soldiers Were Involuntary Guinea Pigs For Chemical Weapon Gasses

  As research on biological and chemical weapons intensified in the 1940s, American officials also began testing repercussions and defenses on the US Army itself. To determine the effectiveness of various chemicals, officials were known to have sprayed mustard gas (dichlorodiethyl sulfide) and other skin-burning, lung-destroying chemicals like lewisite on soldiers - many of whom were Black - without their consent or knowledge of the experiment. Upon contact with skin or mucous membranes, the gases can cause itching, swelling, blistering, and extreme burning pain.

  The US Government also tested the effectiveness of gas masks and protective clothing by locking soldiers in chambers and exposing them to mustard gas and lewisite, mimicking the gas chambers of Nazi Germany.

  It was also rumored that along with soldiers, Veterans Administration hospital patients may have been used as guinea pigs in experiments involving biological warfare chemicals, but that all experiment designations were changed to "observations" to ward off suspicions.

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