Covert and Deceptive Medical Experimentation in the U.S.- How do we evaluate ourselves?

I previously discussed Imperial Japan's covert Unit 731, which conducted hazardous experiments on human subjects to investigate the fields of biological and chemical warfare. I maintained that the majority of the American populace was unaware of Unit 731. Due to the Nuremberg Trials that transpired following the war's conclusion, Americans were aware of the Germans' activities. Nevertheless, General MacArthur had granted immunity to individuals associated with Unit 731 in exchange for research data. It was believed that the United States would benefit from integrating the results of the Japanese programs into its ongoing preparations for a confrontation with the former Soviet Union. Despite the Soviet Union's role as an ally during World War II, there were no misunderstandings about the threat it posed after the war had ended. And although Allied forces had captured Japanese biomedical experimenters at the end of World War II, Soviet forces had taken control of their remaining research facilities and reports. The American government was proactively attempting to prevent the Soviet Union from gaining knowledge of the Japanese germ warfare tests.

Although it may appear shocking the United States government also conducted experiments on human subjects; however, this information is not widely known. Most of this heinous history is between 40 and 80 years old; however, a portion of it was disclosed in 2010. The government "apologized" for the fact that federal doctors had infected prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 78 years prior.

American authorities initiated preparations for war in the Pacific and Europe prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war. An unprecedented coordination of scientific research under federal auspices was signaled by the American entry into the war. The Office for Scientific Research and Development (OSRD) was established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1941. The OSRD, which was headed by Vannevar Bush, the former dean of engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was responsible for the coordination, funding, and supervision of scientific research in support of the American war effort.

Within the OSRD, the Committee on Medical Research (CMR) was responsible for conducting medical investigations during wartime. 137 institutions in the United States, the District of Columbia, and the Panama Canal Zone received more than $24 million from the CMR, which was chaired by pharmacologist Alfred Newton Richards of the University of Pennsylvania. The funding priorities of the CMR included research on chemical warfare agents and the prevention or cure of infectious diseases, particularly those that were likely to be encountered by the armed forces.

In the wake of the Germans' mustard gas deployment during World War I, the American government conducted extensive research into gas warfare agents to prepare for chemical warfare. The tests entailed the application of agents to human subjects, either with or without test ointments, as well as the use of suits impregnated with chemicals that were intended to slow the penetration of vapor. A large-scale research effort had exposed over 60,000 American service personnel to mustard gas (sulfur and nitrogen mustard) and Lewisite (an arsenic-containing agent) by the time the war ended in 1945. The men, whose exposure to these toxic gases varied from mild to severe, were warned not to disclose their involvement in these trials.

The public was only made aware of the extensive nature of the World War II research program into chemical warfare when several veterans approached the Veterans Administration to request compensation for health injuries that had resulted from their exposure to the gases.

In addition to chemical warfare agent research, the CMR provided funding for research projects that examined infectious diseases, including malaria, influenza, dysentery, and sexually transmitted diseases. Many of the human subjects used in the research of new vaccines for these diseases were civilians, particularly children residing in custodial institutions. Medical research was viewed differently during that time. Years ago, infectious diseases claimed the lives of a significantly greater number of individuals, and physicians were compelled to work quickly to develop and evaluate cures. Several prominent researchers believed that it was “permissible to conduct experiments on individuals who did not have full rights in society, such as prisoners, mental patients, and impoverished blacks.” This attitude was comparable to that of Nazi physicians who conducted experiments on Jews.

It appears that the news media did not cover a number of these studies, which were conducted primarily between the 1940s and the 1960s. In the media, the emphasis was on the potential of long-lasting new cures, with the treatment of test subjects being overlooked. One of the most well-known incidents was the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. In that episode, U.S. health officials monitored 600 black men in Alabama who had already contracted syphilis, but they failed to provide them with sufficient treatment, even after penicillin became available.

The participants were primarily sharecroppers, and many had never before visited a doctor. Doctors from the U.S. Public Health Service, which was running the study, informed the participants—399 men with latent syphilis and a control group of 201 others who were free of the disease—they were being treated for bad blood, a term commonly used in the area at the time to refer to a variety of ailments. In order to track the disease’s full progression, researchers provided no effective care as the men died, went blind or insane or experienced other severe health problems due to their untreated syphilis.

Another example was a federally funded study that began in 1942. The study involved the injection of an experimental flu vaccine into male patients at a state insane asylum in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and the subsequent exposure to the flu several months later. It was co-authored by Dr. Jonas Salk, who would become renowned as the inventor of the polio vaccine a decade later. The men's inability to articulate their symptoms raised significant concerns regarding their comprehension of the treatment they were receiving. According to one newspaper article, the test subjects were "senile and debilitated," nevertheless, the article swiftly transitioned to the promising outcomes.

Dr. W. Paul Havens Jr., a renowned researcher, conducted a series of experiments in the 1940s that were funded by the federal government. One of these experiments involved the exposure of men to hepatitis. The experiment was conducted on patients from mental institutions in Middletown and Norwich, Connecticut. Havens, a World Health Organization expert on viral diseases, was among the first scientists to distinguish between the various types of hepatitis and their causative agents.

Medical research was conducted using hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans during World War II, including soldiers, prisoners, conscientious objectors, orphans, and the institutionalized mentally ill and mentally handicapped. However, this was not the extent of the United States' actions. The government also conducted medical experiments on colonial populations.

Puerta Rico has consistently functioned as a living laboratory for prototypes that were subsequently exported worldwide throughout its extensive colonial history. The coercive sterilization of over one-third of Puerto Rican women was the result of the notorious population control experiments that were conducted in the mid-1960s. Over the years, Puerto Rico has conducted numerous tests of hazardous drugs, such as a high-risk version of the birth control pill that contains a hormone dosage that is four times higher than the version that ultimately made it to the U.S. market.

Vieques, an island off the eastern coast of Puerto Rico, was a testing ground for a variety of substances, including Agent Orange, depleted uranium, and napalm. At one time, over two-thirds of the island was a U.S. Navy facility, where Marines conducted ground warfare exercises and completed their gun training.

There is no doubt that the number of instances of human experimentation is significantly greater than the few examples I have provided. We are understandably incensed upon discovering the human experimentation conducted by Japan and Germany. Nevertheless, how do we evaluate ourselves?

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 Sources:

Klein, Naomi. “An Island Weary of Outside Experiments - Teaching for Change.” Teaching for Change, 2018, www.teachingforchange.org/caribbean-connections-puerto-rico-battle-for-paradise-excerpt.

Lederer, Susan. “USGOVCLOUDAPI.” Military Medical Ethics, Volume 2/ THE COLD WAR AND BEYOND: COVERT AND DECEPTIVE AMERICAN MEDICAL EXPERIMENTATION, 2003, medcoeckapwstorprd01.blob.core.usgovcloudapi.net/pfw-images/borden/ethicsvol2/Ethics-ch-17.pdf.

“Ugly Past of U.S. Human Experiments Uncovered.” NBCNews.Com, NBCUniversal News Group, 18 Apr. 2013, www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/ugly-past-u-s-human-experiments-uncovered-flna1c9465329.