4 ms·

The United States Tested Biological Warfare on Its Own Citizens

59 points by signa11 4y ago

thewildginger 4y ago
Yup. Definitely didn't know that. Americans sure don't get told this about the cold war. It is also omitted that mass testing of these bio weapons was done on black communities, hence the distrust of both doctors and the government. That part I learned about from the Tuskegee study, this is also really bad.
- lelandfe 4y ago
  That’s one of the bleakest parts in US medical history. Just completely in opposition to the Hippocratic oath. They stood by and watched as so many Black patients died. And all of it was preventable with cheap penicillin. Another thing that many are surprised by is how fashionable eugenics and forced sterilization were at one point in the US. “I cannot read this sign, by what right have I children?” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eugenics_supporters_hold_signs_on_Wall_Street.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eugenics_supporters_hol...
  - lostmsu 4y ago
    This seems extreme, but regular families are largely based on eugenic principles.
- api 4y ago
  It's awful, but you also have to put yourself in the time period. I don't think this justifies it, but remember that in the 1950s the US defense and intelligence community believed that WWIII was going to happen eventually. They believed they faced the high probability of a full scale global thermonuclear war in their lifetimes. It's easier to justify this kind of madness when "most of these people are going to die when the nukes hit anyway." There really were a lot of people thinking that way. "These people are already dead." To get a sense of the mindset here's a good profile of Herman Kahn whose research helped name a death metal band (Megadeth): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/fat-man https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/fat-man "How many megadeaths (millions of deaths) will we absorb vs. the Soviets?" etc. A lot of this hideous research was to try to characterize the effects of a thermonuclear war and its aftermath to answer questions like that. The Soviets were doing similar things. This I'm sure contributed to an environment where unethical research was tolerated and rationalized for other reasons too.
  - eesmith 4y ago
    > believed that WWIII was going to happen eventually. The 'bomber gap' and the 'missile gap' were fictions, with U-2 photo-intelligence showing the Soviets didn't have the capability to carry off a massive attack. US politicians decided it was better to keep knowledge of the U-2 away from the US public - even though the Soviets knew about the U-2 starting on the first flight. The US even lied about the Powers U-2 crash in 1960, calling it a high-altitude research flight, with the possibility of an incapacitated pilot. So I don't think it's right to say simply they believed the possibility, as that belief was deliberately inculcated by people who wanted a war, wanted increased war funding (the "military-industrial complex"), and/or wanted to leverage public fears for personal and political power.
    - api 4y ago
      People thought that if we didn't see the USSR's stuff it must mean they are even more advanced than we thought and must be imminently preparing first strike! Evidence of Soviet military power was evidence of Soviet military power, and lack of evidence was evidence of even more Soviet military power! People really non-ironically thought this. It seems completely unhinged today, but this was right after the world had just been rocked by two successive bloodbath world wars. It wasn't that crazy in the 1950s and 1960s to think WWIII would be up in short order. Another major factor was how much secrecy there was on both sides. Secrecy breeds conspiracy theories and paranoia. The Soviets were also preparing for a first strike from us and probably were following similar lines of reasoning.
      - eesmith 4y ago
        Again, I think you're being too kind. I think Curtis LeMay - one of those in your category - was unhinged already. I think he wanted a war. This is the guy quoted as "Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started". He wanted to bomb and invade Cuba, and do even more bombing of North Vietnam, and he wanted the US to get rid of its "phobia" about using nuclear weapons. That's someone who wants war, and will manufacture an interpretation that justifies having that war. That's far different than simply drawing that conclusion from negative data. Again, yes, I agree with your "it wasn't that crazy" part. My point is that many of the people who believe that were deliberately lied to, to encourage spreading that belief. While connected with secrecy, as you say, it was a deliberate conspiracy carried out in part to support what Eisenhower termed the "military-industrial complex."
- somenameforme 4y ago
  The experiment primarily focused on by the article was carried out on the general population of San Francisco in 1950. At the time San Francisco was 83% non-hispanic White alone. [1] The point of the Tuskegee experiment was to see if untreated syphilis affected blacks differently than whites, as was believed at the time. It was, in part, motivated by a previous experiment in Norway which had withheld treatment for white's suffering from syphilis, which formed the foundation of the modern understanding of syphilis. [2] If it's unclear, I'm not defending or supporting any of this insanity, but emphasizing that the motivations were in no way racist. In general, if you want to learn more about the selection process for the various sociopathic experiments "we've" carried out through the years, the Wiki on MKUltra provides quite a lot of insight. [3] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco [2] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28004553/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28004553/ [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra#Experiments_on_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra#Experiments_on_America...
  - thewildginger 4y ago
    Out of respect I wanted to reply and say thank you for the links, and justification for another view. While I would say deliberate prejudice very possibly wasn't in the decision making process, a risk assessment was made. One where the risk of gassing black communities in places like St. Louis was the "safer option" because black people were second class citizens. They had no means to challenge it. If they found out, who would believe them? Who would care? For this reason institutional racism was reinforced by the military and to say " well it wasn't to be mean, they had to gas someone unfortunately" doesn't really make the decisions behind it not a decision based on race to hurt those who couldn't stand up for themselves because of their race , and therefore racism. Were other cities that were mostly white gassed to test biological warfare distribution methods? Yes. Did it impact them negatively too? Yes. Did it affect them the same way? No. the white community had a chance to expose it? Yes. Did they have an opportunity to try? Yes. They tried, and it failed. But what of the mostly African-american counterparts? At the time, none of that. Looks.pretty racist from here.
    - 4y ago
ctyc 4y ago
I wonder if our governments are still capable of this…
- 4gotunameagain 4y ago
  Now it's psychological warfare testing :)
  - api 4y ago
    Personally I think what private companies are doing in that department is more egregious than what governments (even other governments) are doing. Just pick up a mobile phone and start grabbing random games and apps and look at how they're built. They're all Skinner box devices built using the same control techniques as slot machines to suck people in and gradually addict them and then get them to make endless purchases or invite other people to the app. It's really incredibly toxic. Then you have social media whose weighting and manipulation of content to "maximize engagement" drives not only social media addiction but a host of mental health problems across our entire culture including among the young. If governments did half of this they'd be compared to Nazis.
    - newsclues 4y ago
      Maybe governments just outsourced the work?
      - api 4y ago
        Profit motive provides plenty of motivation without government prodding. It's all about making you stare at that device as long as possible so you watch ads or making you send payments for loot boxes. It's just amoral profit seeking behavior. Not saying there couldn’t be government involvement just that it’s not necessary to explain this stuff.
    - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
      That does not mean that governments are not doing it as well, or that we should discount their practices just because corporations are doing it a lot as well. Even just the fact that the US army allows Hollywood directors access to military equipment with a say on the script as an exchange, so that they can brainwash young uneducated men to enrol and go fight an imperialist war in some foreign country could easily be labelled internal propaganda.
itsmemattchung 4y ago
I don't understand humans. It's easy to say "The United States" did this but really: people (working for the US government) did this. How do the employees releasing the chemicals — on their own people — justify their own behavior?
- jameskilton 4y ago
  You only have to look at the Nuremburg trials for your answer here. We are social creatures, and following along with the "pack" (which includes following orders from authority) is a very powerful force.
  - wcerfgba 4y ago
    Further, it's not just pack mentality but also the institutional and structural directive. The authority of your supervisor, and the greater authority of the institution and 'the good of the country'. Anarchists have been talking about these problems for a while.
- rayiner 4y ago
  It’s in the article: “At the time, all these simulants were considered harmless to humans.“ Web developers A/B test content on users all the time. What’s the premise of doing so? That it can’t hurt them, right?
- krolden 4y ago
  Ever heard of the chain of command?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jmclnx 4y ago
After all of that, many US and maybe UK Politicians are still baffled as to why the public no longer trust their Government. In the 1950s and part of the 1960s trust in the US government was very high. This along with other things that has come out, only some people running for political office will state they trust the Gov.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  >In the 1950s and part of the 1960s trust in the US government was very high. Trust in one's government is always high after they win a war. Thatcher even bounced back in popularity after she wan the Falklands War. Winning a war against an external enemy ia sure way to be popular and trusted.
NikkiA 4y ago
'Sea Spray' was pretty bad, but the 'Large Area Coverage'[0] experiment was also pretty horrific, and basically involved dusting St Louis and other cities with radioactive materials and random carcinogens. [0] https://www.livescience.com/23795-large-area-coverage-dangers.html https://www.livescience.com/23795-large-area-coverage-danger...
throwaway743 4y ago
Not the only time shit like this was carried out by US gov. Tuskegee syphilis "experiment" is just one of others
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bengow 4y ago
[flagged]
DoreenMichele 4y ago
it is now believed that the release of these bacteria over San Francisco permanently altered the microbiome of the region, leading to an epidemic of heart valve infections in hospitals and other serious infections among intravenous drug users throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Yeah, we are actually performing a lot more "experiments" with creating new chemicals and using them commercially etc. In another hundred years, people may shake their head at some of that.
formerly_proven 4y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentat... Used to be “List of” iirc
photochemsyn 4y ago
The genesis of the US nuclear weapons program went hand in hand with the genesis of the US biological weapons program (and of course both were predated by the US chemical weapons program). An important date in both efforts was July 1941: https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1939-1942/maud.htm https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Bureau_of_Consultants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Bureau_of_Consultants The nuclear effort is of course more well known and documented, while relatively few books have been written about the biological & chemical warfare programs, and those that have tend to suffer from large-scale omissions (Korean War, Vietnam War, covert CIA programs, cooperation with Canada and British BW programs, etc.). Nevertheless: > "Secretary Stimson conveyed the committee's recommendations to President Roosevelt, who in May of 1942 authorized the secretary to create an organization within the Federal Security Agency to conduct the U.S. Biological Warfare Program so as to avoid public concern over America's vulnerability. The exchange of information on this subject with the United Kingdom and Canada, which had been inaugurated some months before, was continued, and provision was made for the interchange of biologic-warfare personnel among the 3 countries (U.S. Army 1977)... In 1942, the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service assumed the responsibility for a large-scale research and development program. Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD, was selected to carry out the biologic-warfare task." https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/5739/chapter/12 https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/5739/chapter/12 The entire history is fairly insane, as large-scale tests of actual pathogenic bacteria were also conducted over large barges full of animals scattered across large tracts of the open ocean, which also exposed naval soldiers, as revealed c.2001, in tests with names like "Shady Grove" from the early 1960s: https://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-0110230264oct23-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-0110230264oct23-story.htm... Notably, many elements of the US biological weapons program were revived in the 1990s following revelations of the scale of the Soviet BW programs that continued through the 1970s and 1980s, and many people think those public-private contractor-led programs were the actual source of the anthrax used in the 9/18/2001 and 10/9/2001 anthrax mailings to media and Congress, respectively. The justification was 'we have to make these weapons to study how to defend against them'. Examples include: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Jefferson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Jefferson This, incidentally, also explains some of the justifications for the gain-of-function research developments of the past two decades (many financed out of Project Bioshield-type funding approved after the anthrax attacks) that appear to have played a leading role in the genesis of the Covid pandemic.

59 points by signa11 4y ago

Yup. Definitely didn't know that. Americans sure don't get told this about the cold war. It is also omitted that mass testing of these bio weapons was done on black communities, hence the distrust of both doctors and the government. That part I learned about from the Tuskegee study, this is also really bad.

lelandfe 4y ago
That’s one of the bleakest parts in US medical history. Just completely in opposition to the Hippocratic oath. They stood by and watched as so many Black patients died. And all of it was preventable with cheap penicillin. Another thing that many are surprised by is how fashionable eugenics and forced sterilization were at one point in the US. “I cannot read this sign, by what right have I children?” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eugenics_supporters_hold_signs_on_Wall_Street.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Eugenics_supporters_hol...
- lostmsu 4y ago
  This seems extreme, but regular families are largely based on eugenic principles.
api 4y ago
It's awful, but you also have to put yourself in the time period. I don't think this justifies it, but remember that in the 1950s the US defense and intelligence community believed that WWIII was going to happen eventually. They believed they faced the high probability of a full scale global thermonuclear war in their lifetimes. It's easier to justify this kind of madness when "most of these people are going to die when the nukes hit anyway." There really were a lot of people thinking that way. "These people are already dead." To get a sense of the mindset here's a good profile of Herman Kahn whose research helped name a death metal band (Megadeth): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/fat-man https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/06/27/fat-man "How many megadeaths (millions of deaths) will we absorb vs. the Soviets?" etc. A lot of this hideous research was to try to characterize the effects of a thermonuclear war and its aftermath to answer questions like that. The Soviets were doing similar things. This I'm sure contributed to an environment where unethical research was tolerated and rationalized for other reasons too.
- eesmith 4y ago
  > believed that WWIII was going to happen eventually. The 'bomber gap' and the 'missile gap' were fictions, with U-2 photo-intelligence showing the Soviets didn't have the capability to carry off a massive attack. US politicians decided it was better to keep knowledge of the U-2 away from the US public - even though the Soviets knew about the U-2 starting on the first flight. The US even lied about the Powers U-2 crash in 1960, calling it a high-altitude research flight, with the possibility of an incapacitated pilot. So I don't think it's right to say simply they believed the possibility, as that belief was deliberately inculcated by people who wanted a war, wanted increased war funding (the "military-industrial complex"), and/or wanted to leverage public fears for personal and political power.
  - api 4y ago
    People thought that if we didn't see the USSR's stuff it must mean they are even more advanced than we thought and must be imminently preparing first strike! Evidence of Soviet military power was evidence of Soviet military power, and lack of evidence was evidence of even more Soviet military power! People really non-ironically thought this. It seems completely unhinged today, but this was right after the world had just been rocked by two successive bloodbath world wars. It wasn't that crazy in the 1950s and 1960s to think WWIII would be up in short order. Another major factor was how much secrecy there was on both sides. Secrecy breeds conspiracy theories and paranoia. The Soviets were also preparing for a first strike from us and probably were following similar lines of reasoning.
    - eesmith 4y ago
      Again, I think you're being too kind. I think Curtis LeMay - one of those in your category - was unhinged already. I think he wanted a war. This is the guy quoted as "Well, maybe if we do this overflight right, we can get World War III started". He wanted to bomb and invade Cuba, and do even more bombing of North Vietnam, and he wanted the US to get rid of its "phobia" about using nuclear weapons. That's someone who wants war, and will manufacture an interpretation that justifies having that war. That's far different than simply drawing that conclusion from negative data. Again, yes, I agree with your "it wasn't that crazy" part. My point is that many of the people who believe that were deliberately lied to, to encourage spreading that belief. While connected with secrecy, as you say, it was a deliberate conspiracy carried out in part to support what Eisenhower termed the "military-industrial complex."
somenameforme 4y ago
The experiment primarily focused on by the article was carried out on the general population of San Francisco in 1950. At the time San Francisco was 83% non-hispanic White alone. [1] The point of the Tuskegee experiment was to see if untreated syphilis affected blacks differently than whites, as was believed at the time. It was, in part, motivated by a previous experiment in Norway which had withheld treatment for white's suffering from syphilis, which formed the foundation of the modern understanding of syphilis. [2] If it's unclear, I'm not defending or supporting any of this insanity, but emphasizing that the motivations were in no way racist. In general, if you want to learn more about the selection process for the various sociopathic experiments "we've" carried out through the years, the Wiki on MKUltra provides quite a lot of insight. [3] [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_San_Francisco [2] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28004553/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28004553/ [3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra#Experiments_on_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MKUltra#Experiments_on_America...
- thewildginger 4y ago
  Out of respect I wanted to reply and say thank you for the links, and justification for another view. While I would say deliberate prejudice very possibly wasn't in the decision making process, a risk assessment was made. One where the risk of gassing black communities in places like St. Louis was the "safer option" because black people were second class citizens. They had no means to challenge it. If they found out, who would believe them? Who would care? For this reason institutional racism was reinforced by the military and to say " well it wasn't to be mean, they had to gas someone unfortunately" doesn't really make the decisions behind it not a decision based on race to hurt those who couldn't stand up for themselves because of their race , and therefore racism. Were other cities that were mostly white gassed to test biological warfare distribution methods? Yes. Did it impact them negatively too? Yes. Did it affect them the same way? No. the white community had a chance to expose it? Yes. Did they have an opportunity to try? Yes. They tried, and it failed. But what of the mostly African-american counterparts? At the time, none of that. Looks.pretty racist from here.
  - 4y ago

ctyc 4y ago

I wonder if our governments are still capable of this…

4gotunameagain 4y ago
Now it's psychological warfare testing :)
- api 4y ago
  Personally I think what private companies are doing in that department is more egregious than what governments (even other governments) are doing. Just pick up a mobile phone and start grabbing random games and apps and look at how they're built. They're all Skinner box devices built using the same control techniques as slot machines to suck people in and gradually addict them and then get them to make endless purchases or invite other people to the app. It's really incredibly toxic. Then you have social media whose weighting and manipulation of content to "maximize engagement" drives not only social media addiction but a host of mental health problems across our entire culture including among the young. If governments did half of this they'd be compared to Nazis.
  - newsclues 4y ago
    Maybe governments just outsourced the work?
    - api 4y ago
      Profit motive provides plenty of motivation without government prodding. It's all about making you stare at that device as long as possible so you watch ads or making you send payments for loot boxes. It's just amoral profit seeking behavior. Not saying there couldn’t be government involvement just that it’s not necessary to explain this stuff.
  - 4gotunameagain 4y ago
    That does not mean that governments are not doing it as well, or that we should discount their practices just because corporations are doing it a lot as well. Even just the fact that the US army allows Hollywood directors access to military equipment with a say on the script as an exchange, so that they can brainwash young uneducated men to enrol and go fight an imperialist war in some foreign country could easily be labelled internal propaganda.

itsmemattchung 4y ago

I don't understand humans. It's easy to say "The United States" did this but really: people (working for the US government) did this. How do the employees releasing the chemicals — on their own people — justify their own behavior?

jameskilton 4y ago
You only have to look at the Nuremburg trials for your answer here. We are social creatures, and following along with the "pack" (which includes following orders from authority) is a very powerful force.
- wcerfgba 4y ago
  Further, it's not just pack mentality but also the institutional and structural directive. The authority of your supervisor, and the greater authority of the institution and 'the good of the country'. Anarchists have been talking about these problems for a while.
rayiner 4y ago
It’s in the article: “At the time, all these simulants were considered harmless to humans.“ Web developers A/B test content on users all the time. What’s the premise of doing so? That it can’t hurt them, right?
krolden 4y ago
Ever heard of the chain of command?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

jmclnx 4y ago

After all of that, many US and maybe UK Politicians are still baffled as to why the public no longer trust their Government. In the 1950s and part of the 1960s trust in the US government was very high. This along with other things that has come out, only some people running for political office will state they trust the Gov.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
>In the 1950s and part of the 1960s trust in the US government was very high. Trust in one's government is always high after they win a war. Thatcher even bounced back in popularity after she wan the Falklands War. Winning a war against an external enemy ia sure way to be popular and trusted.

NikkiA 4y ago

'Sea Spray' was pretty bad, but the 'Large Area Coverage'[0] experiment was also pretty horrific, and basically involved dusting St Louis and other cities with radioactive materials and random carcinogens. [0] https://www.livescience.com/23795-large-area-coverage-dangers.html https://www.livescience.com/23795-large-area-coverage-danger...

throwaway743 4y ago

Not the only time shit like this was carried out by US gov. Tuskegee syphilis "experiment" is just one of others

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bengow 4y ago

[flagged]

DoreenMichele 4y ago

it is now believed that the release of these bacteria over San Francisco permanently altered the microbiome of the region, leading to an epidemic of heart valve infections in hospitals and other serious infections among intravenous drug users throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Yeah, we are actually performing a lot more "experiments" with creating new chemicals and using them commercially etc. In another hundred years, people may shake their head at some of that.

formerly_proven 4y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentation_in_the_United_States https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentat... Used to be “List of” iirc

photochemsyn 4y ago

The genesis of the US nuclear weapons program went hand in hand with the genesis of the US biological weapons program (and of course both were predated by the US chemical weapons program). An important date in both efforts was July 1941: https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1939-1942/maud.htm https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Event... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Bureau_of_Consultants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Bureau_of_Consultants The nuclear effort is of course more well known and documented, while relatively few books have been written about the biological & chemical warfare programs, and those that have tend to suffer from large-scale omissions (Korean War, Vietnam War, covert CIA programs, cooperation with Canada and British BW programs, etc.). Nevertheless: > "Secretary Stimson conveyed the committee's recommendations to President Roosevelt, who in May of 1942 authorized the secretary to create an organization within the Federal Security Agency to conduct the U.S. Biological Warfare Program so as to avoid public concern over America's vulnerability. The exchange of information on this subject with the United Kingdom and Canada, which had been inaugurated some months before, was continued, and provision was made for the interchange of biologic-warfare personnel among the 3 countries (U.S. Army 1977)... In 1942, the U.S. Army Chemical Warfare Service assumed the responsibility for a large-scale research and development program. Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD, was selected to carry out the biologic-warfare task." https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/5739/chapter/12 https://nap.nationalacademies.org/read/5739/chapter/12 The entire history is fairly insane, as large-scale tests of actual pathogenic bacteria were also conducted over large barges full of animals scattered across large tracts of the open ocean, which also exposed naval soldiers, as revealed c.2001, in tests with names like "Shady Grove" from the early 1960s: https://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-0110230264oct23-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-0110230264oct23-story.htm... Notably, many elements of the US biological weapons program were revived in the 1990s following revelations of the scale of the Soviet BW programs that continued through the 1970s and 1980s, and many people think those public-private contractor-led programs were the actual source of the anthrax used in the 9/18/2001 and 10/9/2001 anthrax mailings to media and Congress, respectively. The justification was 'we have to make these weapons to study how to defend against them'. Examples include: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Clear_Vision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Jefferson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Jefferson This, incidentally, also explains some of the justifications for the gain-of-function research developments of the past two decades (many financed out of Project Bioshield-type funding approved after the anthrax attacks) that appear to have played a leading role in the genesis of the Covid pandemic.