How Unethical Experiments Have Defined Modern Medicine
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Medicine is a modern marvel. The creation and discovery of numerous drugs, therapies, and surgical interventions has undoubtedly saved the lives of millions of Americans. Where would we be without penicillin or apendectomies? Even our ability to sterilize wounds and prevent infection has drastically increased the average lifespan.
But not all treatments are created equal. For every breakthrough, lifesaving discovery, dozens more turn out to be harmful, ineffective, or even deadly. Perhaps more important than the discoveries themselves is the way in which they were discovered.
Penicillin, for example, was discovered largely by accident. Dr. Alexander Fleming, the bacteriologist on duty at St. Mary’s Hospital, returned from a summer vacation in Scotland to find a messy lab bench and a good deal more.
Upon examining some colonies of Staphylococcus aureus, Dr. Fleming noted that a mold called
Penicillium notatum had contaminated his Petri dishes. After carefully placing the dishes under his microscope, he was amazed to find that the mold prevented the normal growth of the staphylococci.After a few more weeks, Dr. Fleming had enough of the mold to begin testing it against infections. The research was continued by Dr. Howard Florey, who was able to create and run the lab tests necessary to prove the efficacy of penicillin.
Only after these experiments did the first human test get underway. In September 1940, an Oxford police constable, Albert Alexander, provided the first test case. Alexander nicked his face working in his rose garden. The scratch, infected with streptococci and staphylococci, spread to his eyes and scalp.
Although Alexander was admitted to the Radcliffe Infirmary and treated with doses of sulfa drugs, the infection worsened and resulted in smoldering abscesses in the eye, lungs and shoulder. Dying and out of options, the patient consented to treatment with penicillin.
Today’s standards dictate a similar approach: Laboratory studies to test a hypothesis, followed by animal studies, and finally human studies. These human studies require voluntary participation, informed consent, careful monitoring, and control groups to ensure the highest possible level of safety.
Sadly, this has not always been the case. For nearly as long as modern medicine has existed, so have egregious ethical violations. When hear the term “medical experimentation,” your mind may recall the horrendous experiments conducted in Nazi Germany on Jews, communists, homosexuals, and an assortment of other “undesirables” under the Third Reich. While these experiments were undoubtedly appalling, they were neither the first nor the last of their kind.
In fact, the history of unethical experiments in the United States is long and harrowing. Children, soldiers, minorities, prisoners, and even entire cities have been forcibly or unknowingly subjected to dangerous, cruel, and often lethal experiments… all in the name of science.
While the instance of illegal and unethical medical experimentation dates back before the founding of our nation, we’re going to start 177 years ago, in 1845. The following is a brief history of just some of the horrendous, inhumane experiments conducted by the medical and scientific communities (often in partnership with the U.S. Government).
In the words of Edmund Burke: “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it.” Here are just a few examples of the Medical Industrial Complex experimenting with dangerous drugs on unwilling victims.
1939: 22 Orphans Submitted to Psychological Abuse in Stutter Study
The Monster Study was conducted by Dr. Wendell Johnson (a speech pathologist) to learn more about why children developed a stutter. Johnson developed the Monster Study to see if stuttering was a result of learned behavior or Biology.
“If stuttering is learned behavior, it can be unlearned,” he thought. To validate his thesis, Johnson needed to design an experiment that induced stuttering. If, he reasoned, any and every child could be made to stutter, then obviously no underlying physiological defect was required. If stuttering could be called forth in normal youngsters, it would be proved as a learned, conditioned response.
Johnson chose 22 orphans as participants for The Monster Study. Some of the orphans had a stutter. (It’s not uncommon for young children to have a stutter and then naturally “get over” the stutter without treatment.) Some of the orphans didn’t have a stutter.
None were told the intent of her research. They believed that they were to receive speech therapy. The twenty-two children were separated into four groups: Group IA, Group IB, Group IIA, and Group IIB. Group IA consisted of five children who did in fact stutter and were given the label “stutterers” although the goal for this group of children was to remove the label placed on them. They were told they spoke normally as opposed to being ostracized into a group of individuals who spoke otherwise.
Group IB consisted of five children as well who were also labeled as “stutterers” however, unlike with Group IA these children were not told they spoke perfectly well, instead, these children were treated as such, stutterers. Group IIA consisted of six children who spoke outside the bounds of stuttering although they were labeled as “stutterers”. Unlike with the children in Group IA who did in fact stutter but were told they spoke perfectly well, the children in group IIA spoke perfectly well and were told they had an issue with stuttering.
Lastly was Group IIB which consisted of six children as well who did not stutter and had no negative speech connotations placed on them. Each group of children were treated according to their labels
The subjects sought justice. In the early 2000s, three of the subjects in the “stutterer” group sued the University of Iowa for emotional distress and fraudulent misrepresentation. The estates of three of the other “stutterers” were also included in the lawsuit. The plaintiffs claimed that the impact of the study had a lasting impact. One still “hates to talk.” Another, who says she now has a good life, said that she didn’t have many friends in the orphanage partly because she was so quiet.
They won their settlement and the University of Iowa paid over $1 million to the victims and their estates.
1942: U.S. Exposes Thousands of Soldiers to Mustard Gas
During World War II, scientists funded by the United States government conducted mustard gas experiments on 60,000 American soldiers as part of military preparation for potential chemical warfare.
One aspect of the chemical warfare research program on mustard gas involved race-based human experimentation. In at least nine research projects conducted during the 1940s, scientists investigated how so-called racial differences affected the impact of mustard gas exposure on the bodies of soldiers.
And it wasn’t just African Americans. Japanese Americans were used as test subjects, serving as proxies for the enemy so scientists could explore how mustard gas and other chemicals might affect Japanese troops. Puerto Rican soldiers were also singled out.
White enlisted men were used as scientific control groups. Their reactions were used to establish what was “normal,” and then compared to the minority troops. All of the World War II experiments with mustard gas were done in secret and weren’t recorded on the subjects’ official military records.
Most do not have proof of what they went through. They received no follow-up health care or monitoring of any kind. And they were sworn to secrecy about the tests under threat of dishonorable discharge and military prison time, leaving some unable to receive adequate medical treatment for their injuries, because they couldn’t tell doctors what happened to them.
1946: Soldiers, Sex Workers, Mental Patients, and Prisoners Infected with Venereal Diseases
Led by chief PHS physician John Cutler and funded by the NIH (both of which are departments of HHS), the Guatemala Experiment was undoubtedly a U.S. endeavor. And the lack of ethics was not lost on those involved. In fact, Dr. Parran, still Surgeon General at the time, acknowledged that the study could never take place on U.S. soil.
The subjects were among the most vulnerable populations, including prison inmates, orphans, soldiers, prostitutes, and patients at a nearby mental hospital. These subjects included children as young as 10 years old.
The methods used in the study are deplorable, and unfit to print here in detail. Prostitutes were intentionally infected and provided to Guatemalan soldiers. Inmates and mental patients were forcibly infected, with researchers going so far as to put bodily fluids from the infected into the eyes and orifices of other subjects.
One psychiatric patient was injected with syphilis by Dr. Cutler and suffered severe side effects until treatment was administered 3 months later. After the treatment, Cutler put bodily fluids from a subject infected with gonorrhea into the patient’s eyes and other sensitive areas and injected her with syphilis yet again. The patient, who was subjected to these barbaric experiments against her will, suffered horrific symptoms and died a few days later.
1953: CIA Tortures Subjects in Interrogation Experiment
MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA project in which the agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments—sometimes on unwitting U.S. citizens—to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture. Though Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973, details of the illicit program didn’t become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world.
In the 1950s and 1960s—the height of the Cold War—the United States government feared that Soviet, Chinese and North Korean agents were using mind control to brainwash U.S. prisoners of war in Korea.
In response, Allan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), approved Project MK-Ultra in 1953. The covert operation aimed to develop techniques that could be used against Soviet bloc enemies to control human behavior with drugs and other psychological manipulators.
The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy. Sometimes the test subjects knew they were participating in a study—but at other times, they had no idea, even when the hallucinogens started taking effect.
In 1974, New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh published a story about how the CIA had conducted non-consensual drug experiments and illegal spying operations on U.S. citizens. His report started the lengthy process of bringing long-suppressed details about MK-Ultra to light.
The following year, President Ford—in the wake of the Watergate scandal and amid growing distrust of the U.S. government—set up the United States President’s Commission on CIA Activities within the United States to investigate illegal CIA activities, including Project MK-Ultra and other experiments on unsuspecting citizens.
1953: CIA Tortures Subjects in Interrogation Experiment
MK-Ultra was a top-secret CIA project in which the agency conducted hundreds of clandestine experiments—sometimes on unwitting U.S. citizens—to assess the potential use of LSD and other drugs for mind control, information gathering and psychological torture. Though Project MK-Ultra lasted from 1953 until about 1973, details of the illicit program didn’t become public until 1975, during a congressional investigation into widespread illegal CIA activities within the United States and around the world.
In the 1950s and 1960s—the height of the Cold War—the United States government feared that Soviet, Chinese and North Korean agents were using mind control to brainwash U.S. prisoners of war in Korea.
In response, Allan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), approved Project MK-Ultra in 1953. The covert operation aimed to develop techniques that could be used against Soviet bloc enemies to control human behavior with drugs and other psychological manipulators.
The program involved more than 150 human experiments involving psychedelic drugs, paralytics and electroshock therapy. Sometimes the test subjects knew they were participating in a study—but at other times, they had no idea, even when the hallucinogens started taking effect.
In 1974, New York Times journalist Seymour Hersh published a story about how the CIA had conducted non-consensual drug experiments and illegal spying operations on U.S. citizens. His report started the lengthy process of bringing long-suppressed details about MK-Ultra to light.
The following year, President Ford—in the wake of the Watergate scandal and amid growing distrust of the U.S. government—set up the United States President’s Commission on CIA Activities within the United States to investigate illegal CIA activities, including Project MK-Ultra and other experiments on unsuspecting citizens.
2004: AstraZeneca Study Forces Patient to Participate, Resulting in Death
Dan Markingson was 26 years old when he was forced to make a decision: join a clinical trial or face commitment to a psychiatric institution. University of Minnesota research participant died by suicide while enrolled in an industry-sponsored pharmaceutical trial comparing three FDA-approved atypical antipsychotics: Seroquel (quetiapine), Zyprexa (olanzapine), and Risperdal (risperidone).
Writing on the circumstances surrounding Markingson’s death in the study, which was designed and funded by Seroquel manufacturer AstraZeneca, University of Minnesota Professor of Bioethics Carl Elliott noted that Markingson was enrolled in the study against the wishes of his mother, Mary Weiss, and that he was forced to choose between enrolling in the study or being involuntarily committed to a state mental institution. Further investigation revealed financial ties to AstraZeneca by Markingson’s psychiatrist, Dr. Stephen C. Olson.
In 2010, AstraZeneca agreed to pay over $500 million to settle claims that the company had illegally marketed Seroquel for off-label use. The pharma giant stole hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars through Medicare and Medicaid kickbacks and scams, bribing doctors to prescribe the drug for aggression, Alzheimer’s, anger management, anxiety, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, dementia, depression, mood disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and sleeplessness – all conditions for which the drug had never been tested.
It was given to the elderly, children, veterans and inmates, who were treated as “guinea pigs,” according to the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The Seroquel label now includes a special “increased mortality” warning that cites an increased risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in children, adolescents, and young adults.
There are dozens upon dozens of stories just like these. A recent analysis of drugs approved by the FDA between 2001 and 2010 found that nearly a third ended up years later with warnings about unexpected, sometimes life-threatening side effects or complications.
The 71 flagged drugs included top-sellers for treating depression, arthritis, infections and blood clots. Safety issues included risks for serious skin reactions, liver damage, cancer and even death.
If you think that these illegal, immoral, and unethical experiments are a thing of the past, think again. This is the foundation on which modern Western medicine was built. The pharmaceutical industry exists to create cash, not cures. It cares more about profit than patients and is rarely deterred by fines and lawsuits.
That’s because these companies own the government entities that are meant to oversee them. They are the #1 source of revenue for the media on which you rely for information. They built the curricula with which western doctors are taught, and they are almost exclusively responsible for their continued education.
The examples above are just a small glimpse into the evil inner workings of a medical mafia that’s willing to do anything and everything to make an extra buck. Infecting children with diseases? Using slaves and prisoners as lab rats? Exposing soldiers to chemical weapons? Poisoning the subway system?
These are all very real things that have happened in our nation’s short history. Around the globe, these kinds of experiments on human beings are just as common. And it’s just a small glimpse into the true nature of the world in which we live.
To learn more about the atrocities committed in the name of modern medicine, download our FREE eBook: 177 Years of Medical Experimentation. This powerful, 59-page report documents just a few of the illegal and unethical medical experiments dating all the way back to 1845.
[WARNING: This book contains graphic descriptions of torture and brutality. Reader discretion is advised.]
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