- The United States has a long history
of experimentation, on unwitting human subjects, which goes back to the
beginning of this century. Both private firms and the military have used
unknowing human populations to test various theories. However, the extent
to which human experimentation has been a part of the U.S. Biological Weapons
programs will probably never be known. The following examples are taken
from information declassified in 1977, and from other private source accounts.
Several involve incidents which are still of unknown origins and which
cannot be fully explained:
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- 1900:
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- A U.S. doctor doing research in
the Philippines infected of number of prisoners with the Plague. He continued
his research by inducing Beriberi in another 29 prisoners. The experiments
resulted in two known fatalities.
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- 1915:
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- A doctor in Mississippi produced
Pellagra in twelve white Mississippi inmates in an attempt to discover
a cure for the disease.
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- 1931:
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- The Puerto Rican Cancer Experiment
was undertaken by Dr. Cornelius Rhoads. Under the auspices of the Rockefeller
Institute for Medical Investigations, Rhoads purposely infected his subjects
with cancer cells. Thirteen of the subjects died. When the experiment was
uncovered, and in spite of Rhoads' written opinions that the Puerto Rican
population should be eradicated, Rhoads went on to establish U.S. Army
Biological Warfare facilities in Maryland, Utah, and Panama. He later was
named to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and was at the heart of the
recently revealed radiation experiments on prisoners, hospital patients,
and soldiers.
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- 1932:
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- The Tuskegee Syphilis Study began.
Two hundred (200) poor black men with syphilis began a long term experiment
in which those men were to be studied. They were never told of their illness,
and treatment was denied them. As many as 100 of the original 200 died
as a direct or indirect result of the illness. The wives and children of
the subjects also suffered as a result of the disease. (The government
office supervising the study was the predecessor to today's Centers for
Disease Control (CDC)).
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- 1940's:
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- In a crash program to develop new
drugs to fight Malaria during World War II, doctors in the Chicago area
infected nearly 400 prisoners with the disease. Although the Chicago inmates
were given general information that they were helping with the war effort,
they were not provided adequate information in accordance with the later
standards set by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. Nazi doctors on trial
at Nuremberg cited the Chicago studies as precedents to defend their own
behavior in aiding the German war effort.
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- 1950:
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- The U.S. Navy sprayed a cloud of
bacteria over San Francisco. The Navy claimed that the bacteria was harmless,
and used only to track a simulated attack, but many San Francisco residents
became ill with pneumonia-like symptoms, and one is known to have died.
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- 1950 - 1953:
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- An array of germ warfare weapons
were allegedly used against North Korea. Accounts claim that there were
releases of feathers infected with anthrax, fleas and mosquitoes dosed
with Plague and Yellow Fever, and rodents infected with a variety of diseases.
These were precisely the same techniques used in immunity from prosecution
in exchange for the results of that research. The Eisenhower administration
later pressed Sedition Charges against three Americans who published charges
of these activities. However, none of those charged were convicted.
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- 1952 - 1953:
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- In another series of experiments,
the U.S. military released clouds of "harmless" gases over six
(6) U.S. and Canadian cities to observe the potential for similar releases
under chemical and germ warfare scenarios. A follow-up report by the military
noted the occurrence of respiratory problems in the unwitting civilian
populations.
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- 1955:
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- The Tampa Bay area of Florida experienced
a sharp rise in Whooping Cough cases, including 12 deaths, after a CIA
test where a bacteria withdrawn from the Army's Chemical and Biological
Warfare arsenal was released into the environment. Details of the test
are still classified.
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- 1956 - 1958:
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- In Savannah, Georgia and Avon Park,
Florida, the Army carried out field tests in which mosquitoes were released
into residential neighborhoods from both ground level and from aircraft.
Many people were swarmed by Mosquitoes, and fell ill, some even died. After
each test, U.S. Army personnel posing as public health officials photographed
and tested the victims. It is theorized that the mosquitoes were infected
with a strain of Yellow Fever. However, details of the testing remain classified.
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- 1965:
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- In a three year study, 70 volunteer
prisoners at the Holmesburg State Prison in Philadelphia were subjected
to tests of dioxin, the highly toxic chemical contaminant in Agent Orange.
Lesions which the men developed were not treated and remained for up to
seven months. None of the subjects was informed that they would later be
studied for the development of cancer. This was the second such experiment
which Dow Chemical undertook on "volunteers" who did not receive
the information which the world proclaimed was necessary for "informed
consent" at Nuremberg.
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- 1966:
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- The U.S. Army dispensed a bacillus
throughout the New York City subway system. Materials available on the
incident noted the Army's justification for the experiment was the fact
that there are many subways in the (former) Soviet Union, Europe, and South
America. Although there are no harmful effects known for this release,
details of the experiment are still classified.
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- 1968 - 1969:
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- The CIA experimented with the possibility
of poisoning drinking water by injecting a chemical substance into the
water supply of the Food And Drug Administration in Washington, D.C.. There
were no harmful effects noted from this experiment. However, none of the
human subjects in the building were ever asked for their permission, nor
was anyone provided with information on the nature or effects of the chemical
used.
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- 1969:
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- On June 9, 1969, Dr. D.M. McArtor,
then Deputy Director of Research and Technology for the Department of Defense,
appeared before the House Subcommittee on Appropriations to request funding
for a project to produce a synthetic biological agent for which humans
have not yet acquired a natural immunity. Dr. McArtor asked for $10 million
dollars to produce this agent over the next 5-10 years. The Congressional
Record reveals that according to the plan for the development of this germ
agent, the most important characteristic of the new disease would be "that
it might be refractory [resistant] to the immunological and therapeutic
processes upon which we depend to maintain our relative freedom from infectious
disease". AIDS first appeared as a public health risk ten years later.
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- 1972:
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- President Nixon announced a ban
on the production and use of biological (but not chemical) warfare agents.
However, as the Army's own experts reveal, this ban is meaningless because
the studies required to protect against biological warfare weapons are
generally indistinguishable from those for chemical weapons.
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- 1977:
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- Ray Ravenhott, director of the
population program of the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID),
publicly announced the agency's goal to sterilize one quarter of the world's
women. In reports by the St Louis Post-Dispatch, Ravenhott in essence cited
the reasoning for this being U.S. corporate interests in avoiding the threat
of revolutions which might be spawned by chronic unemployment.
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- 1980-1981:
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- Within months of their incarceration
in detention centers in Miami and Puerto Rico, many male Haitian refugees
developed an unusual condition called "gynecomasia". This is
a condition in which males develop full female breasts. A number of the
internees at Ft. Allen in Puerto Rico claimed that they were forced to
undergo a series of injections which they believed to be hormones.
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- 1981:
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- More than 300,000 Cubans were stricken
with dengue hemorrhagic fever. An investigation by the magazine 'Covert
Action Information Bulletin', which tracks the workings of various intelligence
agencies around the world, suggested that this outbreak was the result
of a release of mosquitoes by Cuban counterrevolutionaries. The magazine
tracked the activities of one CIA operative from a facility in Panama to
the alleged Cuban connections. During the last 30 years, Cuba has been
subjected to an enormous number of outbreaks of human and crop diseases
which are difficult to attribute purely natural causes.
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- 1982:
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- El Salvadoran trade unionists claimed
that epidemics of many previously unknown diseases had cropped up in areas
immediately after U.S. directed aerial bombings. There is no hard evidence
to support these charges. However, the pattern and types of outbreaks are
consistent with the claims.
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- 1985:
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- An outbreak of Dengue fever strikes
Managua Nicaragua shortly after an increase of U.S. aerial reconnaissance
missions. Nearly half of the capital city's population was stricken with
the disease, and several deaths have been attributed to the outbreak. It
was the first such epidemic in the country and the outbreak was nearly
identical to that which struck Cuba a few years earlier (1981). Dengue
fever variations were the focus of much experimentation at the Army's Biological
Warfare test facility at Ft. Dietrick, Maryland prior to the 'ban' on such
research in 1972.
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- 1985:
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- In ruling on a case in which a
former U.S. Army sergeant attempted to bring a lawsuit against the Army
for using experimental drugs on him, without his knowledge, the U.S. Supreme
Court determined that allowing such an action against the military would
disrupt the chain of command. Thus, nearly all potential actions against
the military for past, or future, misdeeds have been barred as have actions
aimed at the release of classified documents on the subject.
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- 1987:
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- As the result of a lawsuit by a
public interest group, the Department of Defense was forced to reveal the
fact that it still operated Chemical and Biological Warfare (CBW) research
programs at 127 sites around the United States.
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- 1996:
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- Under pressure from Congress and
the public, after a 60 Minutes segment, the U.S. Department of Defense
finally admits that at least 20,000 U.S. servicemen "may" have
been exposed to chemical weapons during operation 'Desert Storm'. This
exposure came as a result of the destruction of a weapons bunker. Causes
of the similar illnesses of other troops, who were not in this area, have
not yet been explained, other than as post traumatic stress syndromes.
Veterans groups have released information that many of the problems may
be a result of experimental vaccines and innoculations which were provided
troops during the military buildup.
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