At precisely 5:29 am, the bomb (known simply as "The Gadget" exploded in a foul and awesome display, which appeared to glow brighter than the sun, in brilliant yellow, red, purple and white. At the sight of this, Oppenheimer was reminded of two separate verses from Chapter Eleven of the Bhagavad Gita, which he had translated from Sanskrit to mean:
"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. [Verse 12] I am become Death, destroyer of worlds. [Verse 32]"As the light began to subside, Bainbridge turned to him and remarked:
"Now we are all sons of bitches . . ."This is the power, the beauty and the horror of science. It is a tool that can achieve great things, and things which we, perhaps, considered impossible. I have talked about religion and science, and this was once seen as the collision of religion and science - men who attempt to usurp gods, by achieving power equivalent to that of a god.
Whilst I consider this notion regressive, the moral implication of this still lingers. When we have the power to reshape the world, literally, with the power of science and in the blink of an eye, the caution necessary to avoid chaotic consequences is of the utmost importance.
Today, I am presenting a list of five times that we failed to take that caution . . .
Before I begin, however, I am prefacing this by saying that I have excluded all human experiments conducted during World War 2. This is for two unfortunate reasons . . . first of all, if I were to do that, then practically every item on this list would be Nazi experiments. Secondly, this list is exactly five items long, but there are over 20 separate, torturous experiments which utilized unwilling human subjects just from two of the wartime research facilities that I investigated whilst researching this list. This is not a discovery which I take lightly, but for now I am leaving this particular stone unturned, so as to focus on some of the more international ways that science has tortured the innocent . . .
5. The Speech Therapy Monster Study
What? In 1939, the University of Iowa conducted a speech therapy research study, in an attempt to understand the phenomenon of stuttering in children, and the best way to treat it.
How? Johnson selected 22 children from local orphanages, some as young as five, and some as old as fifteen. 10 of them were specifically chosen because they were determined (by their tutors and orphanage guardians) to be stutterers, and the other 12 were selected randomly from the orphanage population. First, their I.Q. was tested, as was whether they were right-handed or left-handed. Then, each group was split into two groups. The stutterers were split into IA & IB, two groups of five each. The non-stutterers were split into IIA & IIB, two groups of six each.
Half of the stutterers were told that they spoke very well, and that despite people who critiqued their stuttering, it was merely a phase. The other half were told the truth, that their stuttering was quite noticeable and poor, and that they needed to work on it. Half of the non-stutterers were also told that they spoke very well, and were to be complimented on their enunciation. The other half were told that their speech was deteriorating quite noticeably, and that if they did not work to prevent it, then they would develop a stutter.
The reason this is considered the monster study is because it lead to worse grades, withdrawal, diminished social activity and - in many cases - silence from practically all of the children who were told that their speech was poor. Although this study only lasted for five or six months, not only is there evidence that several of the negatively-reinforced childrens' ability to speak "deteriorated significantly" as a result of the study; but also, several of the children involved were left with persistent negative psychological effects as a result of their treatment during the study.
Why? The purpose of the test was to determine whether positive or negative reinforcement could affect one's ability to speak without stuttering. I guess in one sense, the study succeeded . . . but, in a much more potent sense, I feel that we all failed these children.
4. The Guatemalan Syphilis Experiment
What? From 1946 to 1948, the Pan American Sanitary Bureau conducted experiments on unaware Guatemalan soldiers, prisoners, mental patients & orphans by infecting them with sexually-transmitted diseases, so as to monitor the results and attempt to develop a vaccine.
How? With funding granted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, the Sanitary Bureau sent John Charles Cutler M.D. and a research team to Guatemala, where they selected test subjects from the Guatemala state penitentiary, and later the army barracks, hospitals and local towns. They began by organizing for prostitutes infected with syphilis to sleep with them Guatemalan prisoners, then monitored the progress of the disease and treated those who contracted it with penicillin (although, according to reports, they were all underdosed). As the infection rate of sexual transmission was too low for the purposes of research, they later made abrasions on their test subjects' arms, faces and genitals and directly applied syphilis bacteria to their skin, or in some cases by injecting it into the spine. Over the years that this experiment took place, they used methods such as this, to infect 1,500 soldiers, prisoners, mental patients and even orphans.
Why? Because the researchers wanted to test if penicillin could prevent someone from contracting syphilis. They conducted these experiments in Guatemala because they knew full well that what they were doing was a human rights violation, and they even kept the experiment strictly off-the-books because this occurred during the Nuremberg trials, a highly publicized case condemning unethical Nazi experiments. In fact, alongside the unsuccessful results of the experiments. it is believed that the study was shut down after just two years because gossip was beginning to spread regarding the large number of sick people that were being sent to hospital as a direct result of this experiment. So, the records were kept secret and as his own tests had failed to garner any useful data, the lead researcher later helped to take part in the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment.3. The Rawalpindi Gas Experiments
What? From 1916 to 1989, the British Military Service conducted several chemical weapon tests on Indian soldiers, who were unaware of the nature of these tests, in an effort to determine the affects of certain chemical weapons on different subjects.
How? Scientists from the Porton Down science park, travelled to India and set up several gas chambers, for the purposes of their experiments - but, as the records were buried, the exact location of these gas chambers is unknown. It is also unknown if the participation was voluntary . . . if they were treated like the British soldiers, they would have volunteered for "experiments" without being informed as to the specifics of these experiments, but due to the way the British tended to treat Indians, many doubt that this was voluntary.
These men were then sent into gas chambers filled with mustard gas - sometimes with very little clothing, sometimes with nothing but a respirator.
All of these men sustained burns, but some were serious enough to have men hospitalized, which we know due to hospital records from the Military Hospital Rawalpindi. These men had severe burns on their skin, genitals, faces and in their eyes due to exposure to the gas.
More than 500 Indian soldiers were exposed to mustard gas during the course of these experiments, and experienced severe discomfort and upset as a result. The scientists were well aware of the torment these patients underwent, as one scientist commented upon this in their report by saying: "Severely burned patients are often very miserable and depressed and in considerable discomfort, which must be experienced to be properly realised."
Why? Because the researchers wanted to know how the gas affected its victims - in particular, they wanted to know if the gas reacted differently to non-white skin compared with the white skin of their British test subjects.
2. The Apartheid Africa's Aversion Project
What? From 1971 to 1989, the South African Defence Forces conducted medical torture on unwilling homosexual conscripts in the form of compulsion shock therapy, drugs and other "therapies", in an effort to "cure" them of their homosexuality.
How? Due to a deliberate loophole in the law, homosexuals in South Africa could not join the military at the time, but they could be conscripted into it. However, as there was still a heavy degree of prejudice against homosexuality at the time, it was seen as a deviant and mental illness. To "solve" this, any drafted men which were identified as homosexual by the SADF were sent to Ward 22 at the Pretorian Voortrekkerhoogte Military Hospital. There, under the administration of Aubrey Levin, they were forced to undergo conversion therapies, to "cure" them of their homosexuality. Some of these "therapies" included compulsion shock therapy, whereby subjects were shown pictures of naked men, and when they became aroused were electrocuted; then they were shown images of naked women and told to fantasize. As well, some subjects were given testosterone, and (according to some reports) forced to have sex with women, and some subjects were even chemically castrated.
When these conversion therapies failed, as they inevitably would, these homosexual men were forced to undergo genital reassignment surgeries, and had their identities legally changed to female. According to reports, almost 900 homosexual men were forced to undergo genital reassignment surgery - without their consent - some resulting in incomplete surgeries and even death. Many of the gay men who were tortured, mutilated or medicated in this project committed suicide due to the trauma and disfigurements they sustained.
Why? HOMOPHOBIA. Clearly, these doctors didn't know what they were dealing with, didn't understand and didn't want to understand. Thankfully, at time of writing, Aubrey Levin is in prison because of the role he played in these crimes, but he is due for release in 2019.
1. The Soviet Poison Laboratories
What? From 1921 to 1953 (and apparently, reactivated in the 90s), the Soviet Secret Services tested a variety of deadly poisons on unwilling participants from forced-labour camps, in an effort to discover an undetectable poison which left no trace.
How? According to records, in 1939, the "Special Office" laboratory had been renamed Laboratory 1, and head researcher Grigory Mairanovsky - with the direct supervision of NKVD director Lavrenty Beria - initiated the secret poison program. The facility tested a variety of poisons on unwilling political prisoners which they had taken from Russian gulags. The poisons they tested included curare, cyanide, digitoxin, mustard gas, ricin, sarin gas, and many others including radioactive and biochemical poisons. They often either released the gas into sealed rooms with the subjects inside, or were given to the victims, with a meal or drink, as "medication". Once the subject died from the poison, they were then taken away and autopsied, so that more data could be collected. If the subjects survived the poisonings, they were executed and then autopsied so that more data could be collected.
Why? Poisons can be implemented in a number of different ways, they can be inhaled by poisoning the air we breath, ingested by poisoning the food we eat & even injected by harming someone with a poison-laced weapon. It is incredibly useful, especially in assassination. The Soviet Secret Service was testing the viability of several different poisons, as well as their effects on a people of different ages, races and physical conditions, to determine the best ways they could be utilized. But, the ultimate goal of these laboratories was to create the perfect, undetectable poison. Not only a poison that could not be tasted or smelled, but one which did not present during autopsy - perfect for political assassinations.
The scariest part of this is that, unlike some of these cruel experiments, apparently the Poison Laboratories succeeded. Carbylamine Choline Chloride, more commonly referred to as C-2 or K-2, is a poison that is near-undetectable, and kills a victim in just 15 minutes after poisoning.
Science is not free from sin. I believe that curiosity is a powerful force, and that learning should be celebrated; however, each one of these projects - even the attempts at "curing" a non-existent illness, for they too tested theories, and rejected failures - all of them came from a desire for knowledge, to broaden the reaches of science.
I deeply wish that I could say this were completely unnecessary, but even I am a skeptic of this optimistic view. How can we know what is safe without risking being unsafe? How can we draw the boundaries, unless we are willing to step over them?
I don't know the answers to these questions, and the fact that I do not know is both sobering and worrying . . . and I fear what I would need to do to find out.
I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I am sorry that ignorance must come before knowledge, just as religion came before science, but as someone who values both truth and well-being, I am anxious to think that they, at times like these, come into conflict. Until next time . . . please, get consent before you experiment.
