This page deals with experiments of various sorts that are known to have been conducted on human beings without their consent, and often without their knowledge.
The National Security Archive site has archived information about the activities of The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, including the final report.
This critique of the Advisory Committee report [*] appeared in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Jan/Feb 1996. "I have a suspicion that at root, there was too much deference to the experiment industry by this committee," Roisman of the Human Experiment Litigation Project said.The radiation experiments that the Advisory Committee dealt with are definitely not the only cases of nonconsensual experimentation, and in fact that committee only dealt with radiation experiments conducted before May 30, 1974. Besides radiation experiments, there are also known experiments in chemical and biological warfare, as well as mind and behavior control -- but the unwitting victims of these experiments are still being kept in the dark about the fact that they were used in experiments and about what exactly was done to them. A U.S. News and World Report article from Jan. 24, 1994 describes some of these experiments and the unwitting victims still being denied their human rights. ...the government has long ignored thousands of other cold war victims, rebuffing their requests for compensation and refusing to admit its responsibility for injuries they suffered.Continued secrecy and legal roadblocks erected by the government have made it virtually impossible for victims of these cold war human experiments to sue the government successfully, legal experts say.
Many of the stories of people whose lives were destroyed by mind-altering drugs, electroshock "treatments" and other military and CIA experiments involving toxic chemicals or behavior modification have been known for almost 20 years. But U.S. News has discovered that only a handful were ever compensated -- or even told what was done to them.
Admiral Turner, in his 1983 deposition, conceded that "a disappointingly small number" were notified but defended the agency's continuing refusal to declassify the names of the researchers and universities involved. "I don't think that would have been necessarily the best way," Turner said. "Not in the litigious society we live in."
These are Sen. John Glenn's introductory remarks on bill S. 193 in the 105th Congress. The bill would have provided some protection to subjects of human experimentation, including classified experimentation. The bill was killed in committee. Glenn's remarks detail why such a bill was needed -- and is still needed. You just think about your own family, your own son, your own daughter, or grandchildren who might be, the next time they go to a doctor, the subject of some medical experiment that they are not even told about. I do not think there can be many things more un-American than that.Human Research Subject Protections Act of 2000 (H.R. 4605, 106th Congress) was a bill introduced in the House of Representatives in June 2000. It seems to have been killed in committee like Glenn's bill above.
This is Jose Delgado's ironically titled paper "Intracerebral Radio Stimulation and Recording in Completely Free Patients." It appears in Psychotechnology: Electronic Control of Mind and Behavior, edited by Robert L. Schwitzgebel and Ralph K. Schwitzgebel, Chapter 15, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973. It was reprinted there from The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, Vol. 147, No. 4, 1968. I have tried to format the HTML similarly to the printed paper. In the paper, Delgado describes his "stimoceiver" brain implants and experiments on four "patients." Were they given informed consent? Does Delgado's description of their behavior problems change that? Was the research purely intended to benefit the subjects, or might there have been other motives? What would it feel like to be an involuntary subject of this sort of experimentation? These are some questions I think the article raises. The article also gives an indication of the state of open-source human brain implant research and technology in 1968. See this excerpt from Gordon Thomas' book Journey Into Madness for more information on the editors of the above book, and the infamous "Schwitzgebel Machine."
Healthnewsnet has online a history of secret human experimentation [*] which gives a timeline of some major incidents.
This is the text of a staff report prepared in 1994 for the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, on military human experimentation.
Steven Hale created the web pages Resources on Nonconsensual Human Experimentation for his English 101 students at DeKalb College -- as well as for others who might want to access them. The site contains many useful links organized into categories.
This site by Anthony Lalli has informative essays and other information related to human subjects protection, especially federal policy on human subjects research.
Here is an article from the Penn History Review titled "Retin-A's Wrinkled Past." [*] It is by Jonathan Kaye and is from the Spring, 1997 issue. It discusses experiments on prisoners conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania.
In this series of articles from Sept., 2000, USA Today reports on US nuclear worker who have suffered serious health problems due to exposure to toxins and radiation. The articles also deal with the politics of compensating the workers and the lack of political will to spend money on this, rather than on other programs, now that the cold war is over and "won." [Update: a compromise plan was finally enacted; see the linked page above for details.] Federal officials misled workers, insisting their jobs were safe despite having evidence to the contrary. Surviving employees still have not been told of their risks, though screening and early treatment could boost their odds for surviving some illnesses they might face as a result of their work.Likewise, communities were left unaware of toxic and radioactive waste spilling from behind the innocuous facades of businesses. The secrecy that shrouded the weapons program's contracting still masks residual contamination at some sites; other sites have never been checked for problems.
These two stories deal with human experimentation in England. They both appeared in The Daily Express. The first is from Nov. 7, 2000, and is titled, "Scandal of the British soldiers 'poisoned in MoD tests' ." [*] Scientists from the Ministry of Defense face criminal charges for conducting experiments on soldiers similar to those the U.S. is also known to have conducted. For example, sarin was dropped onto patches of material affixed to the soldiers' arms. The second story is from May 26, 2000, and is titled, "Secret trials that crippled 55 babies." [*] It describes nonconsensual tests of a whooping cough vaccine on babies.