Crossposted from Invictus
Thanks to tigana for the link to this online resource regarding the U.S. Army’s decades-long experimentation of biological and chemical agents on human subjects. The site has a number of documentary photographs from the testing at Edgewood itself. The photos include both animal and human exerimentation. They are shocking in their display of cold, clinical, Nazi-like science. I recommend following up by reading the link to the Senate hearings included below. I will have much more to say on this subject in the near future.
Between 1955 and 1975, the U.S. Army used 7,000 enlisted soldiers as human guinea pigs for experiments involving a wide array of biological and chemical warfare agents.
These tests were conducted jointly by the U.S. Army Intelligence Board and the Chemical Warfare Laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal’s research facility in Maryland. Approximately 3,500 of these soldiers were given doses of powerful mind-altering psychochemicals, including LSD, PCP, and BZ. These “volunteer” test subjects were not told which drugs they were given, and were not fully informed of the extreme physical and psychological effects these drugs would have on them.
The images presented here are stills from documentary footage of these experiments filmed by the U.S. Army. To learn more, read the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on covert military testing of human subjects; see also the excellent A&E Investigative Reports documentary “Bad Trip to Edgewood.”
For more on the history of the Edgewood Arsenal Experiments, see the Wikipedia article, which I had a hand in assembling:
The Edgewood Arsenal experiments (also known as Project 112) are said to be related to or part of CIA mind control programs after World War II, like MKULTRA…. The experiments were performed at the Edgewood Arsenal, northeast of Baltimore, Maryland, and involved the use of neurological agents and heavy hallucinogens like LSD, THC, and BZ, in addition to biological and chemical agents…. In the mid-1970s, in the wake of many health claims made from exposure to such agents, including psychotropic and hallucinogenic drugs administered in later experiments, Congress began investigations of misuse of such experiments, and inadequate informed consent given by the soldiers and civilians involved.
The Edgewood experiments took place from approximately 1952-1974 at the Bio Medical Laboratory, which is now known as the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense. The volunteer would spend the weekend on-site. They would perform tests and procedures (math, navigation, following orders, memory and interview) while sober. The volunteer would then be dosed by a scientist and perform the same tests. These tests occurred in the building/hospital under the care of doctors and nurses. At times the tests would be taken outside to study the effects while in the field. For example the volunteer would have to guard a check point while under the influence to see what effects certain drugs had on the patient.
A pamphlet produced by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Health Effects from Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Weapons (Oct. 2003), discusses the Edgewood Arsenal Experiments in some detail.
This post is dedicated to the victims of white phosphorus at Fallujah.
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but thank you for the info.
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It helps get information out to the greater public, which has been woefully undereductated on this. If you add that to the very human reaction of denial and avoidance, then you get the state of ignorance about this government that gets us into wars like Iraq, and (hopefully not) possibly soon, Iran.
Coincidentally, I was doing a little research on James Ketchum last weekend. For those not familiar, he was the lead physician in conducting the experiments. I see his book linked on the wiki page. Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten. I haven’t read it yet but was planning to buy it particularly for the followup studies.
I will be interested to read your next essay Valtin.
totally, batshit insane with their LSD experiments, dubbed “MK-ULTRA”, back in the early 50’s.
Here’s a sample of what I mean – can you imagine?
Our tax dollars at work! I read that and think “Gee! I wonder how those hijackers outwitted our ‘intelligence’ agencies on 9/11?!?”
Particularly the specific mental hospitals and residential institutions? I’m wondering what types of research were carried out where and when, and I’m wondering if there is a published list somewhere.
i think this starts in small ways…
every summer i’d have an invasion of small ants in the kitchen. the first few years, i’d get the ant traps and for some reason i thought it was important to kill them… wipe them out… get RID OF THEM ugh out of the kitchen.
but then, one summer, looking at them and really thinking about these incredible little creatures, i thought i’d been the stupid one. they did me no harm. i left them alone, to the horror of my neighbors.
i started to look at life differently then. how easy it is for us to objectify things… oh look a bug on the table and let me just smush it::: BUT WHY?
how do we beat a dog or set a frog on fire or beat a kid smaller than we.. how do we justify experimenting on animals… and people…
how do we objectify 35% of the Iraqi population being destroyed in some way and not have a nation-wide strike… how are we not wailing in the streets for this horror
how do we do the things we do?
I salute you again for staying on the trail of this subject matter.
And I’ve let you know my admiration for your work has to do with my inability to face it often. For my father was an army guinea pig too, one of the first group of WWII Pacific Theatre pilots to receive amphetamines (he thought he was getting B vitamin shots). When he broke down after a possibly unmatched record of 54 missions in 8 months (the record might have been 72, but over a year and a half) he was “lost” on a hospital ship for four months. The family contacted the Montana senator (I don’t recall the name now) who searched for my father, and finally let the family know he’d been sent to Utah’s VA hospital, then he was sent to Sheridan WY.
He was subjected to electroshock therapy and “hydrotherapy.” They would not let family see him for months. I have since read up on MK Ultra and the previous such experiments, and the things to which my father was subjected are the ways they “erase” minds from having been subjected to experiments.
Why was he on that hospital ship? Like they needed him there? They were up to something. Of course the VA can’t come up with medical records before Utah.
I was born many years later but let me tell you, his experience turned my life to shit for decades and decades. He did not know why he “became irrational” and I only put it all together a couple weeks before he died, when the VA finally explained about the amphetamine experiments. He died never knowing why he “went insane” (amphetamine psychosis), and his life was a long painful series of efforts to prove his regained sanity to himself.
Enough said.
I so appreciate your work. I could not look at the monster’s face the way you do, I would be overcome for anger at what happened. Maybe some day I’ll find it in me to write more.
God on you for your work, Valtin.
FRONTPAGE THIS NOW!!!!!!!!!!!
Much, much more on that site.