Forced Medical Treatment and Military Experiments with Toxic Chemicals: A Century-Long Criminal History

 

The BBC recently published a report describing how dozens of people who were child patients at a British psychiatric hospital in the 1960s and 70s say they were experimented on with a “truth serum”. As the report describes, the experience has left the victims with disturbing memories and unanswered questions. For anyone assuming that criminal experiments conducted by or on behalf of pharmaceutical, chemical, or other interests ceased after those carried out by Nazi doctors and the German IG Farben Cartel during WWII, the evidence clearly shows this is not the case. In fact, during the past century, such experiments have been far more commonplace than most people realize.

Conducted at Aston Hall, Derbyshire, in England, the experiments described in the BBC report include children being stripped and locked in “treatment rooms” with their hands tied in bandages. Injections of sodium amytal, a so-called “truth serum”, were given, supposedly for the purposes of uncovering “hidden trauma”.

With the patients having to spend the rest of their lives suffering the effects of these experiences, the parallels with criminal medical experiments conducted during WWII by Nazi doctors and the German IG Farben Cartel are obvious. As well-known as these brutal wartime tests now are, however, they were not the only ones being conducted at that time.

In 1943, the United States Navy used its own men in experiments with poison gas. Conducted at the Naval Research Laboratory in Anacostia in Washington and the Edgewood arsenal in Maryland, the experiments involved injecting toxic mustard gas into locked chambers from which the men, who had been recruited under false pretenses, were unable to escape. Participants who refused to take part were threatened with court martial and 40 years in prison. Not surprisingly, almost all the victims suffered severe external and internal burns. Despite the inevitable damage to their health, the men were subsequently ignored by the Navy and even told that the Espionage Act would be used against them if they disclosed what had taken place.

The record of the British military in such matters is no better.  (more...)

Forced Medical Treatment and Military Experiments with Toxic Chemicals: A Century-Long Criminal History