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Secret Human Experiments By The State

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Anonymous

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Well I've heard tales of experiments testing LSD on Vietnam troops (is this true, BTW?) but here I was sent a link to some British troops being given the hallucinogen and its hilarious results....

Clicky
 
This was shown on TV a few years ago but I forget what the program was. Imagine giving a rocket launcher to a guy on acid!
 
I just love the typical BBC voice...

'One one climbing a tree...'

Classic.
 
the vid clip reminds me of the scene in the film "the history of the pt 1" by mel brooks

where the romans are chasing our heros, and they (romans) get stoned on "roman red"

:D
 
Thanks. The funniest thing I've seen for ages.

I especially like the bit where the radio gear is wrapped around a tree. And the soldier climbing a tree to feed the birds.
 
I thought the LSD testing on the troops was done by themselves :D. it's no mystery that marijuana was a popular GI "distraction" during Vietnam.
 
I can see why governments would "test" amphetamines on pilots and ground troops, but what reason could they have for using acid? How does this help win a war? If anything, I would think they'd be spraying the enemy front with the stuff.

What next, X? "Aww, come on, man, let's just be peaceful and dance."
 
Vitrius said:
I can see why governments would "test" amphetamines on pilots and ground troops, but what reason could they have for using acid? How does this help win a war? If anything, I would think they'd be spraying the enemy front with the stuff.

What next, X? "Aww, come on, man, let's just be peaceful and dance."
Testing possible weapons on one's own men has a long history in Britain and the US. For possible use as a non-lethal weapon, of course!

The real problem was delivering the stuff, but the active dose is actually incredibly incredibly small. Delivered as an aerosol in tiny droplets, over a wide area, the effect on any enemy, in a warzone, or an urban civil insurgency situation could be completely disorientating and demoralising.

Then there were all the fears in the Sixties of hippy terrorists pouring the stuff into the water supply, although (luckily?) the stuff doesn't really mix with water.

The CIA investigated and developed the stuff in the Fifties for use as a mind control drug and chemical weapon.

There were rumours of a super-variant, codenamed 'george', which was developed by the military, with effects which last for several days, rather than just a few hours .
 
The hippy terrorist angle is a natural-born UL. Lots of psychoactives DO mix with water and are cheaper in bulk than LSD. If it were going to happen, I bet it would have by now. Or maybe it has....and that's where mothman came from. :blah:

Then again, terrorists in general seem inefficient as hell to me, despite the occasional successful act of mass destruction.
 
More on Porton Down

Inquest resumes into 1953 death at Porton Down

Rob Evans and Sandra Laville
Monday August 23, 2004
The Guardian

In an old-fashioned Victorian courtroom, an inquest into one of the most enduring cover-ups of the cold war is to resume today.
The inquest, sitting after a month's break, is examining how a 20-year-old airman died in 1953 after a secret experiment in which military scientists dripped liquid nerve gas on to his arm.

It is the first full public airing of the circumstances surrounding the death of Ronald Maddison at the Porton Down chemical warfare establishment in Wiltshire.

The original inquest, in 1953, was held behind closed doors on government orders, and details of the death remained hushed up for decades. After pressure from Maddison's family and supporters, the lord chief justice, Lord Woolf, ordered a new hearing which opened in May.

It is a test case for hundreds of servicemen who say they were duped into volunteering for experiments at Porton Down, believing they were attempts to find a cure for the common cold. Many claim their health was damaged.

The inquest at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, has heard from more than 30 witnesses.

Robert Lynch, now 80, was a a lab technician, but was not involved in the human testing. "Most of us had the thought that we were going into very dangerous areas," he told the inquest, adding: "We knew that we were pushing it. "There were very large amounts of [sarin nerve gas] being used ... Because they were human experiments, any of us who knew about them could not help feeling nervous."

The jury has heard extracts from the memoirs of a Porton Down scientist, the late Mark Ainsworth, who wrote that he and a colleague had been "a bit unhappy" about the experiments in which sarin was dropped on to the subjects' arms.

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Ainsworth wrote that the head of the department responsible for the human experiments, Dr Harry Cullumbine, "continued, but we persuaded him to go carefully".

Under questioning, Mr Lynch agreed Cullumbine had been a "forceful personality".

The jury has also heard that another Porton Down scientist, John Rutland, believed that the levels of sarin used in Maddison's test were "well above the normal limits".

The inquest is scrutinising whether the scientists took enough care when they exposed the airman to nerve gas on May 6 1953. Ten days earlier, another human guinea pig, John Kelly, nearly died after scientists dropped nerve gas on to his arm. A third serviceman, Oliver Slater, also suffered a bad reaction days before that.

Professor Robert Forrest, an expert toxicologist, said the experiments should have immediately been stopped.

At the time, the British government feared the threat of a chemical attack by the Soviet Union, and so Porton Down was hurriedly developing a nerve gas arsenal, as well as defences against poison gas.

Maddison was one of 396 servicemen to undergo the experiment "to determine the dosage of sarin (and two other nerve gases) which when applied to the clothed or bare skin would cause incapacitation or death".

Two of the six servicemen who were in the gas chamber with Maddison have given evidence.

One, Mike Cox, said they had been playing noughts and crosses to pass the time when Maddison suddenly fell forward on to the table.

He said two Porton technicians had "half-carried" him out. Within half an hour he died, despite frantic attempts to revive him.

The jury has also heard about a letter written in August 1953 by a government lawyer, Mr H Woodhouse, to another official, in which he admitted the government was liable for Maddison's death.

He proposed paying a pension to the family: "This would probably dispose of the case and Maddison's family would probably be satisfied."

John Harding, a Ministry of Defence historian, could not recall any compensation being paid to the airman's relations.

At least 20,000 servicemen have taken part in tests at Porton Down since the first world war. More than 3,000 were exposed to nerve gas.

The inquest was due to end in June, but is now likely to finish in late September. The original verdict was death by misadventure.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/military/story/0,11816,1288783,00.html
 
MoD hid warning on deadly sarin test

MoD hid warning on deadly sarin test
By Michael Evans
A young airman faced uncontrollable danger, a secret report on his death said

A YOUNG airman who died during experiments at Porton Down chemical research establishment more than 50 years ago had been subjected to “uncontrollable danger”, according to a secret official report, an inquest was told yesterday.
Leading Aircraftman Ronald Maddison, one of thousands of servicemen who participated in the chemical and biological tests over several decades, died shortly after having sarin nerve agent dripped on to a pad on his arm. He was 20.

At the original inquest into his death in 1953, conducted in secret for “national security” reasons, the Ministry of Defence withheld a report by Professor Ian Kennedy, one of Britain’s leading experts on ethics. He gave a warning in his report that it had been wrong to go ahead with the experiments and cast doubt on their safety.

Yesterday, at the second inquest into Mr Maddison’s death after a recent police inquiry into the circumstances behind the fatal sarin test, David Masters, the Wiltshire Coroner, revealed Professor Kennedy’s conclusions for the first time. The full report was released to the coroner by a Treasury solicitor.

The new inquest was ordered after complaints to Wiltshire police that Mr Maddison and other human guinea pigs at Porton Down had been misled into taking part in the experiments. It had been claimed that the tests were for the common cold.

The inquest was opened three months ago and yesterday’s hearing began after a six-week break to allow jury members to go on holiday.

Mr Masters, reading from the previously suppressed official report, told the jury that Professor Kennedy had judged that it was wrong to proceed with the tests because scientists then knew that the level of poison absorbed into the skin depended on the amount of individual fat; but there was no reliable way of testing a person’s fat levels.

Mr Masters told the jury: “He draws the conclusion that first, scientists knowing its importance, but secondly, being unable to measure it, the volunteers, including the deceased, Ronald Maddison, were exposed to uncontrollable danger of serious harm or death. And, therefore, on these assumptions, it was not safe to proceed with this and the allied experimental chemical trials.”

He added: “He may or may not be right; what we now need to do in the light of what we know he says, is to further examine whether or not the scientists did actually believe it at the time.”

A post-mortem examination found that Mr Maddison had 66 micrograms of skin fat per square centimetre, which was significantly less than the human average of 81.6 micrograms. Another guinea pig at Porton Down, who had nearly died a few days before Mr Maddison, had only 28.8 micrograms of skin fat per square centimetre.

Professor Robert Forrest, a forensic toxicologist from the University of Sheffield, told the jury, sitting at Trowbridge, Wiltshire, that the crucial question was whether the scientists at Porton Down were aware that the “skin-fat factor” could make a dose of sarin nerve agent more lethal.

Thickness of skin varied enormously from individual to individual, and it appeared that the scientists knew this, Professor Forrest said.

The inquest continues today.
 
Nerve gas death was 'unlawful'

The inquest into a young airman who died 51 years ago in secret nerve gas tests has ruled that his death was unlawful.

Ronald Maddison, 20, from County Durham, died after being exposed to sarin at Porton Down in Wiltshire.

The original inquest in 1953 ruled that Leading Aircraftman Maddison's death was caused by misadventure.

In 2002, the High Court quashed that verdict and ordered that a new inquest should be held.

The jury concluded that the cause of Mr Maddison's death was "application of a nerve agent in a non-therapeutic experiment".

An MoD spokesman said: "The Ministry of Defence notes the jury's findings and will now take some time to reflect on these.

"We will be seeking legal advice on whether we wish to consider a judicial review.

"We don't believe the verdict today has implications for other volunteers. However, we will consider the implications."

The original inquest was held behind closed doors "for reasons of national security".

Operation Antler

Mr Maddison's family has claimed that he was tricked into taking part and was told he was helping to find a cure for the common cold.

Mr Maddison was exposed to 200 milligrammes of sarin which was dropped on to a piece of uniform material which was wrapped around his arm.

The second inquiry was prompted after ex-serviceman Gordon Bell complained to Wiltshire Police that he had been duped into similar tests.

The constabulary then launched Operation Antler which looked at experiments which used chemical and biological agents at government research centre Porton Down between 1939 and 1989.

The operation found that the coroner at the original inquest was "not apparently provided with all the potentially available material".

The outcome could lead to legal action by the veterans of Porton Down - They claim they were duped into taking part in similar dangerous trials.

The hearing, at Trowbridge Magistrates' Court, lasted six months.

Story from BBC NEWS:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4013767.stm
 
A little bit, certainly.
Lets hope it bodes well for the cases of all the other poor sods who either died or suffered permanent injury from Porton Down's experiments.
 
Lady Stella said:
A little bit, certainly.
Lets hope it bodes well for the cases of all the other poor sods who either died or suffered permanent injury from Porton Down's experiments.

I'm to much of a cynic I'm afraid. I'm sure they'll find a way out of having to claim responsibiblty.
 
Airman's family to sue over death

The family of an airman who died after taking part in a nerve gas test will seek compensation after an inquest ruling that he was unlawfully killed.

Ronald Maddison from County Durham, died in 1953 after being exposed to sarin at Porton Down in Wiltshire.

The original secret inquest in 1953 ruled that the 20-year-old mechanic's death was caused by misadventure.

A new inquest found his death was the result of the "application of a nerve agent in a non-therapeutic experiment".





The family's lawyer, Alan Care, said the verdict brought to an end a 50-year call for an explanation about why the airman died.

"The family now seek compensation which, as the Treasury solicitor had indicated in 1953, should be paid to the family."

'Sworn to secrecy'



The verdict paves the way for a series of legal claims against the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

A spokesman for the MoD said: "The Ministry of Defence notes the jury's findings and will now take some time to reflect on these.

"We will be seeking legal advice on whether we wish to consider a judicial review."

'Full apology'

Another veteran of the experiments, Terry Alderson, 74, from Danby, Whitby, North Yorkshire, said he was delighted with the jury's decision.

He was now calling for a public inquiry and a full apology from the government.

Ian Foulkes, 40, from Chippenham, Wiltshire, was tested with sarin as recently as 1983.

He said after the hearing: "I think now there will be claims for compensation from the other veterans because their health has been affected."

Story from BBC NEWS:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/wiltshire/4015239.stm
 
MI6 ordered LSD tests on servicemen

Greets

MI6 ordered LSD tests on servicemen*


Volunteers fed hallucinogen in mind control experiments

*Rob Evans
Saturday January 22, 2005
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>*

Fifty years ago, Eric Gow had a baffling and unexplained experience. As a 19-year-old sailor, he remembers going to a clandestine military establishment, where he was given something to drink in a sherry glass and experienced vivid hallucinations.

Other servicemen also remember tripping: one thought he was seeing tigers jumping out of a wall, while another recalls faces "with eyes running down their cheeks, Salvador Dalí-style".

Mr Gow and another serviceman had volunteered to take part in what they thought was research to find a cure for the common cold.

Mr Gow felt that the government had never explained what happened to him. But now he has received an official admission for the first time, confirmed last night, that the intelligence agency MI6 tested LSD on servicemen.

The Guardian has spoken to three servicemen who say that they were not warned that they were being fed a hallucinogen during experiments.

One of the scientists involved at the time suggested that the experiments were stopped because it was feared that the acid could produce "suicidal tendencies".

MI6, known formally as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and responsible for spying operations abroad, carried out the tests in the cold war in an attempt to uncover a "truth drug" which would make prisoners talk against their will in interrogations.

It appears that MI6 feared that the Russians had discovered their own "brainwashing" chemical to control the minds of their enemies, fears triggered by pictures of American servicemen who had been captured during the Korean war confessing to their "crimes" and calling for a US surrender.
In 1949, a Hungarian dissident had also "confessed" robotically in a show trial without, it seemed, being in control of himself.

In parallel experiments, the CIA infamously tested LSD and other drugs on unwitting human subjects in a 20-year search to uncover mind-manipulation techniques. The trials were widely criticised when they came to light in the 1970s.

Mr Gow and another man say that while serving in the military they volunteered to take part in research. They were told to go to the Porton Down chemical warfare establishment in Wiltshire, where servicemen were regularly tested in experiments.

Mr Gow, then a radio operator in the Royal Navy, says that scientists gave him the liquid to drink in 1954, a decade before the effects of LSD were popularised by hippies.

Soon he could not add up three figures. The radiator started to go in and out "like a squeezebox", while shoe marks on the floor spun like a catherine wheel. He says he still seemed to be tripping that evening, when he and a colleague went dancing in nearby Salisbury, with wellies on. "I don't think we got a date that night," he said yesterday.

He added that the scientists had been "irresponsible", particularly as they had not kept the men under close supervision. Now a magistrate, he submitted an open government request to the Ministry of Defence seeking more details of the experiments.

The MoD replied that "much of the information concerning LSD involves research conducted at the behest of the Secret Intelligence Service ... We are more than happy to speak to them [SIS] on your behalf and will pursue the question of downgrading the security classification of certain documents to allow us to disclose them to you".

Last night, a Foreign Office spokesman confirmed that in 1953 and 1954 Porton Down carried out SIS-commissioned tests of LSD on service personnel.

Don Webb says that in 1953, when he was a 19-year-old airman, scientists told him to take LSD several times in a week. He experienced "walls melting, cracks appearing in people's faces, you could see their skulls, eyes would run down cheeks, Salvador Dalí-style faces".

Alan Care, a lawyer representing Mr Gow and Mr Webb, has written to MI6 demanding more documents about the trials and is threatening legal action. Yesterday he said: "Clearly these men were duped and subjected to unethical LSD thought control experiments. MI6 should release all its documents about these trials - national secrets will not be compromised."

A senior Porton Down official described the LSD trials as "tentative and inadequately controlled", according to a document made public in the National Archives.

One scientist involved was believed to be the late Harry Cullumbine, who was in charge of human experiments at Porton Down in the 1950s.

Extracts from his unpublished autobiography were aired at the recent inquest into the death of the airman Ronald Maddison after nerve gas trials in 1953. According to the Wiltshire coroner, David Masters, Cullumbine wrote: "We stopped the trials ... when it was reported that in a few people it might produce suicidal tendencies."

Mr Masters told the inquest: "MI6 was eager to try it as a truth drug."

However, the quest came to nothing, because the scientists discovered that LSD was useless for manipulating the human mind.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1396099,00.html

mal
 
Super footage. It's a pity there's no live audio so we don't get to hear them falling around p*ssing themselves laughting:D

I might just have to sample that sometime too...
 
No charges over Porton Down tests

No scientists will be charged over a series of chemical tests on human volunteers at the Ministry of Defence's laboratories at Porton Down.


Between 1939 and 1989, hundreds of servicemen took part in experiments at the Wiltshire establishment.

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) carried out a review after an inquest ruled one aircraftsman who died in 1953 had been unlawfully killed.

But the CPS has decided there is insufficient evidence to prosecute.

Leading Aircraftsman Ronald Maddison's family say he went to Porton Down believing he would be taking part in tests to find a cure for the common cold.

Instead, he was exposed to the lethal nerve agent sarin, and died within an hour.

The initial inquest into his death was held in secret on the grounds of national security, but after years of campaigning a second inquest was opened in 2004. It decided LAC Maddison had been unlawfully killed.

Last month it was revealed his family had been awarded £100,000 in compensation from the Ministry of Defence

Kate Leonard, Senior Crown Prosecutor, said: "I have decided there is still insufficient evidence available to prosecute any person with a criminal offence over the testing which was carried out.

"In reaching these decisions I considered the evidence from the inquest into Mr Maddison's death to see whether it had any impact."

Story from BBC NEWS:

Published: 2006/06/12 12:21:01 GMT

© BBC MMVI
 
I think this fits here.

Secret Science: Deadly experiments done for the ‘greater good’

From a simulated bioattack on London's Underground to scientists self-testing hydrogen cyanide, a book about science under wraps exposes numerous horrors

THE 26 July 1963 is widely remembered for the devastating earthquake that killed thousands of people in the city of Skopje, then in Yugoslavia. Far fewer know it as the date of a secret military trial on the London Underground, which aimed to simulate another sort of catastrophic event: the release of anthrax in an enclosed public space.

At around midday, a small box of powder was dropped from the window of a Northern Line train, just as it pulled out of the south London station of Colliers Wood. As the box smashed and released its contents, hundreds of men, women and children were exposed to spores of Bacillus globigii, unaware that they had just become test subjects in one of the largest ever field trials of a simulated biological attack.

As Secret Science explains, B. globigii is considered a human pathogen with the potential to trigger food poisoning, eye infections and septicaemia. In 1963 it was believed harmless. Several days after the “attack”, trainee engineers, clueless about the true nature of what they were doing, gathered dust samples from tube stations across central London. The spores had travelled more than 16 kilometres through the ventilation system, and were recovered as far north as Camden.

https://www.newscientist.com/articl...deadly-experiments-done-for-the-greater-good/
 
If there's somewhere better for this feel free to move.

From mind control to murder? How a deadly fall revealed the CIA’s darkest secrets

A long but fascinating dark & murky read about the case of Frank Olson
one of the first scientists assigned to the secret US biological warfare laboratories at Fort Detrick in Frederick, Maryland during the second world war.
who in 1953 supposedly committed suicide by jumping from a hotel room several stories up but, reading the story, looks more likely to have been murdered by the CIA.

Olson began working with the handful of colleagues who would accompany him throughout his clandestine career. One was Harold Abramson. Others included ex-Nazi scientists who had been brought to work on secret missions in the US. For a time they worked on aerosol technologies – ways to spray germs or toxins on enemies and to defend against such attacks. Later, Olson met with American intelligence officers who had experimented with “truth drugs” in Europe.

In his laboratory at Fort Detrick, Olson directed experiments that involved gassing or poisoning laboratory animals. These experiences disturbed him. “He’d come to work in the morning and see piles of dead monkeys,” his son Eric later recalled. “That messes with you. He wasn’t the right guy for that.”

“In CIA safe-houses in Germany,” according to one study, “Olson witnessed horrific brutal interrogations on a regular basis. Detainees who were deemed ‘expendable’ – suspected spies or moles, security leaks, etc – were literally interrogated to death in experimental methods combining drugs, hypnosis and torture, to attempt to master brainwashing techniques and memory erasing.”

At Porton down on 6 May, a volunteer subject, a 20-year-old soldier, was dosed with sarin, began foaming at the mouth, collapsed into convulsions, and died an hour later. Afterward, Olson spoke about his discomfort with a psychiatrist who helped direct the research, William Sargant.
He's invited to a meeting of various scientists - CIA, MK-Ultra, army chemical corps, where he & some others are unwittingly dosed with LSD in cognac. It doesn't go well from then on.

The meeting broke up. Olson headed back to Frederick. By the time he arrived, he was a changed man.

The next morning, 23 November, Olson showed up early at Fort Detrick. His boss, Vincent Ruwet, arrived soon after. Neither were in good shape. More than four days had passed since they had been given LSD without their knowledge. Ruwet later called it “the most frightening experience I have ever had or hope to have”.

By this time MK-Ultra had been under way for seven months. It was one of the government’s deepest secrets, guarded by security that was, as Olson had been told when he joined the special operations division, “tighter than tight”. Barely two dozen men knew its true nature. Nine had been at Deep Creek Lake. Several of those had been surreptitiously dosed with LSD. Now one of them seemed out of control. This was no light matter for men who believed that the success or failure of MK-Ultra might determine the fate of the US, and all humanity.

He appears to have completely turned against the work he was involved in & wanted out, but was in a mental state which worried the CIA - government secrecy etc, as to what he knew.

His family are eventually, more than 20 years later, paid $750,000 by the government as more or less an admission of some responsibility. They waive a right to subsequently take any further action. After subsequent exhumation of his body, he's found to have a skull injury pointing to a blow on the head before he 'fell' out the window.

In 2017, Stephen Saracco, a retired New York assistant district attorney who had investigated the Olson case and remained interested in it, made his first visit to the hotel room where Olson spent his final night. Looking around the room, Saracco said, raised the question of how Olson could have done it.

“If this would have been a suicide, it would have been very difficult to accomplish,” Saracco concluded. “There was motive to kill him. He knew the deepest, darkest secrets of the cold war. Would the American government kill an American citizen who was a scientist, who was working for the CIA and the army, if they thought he was a security risk? There are people who say: ‘Definitely.’”
 
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