MKULTRA and the Tuskegee experiment

[M is for Morphine]

This thread is about the importance of consent in medical experiments. It is also about extremely terrible acts perpetrated by agencies of the US government (and in some cases the Canadian and Indian government). While I have taken care not to go into graphic or forums inappropriate detail, the following may be distressing to read. This is your trigger warning.

Let's start with MKULTRA. A quick google search for this will bring up a large number of kooky conspiracy theory type websites. It is very easy to assume that this is some sort of made up, paranoid nonsense. However, it was very real. We'll talk about verifying this information a little later.

So, what is MKULTRA? In the 1940s, the US government learned first hand the horrors of non consensual experiments on human beings when the activities of Nazi Germany came to light. The conclusion the CIA reached was that this was totally rad, and they wanted in on it.

The published evidence indicates that Project MKULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and sexual abuse.

Yes, starting in the 1950s and continuing until the 60s, or possibly longer, the CIA experimented on citizens of the US and Canada without their knowledge or consent. They dosed strangers in bars, prostitutes, and prisoners with various psychotropic drugs including LSD and mescaline without them knowing. They even opened up their own brothel and experimented on the clients, knowing that they would be too embarrassed to tell. They destroyed related documents en masse when they were finally revealed.

Donald Ewen Cameron experimented in sensory deprivation to a degree that permanently damaged subjects, then moved moved to Canada where the Canadian government paid him half a million dollars to do it some more!

His treatments resulted in victims' incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents.

It is worth noting in closing that many of the techniques researched during the MKULTRA project were developed into psychological torture techniques. See the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual, which was used in various revised formats for decades and declassified in 2004.

In the 70s, 20,000 documents that were supposed to be destroyed but were overlooked because of misfiling were discovered, and investigated by a congressional comity. A large amount of data has been lost, so not much resulted other than an Executive order that prohibited "experimentation with drugs on human subjects, except with the informed consent, in writing and witnessed by a disinterested party, of each such human subject"

That wasn't the only thing to come to light during the 70s, though! In 1972, the public became aware of a series of experiments on poor rural African Americans.

The Public Health Service, working with the Tuskegee Institute, began the study in 1932. Investigators enrolled in the study a total of 600 impoverished, African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama; 399 who had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 without the disease. For participating in the study, the men were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance. They were never told they had syphilis, nor were they ever treated for it.

By 1947, penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Choices available to the doctors involved in the study might have included treating all syphilitic subjects and closing the study, or splitting off a control group for testing with penicillin. Instead, the Tuskegee scientists continued the study without treating any participants and withholding penicillin and information about it from the patients. In addition, scientists prevented participants from accessing syphilis treatment programs available to others in the area. The study continued, under numerous US Public Health Service supervisors, until 1972, when a leak to the press eventually resulted in its termination. The victims of the study included numerous men who died of syphilis, wives who contracted the disease, and children born with congenital syphilis.

They actually watched hundreds of people die who could have been saved, and by inaction allowed hundreds of others to be infected.

Also, in India between 1975 and 1977 the government paid for the sterilization of undesirables and political opponents, some of which were tricked or coerced into the procedure. The US did the same thing to Native American women, telling them the procedure was reversible (it wasnt'), telling them the surgery was to remove their tonsils, or providing the pertinent information in English without a translation into their native language.

Verifying claims
You should never believe everything you hear, and this goes doubly for the internet. However, you can request to view the documents related to MKULTRA through the Freedom of Information Act. Yup, you can order the documents that incriminate the CIA from the CIA. Ain't it a crazy world? Apparently this information is so frequently requested that they have a 'greatest hits' 3 CD set of mind control experiment documents.

It is strange to think about these sort of things happening within our parent's lifetime. It's even stranger to think about how many of us do not know.

[Deleted]

Three words: This. Is. Evil.

I read a bit of that KUBARK thing and found something I thought only existed in horror stories and/or fascist countries. I don't care if someone could be a terrorist, and I don't care just how bad a crime someone committed. This sort of torture is a big black stain upon the soul of whoever is doing it.

Say the object of torture is an evil psychopath who killed and/or tortured everyone in the country. I STILL don't like it. Because you're becoming just as bad as that person by doing this. If we really want to be better than them the solution is to try to reform them and if that fails than maybe they should be locked up for life. But still, no torture. Please. I won't allow it.

And the bit about people experimenting on innocent African and Native Americans - N-O! NO! If you're doing that you've reached the lowest of the low.

Basically, I am strongly against all this experimentation and torture stuff. It's wrong. Never do it, ever.

[Cow-winkle]

I've heard of this before, and it's good to make sure people are aware of it. I guess there's not much to debate (I'm pretty sure nobody here is IN FAVOUR OF performing non-consensual medical experiments on large groups of unsuspecting people), but there's not really another board to post something like this.

I didn't, however, know about the process of ordering information materials from the CIA. That's pretty neat. But I suppose you have to live in the United States to do it?

[M is for Morphine]

Oct 11, 2011 19:09:23 GMT -5 Cow-winkle said:

I've heard of this before, and it's good to make sure people are aware of it. I guess there's not much to debate (I'm pretty sure nobody here is IN FAVOUR OF performing non-consensual medical experiments on large groups of unsuspecting people), but there's not really another board to post something like this.

I didn't, however, know about the process of ordering information materials from the CIA. That's pretty neat. But I suppose you have to live in the United States to do it?

Yeah, it's more on the discussion end of D&D. Unless someone wanted to argue about the use of the information gained by the MKULTRA experiments in torture, which still goes on in US controlled places like Guantanamo Bay.

I think you do have to live in the US to request the documents, since they were made available specifically for citizens. It's actually a really complicated act. There are a bunch of restrictions on what is covered. Documents that would reveal trade secrets (for example, if the FDA knows the formula for Coke they can't release it), or violate the privacy of a citizen, or documents that might jeopardize a criminal investigation by being released can't be given out.

Actually, George W. Bush issued an executive order that Presidential records would be exempt, which is super crappy and suspicious. Obama overturned it with his own order, though.

I think transparency is important in a government, to a reasonable extent. The FOIA is a really great step in that direction. You can request some pretty weird stuff, like Project Bluebook documents. Project Bluebook was the government's investigation into UFOs. XD Mostly they seem to have done it because they heard the Russians were, I don't think they found anything interesting.

[Stephanie (swordlilly)]

Oct 11, 2011 14:56:55 GMT -5 M is for Morphine said:

you can request to view the documents related to MKULTRA through the Freedom of Information Act. Yup, you can order the documents that incriminate the CIA from the CIA. Ain't it a crazy world?

It sure is! We've come a long way within the space of a few decades.

These days, the rules on conducting any research involving human subjects are so strict that even an undergrad who wants to give a couple of people a pretty harmless questionnaire has to go through an IRB approval process before they can get funding for their project. Some of my friends who are in Cog Sci had to go through that. I'm lucky to be in the humanities where I mostly just work with books. XD

I've participated in a few Psych experiments too, and at the beginning of each questionnaire there was always a form that I had to sign. The form usually said something like, "If at any point the questions make you uncomfortable, you have the right to choose not to proceed," even if the questions turned out to be about as upsetting as the average conversation. At the time I found this paperwork kind of amusing, but thank you for reminding us, Teow, of the heavy prices that were paid before all this enforcement of the rights of human subjects. :3

[Deleted]

Oct 13, 2011 14:36:57 GMT -5 Stephanie (swordlilly) said:

Oct 11, 2011 14:56:55 GMT -5 M is for Morphine said:

you can request to view the documents related to MKULTRA through the Freedom of Information Act. Yup, you can order the documents that incriminate the CIA from the CIA. Ain't it a crazy world?

It sure is! We've come a long way within the space of a few decades.

These days, the rules on conducting any research involving human subjects are so strict that even an undergrad who wants to give a couple of people a pretty harmless questionnaire has to go through an IRB approval process before they can get funding for their project. Some of my friends who are in Cog Sci had to go through that. I'm lucky to be in the humanities where I mostly just work with books. XD

I've participated in a few Psych experiments too, and at the beginning of each questionnaire there was always a form that I had to sign. The form usually said something like, "If at any point the questions make you uncomfortable, you have the right to choose not to proceed," even if the questions turned out to be about as upsetting as the average conversation. At the time I found this paperwork kind of amusing, but thank you for reminding us, Teow, of the heavy prices that were paid before all this enforcement of the rights of human subjects. :3

In 7th grade each of us was required to do a project for the science fair, and there was that rule about the consent of doing an experiment with human subjects. You could definitely NOT, however, involve any vertebrate animal, which disappointed me since I was planning on doing a project researching cats and kittens and how the mother looks after them (without harming the animals, of course).

The reason my teacher gave was this: even though she knew I would never hurt an animal, there was some wacko who would. And because of that one wacko this rule was in place.

Now, you could torture a bug all you wanted (which I don't approve of either).

Sorry if this is too off topic, guys.

[Dju]

This is so...uhm, worrying. I mean, we're under influence of the most powerful people all the time, I hate feeling as if I can't control a situation. What if, I dunno, the government simply decides to kidnap random people to experiment on them? They are in control of the police, buh bye. End. O_e

*sigh* Science, as any other things, needs limits to be properly managed. You have to understand rights of each living being, when I read about Laika (the first living being in space) died of a heart attack during launch, I couldn't hep but feel...something like agony? Ungh. Poor Laika, totally had the right to live taken away from her, just like that.

Our History teacher showed us a documentary about the experiments made on the Jewish, homosexuals, gypsies and all the other prisoners in the Nazi times, it was awful. Unhumane, totally monstrous.

Thankfully the world learned many things from this...glad we have internet to order CIA documents and profiles to join forces to support noble causes now days! ^-^;

[Deleted]

Oct 13, 2011 14:36:57 GMT -5 Stephanie (swordlilly) said:

Oct 11, 2011 14:56:55 GMT -5 M is for Morphine said:

you can request to view the documents related to MKULTRA through the Freedom of Information Act. Yup, you can order the documents that incriminate the CIA from the CIA. Ain't it a crazy world?

It sure is! We've come a long way within the space of a few decades.

These days, the rules on conducting any research involving human subjects are so strict that even an undergrad who wants to give a couple of people a pretty harmless questionnaire has to go through an IRB approval process before they can get funding for their project. Some of my friends who are in Cog Sci had to go through that. I'm lucky to be in the humanities where I mostly just work with books. XD

I've participated in a few Psych experiments too, and at the beginning of each questionnaire there was always a form that I had to sign. The form usually said something like, "If at any point the questions make you uncomfortable, you have the right to choose not to proceed," even if the questions turned out to be about as upsetting as the average conversation. At the time I found this paperwork kind of amusing, but thank you for reminding us, Teow, of the heavy prices that were paid before all this enforcement of the rights of human subjects. :3

Thanks for the warning, Teow. ^^ S'good to be prepared.

I've had similar experiences. 3rd year psych students are given the task of running our own experiments under our professor's supervision. I did mine on the acceptability of certain types of punishment, so I constructed written scenarios in which a child displayed X behavior, and was punished with Y, and then a questionnaire to determine how appropriate the punishment was given the nature of the child, the family and the problem behavior.

Well, I sent my proposal to my professor who came back to me a while later saying that the Ethics Committee wouldn't give approval unless the questionnaires were made confidential (I would be recruiting friends and family members as well as strangers) and anonymous. I had to ensure that, before the participant handed their survey back to me, they sealed it in an envelope. I also had to recruit a classmate to open and code the data for me so I wouldn't recognize someone from the demographic information provided. (age, gender, parent/non-parent, number and age of children)

At the time it seemed a little ridiculous, but ... yeah. I don't suppose it's that big an overreaction when you see what's gone on in the past, and might well be continued to this day.

One thing I do find it interesting to discuss is exactly what is and isn't ethical in certain areas. One situation I read of recently was a man with Somatoparaphrenia claiming his left leg didn't belong to him. He approached surgeon Robert Smith and asked for the limb to be amputated. The surgeon went through with it. =/ Now, I would call this case unethical because the patient involved was not in a fit mental state to be making rational decisions about his body, let alone within a medical and surgical context. However, some have argued that amputees by choice with sound minds should not be prevented. What do you guys think?

[Deleted]

Oct 13, 2011 16:08:26 GMT -5 @adoqhina said:

Oct 13, 2011 14:36:57 GMT -5 Stephanie (swordlilly) said:

It sure is! We've come a long way within the space of a few decades.

These days, the rules on conducting any research involving human subjects are so strict that even an undergrad who wants to give a couple of people a pretty harmless questionnaire has to go through an IRB approval process before they can get funding for their project. Some of my friends who are in Cog Sci had to go through that. I'm lucky to be in the humanities where I mostly just work with books. XD

I've participated in a few Psych experiments too, and at the beginning of each questionnaire there was always a form that I had to sign. The form usually said something like, "If at any point the questions make you uncomfortable, you have the right to choose not to proceed," even if the questions turned out to be about as upsetting as the average conversation. At the time I found this paperwork kind of amusing, but thank you for reminding us, Teow, of the heavy prices that were paid before all this enforcement of the rights of human subjects. :3

Thanks for the warning, Teow. ^^ S'good to be prepared.

I've had similar experiences. 3rd year psych students are given the task of running our own experiments under our professor's supervision. I did mine on the acceptability of certain types of punishment, so I constructed written scenarios in which a child displayed X behavior, and was punished with Y, and then a questionnaire to determine how appropriate the punishment was given the nature of the child, the family and the problem behavior.

Well, I sent my proposal to my professor who came back to me a while later saying that the Ethics Committee wouldn't give approval unless the questionnaires were made confidential (I would be recruiting friends and family members as well as strangers) and anonymous. I had to ensure that, before the participant handed their survey back to me, they sealed it in an envelope. I also had to recruit a classmate to open and code the data for me so I wouldn't recognize someone from the demographic information provided. (age, gender, parent/non-parent, number and age of children)

At the time it seemed a little ridiculous, but ... yeah. I don't suppose it's that big an overreaction when you see what's gone on in the past, and might well be continued to this day.

One thing I do find it interesting to discuss is exactly what is and isn't ethical in certain areas. One situation I read of recently was a man with Somatoparaphrenia claiming his left leg didn't belong to him. He approached surgeon Robert Smith and asked for the limb to be amputated. The surgeon went through with it. =/ Now, I would call this case unethical because the patient involved was not in a fit mental state to be making rational decisions about his body, let alone within a medical and surgical context. However, some have argued that amputees by choice with sound minds should not be prevented. What do you guys think?

I don't think it's possible for a mentally and/or emotionally healthy person to want a working limb or other part of the body amputated. That just injures the person, and the only other reason I can think of besides that disorder for a want of this would be someone who thought they were deserving of it as a punishment. And those kind of people need help, not that.

I certainly hope no one would harm someone because they asked you to. If someone (whether friend, family or stranger) approached me and asked for me to hurt them in any way, I'd get them to a psychologist or similar therapist.

Now...so far, there are no medical advancements which allows a limb to be transplanted to someone who has lost it. If someday in the future that happens and someone wanted to give their own working limb to a relative who had lost one, that would be another story. But since we can't really do that right now, no, I don't think anyone should be unreasonably injured.

[Deleted]

Oct 13, 2011 16:32:03 GMT -5 @saeryena said:

Oct 13, 2011 16:08:26 GMT -5 @adoqhina said:

Thanks for the warning, Teow. ^^ S'good to be prepared.

I've had similar experiences. 3rd year psych students are given the task of running our own experiments under our professor's supervision. I did mine on the acceptability of certain types of punishment, so I constructed written scenarios in which a child displayed X behavior, and was punished with Y, and then a questionnaire to determine how appropriate the punishment was given the nature of the child, the family and the problem behavior.

Well, I sent my proposal to my professor who came back to me a while later saying that the Ethics Committee wouldn't give approval unless the questionnaires were made confidential (I would be recruiting friends and family members as well as strangers) and anonymous. I had to ensure that, before the participant handed their survey back to me, they sealed it in an envelope. I also had to recruit a classmate to open and code the data for me so I wouldn't recognize someone from the demographic information provided. (age, gender, parent/non-parent, number and age of children)

At the time it seemed a little ridiculous, but ... yeah. I don't suppose it's that big an overreaction when you see what's gone on in the past, and might well be continued to this day.

One thing I do find it interesting to discuss is exactly what is and isn't ethical in certain areas. One situation I read of recently was a man with Somatoparaphrenia claiming his left leg didn't belong to him. He approached surgeon Robert Smith and asked for the limb to be amputated. The surgeon went through with it. =/ Now, I would call this case unethical because the patient involved was not in a fit mental state to be making rational decisions about his body, let alone within a medical and surgical context. However, some have argued that amputees by choice with sound minds should not be prevented. What do you guys think?

I don't think it's possible for a mentally and/or emotionally healthy person to want a working limb or other part of the body amputated. That just injures the person, and the only other reason I can think of besides that disorder for a want of this would be someone who thought they were deserving of it as a punishment. And those kind of people need help, not that.

Some recent advancement in the technology of artificial limbs has led some to want to replace their flesh limbs with cybernetic ones which are far more capable and far less fallible. I can't say I'd want this for myself, but if I did happen to lose an arm it'd be kind of cool. xD

Warning: some graphic images are presented in this video.