Breaking the Nuremberg Code: The US Military’s Human-Testing Program Returns

[seemslikeadream]

http://www.heatherwokusch.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=137

The Pentagon is slated to release a suspected toxicant in Crystal City, Virginia this week, ostensibly to test air sensors.

The operation is just the latest example of the Defense Department’s long history of using service members and civilians as human test subjects, often without their consent or awareness.

Gas chambers in Maryland

Wray C. Forrest learned about the US military’s human-testing program the hard way. In 1973, the Army sent then 23-year-old Forrest to its Edgewood Arsenal chemical-research center in Maryland, promising patriotic service and a four-day work week.

Instead, he became one of roughly 6,720 soldiers used as Edgewood Arsenal test subjects between 1950-1975.

Forrest was given a new identity at Edgewood: Research Subject #6692. He says, "That was the number assigned to me … similar to the numbers assigned to the Jews in the concentration/death camps in Germany during WWII."

The US military tested heart drugs on Forrest, which he says were administered by IV and various types of injections. Forrest was also exposed to "contaminated drinking water, food, and various ground contaminates that permeate Edgewood Arsenal. BZ , napalm, mustard agents, and any number of other contaminates in the ground and drinking water there, from previous testing done there by the military."

A total of 254 different chemicals were researched on soldiers at Edgewood, and Forrest notes, "We were never informed as to exactly what we were being given. We also did not sign any informed consent prior to the testing. This was a direct violation of the Geneva Convention rules for the use of humans in chemical and drug experiments/research."

The Edgewood Arsenal facility played a role in WWII human subject testing as well. Roughly 4,000 US soldiers were used as human guinea pigs in chemical research which often took place in gas chambers.

US Navy member Nat Schnurman, for example, was sent to an Edgewood gas chamber six times one week in 1942. As The Detroit Free Press reported: "On his last visit, a blend of mustard gas and lewisite was piped in. Schnurman was overcome with toxins, vomited into his mask and begged for release. The request was denied. His next memory is of coming to on a snowbank outside the chamber."

A pattern of abuse and neglect






ONLY 35 YEARS, BUT WHAT'S THAT TO THE "OFFICAL" BELIEVERS, HUH?

[seemslikeadream]

1. The Plutonium Files

The Plutonium Files
by Eric Alterman


Eileen Welsome, a mild-mannered 48-year-old reporter laboring away in obscurity for a tiny afternoon newspaper in Albuquerque, New Mexico, is no one's idea of a media Bigfoot. She doesn't give pop quizzes to presidential candidates. She doesn't schmooze with Tina Brown or Graydon Carter at the Four Seasons, or chat up Strobe Talbott at Maison Blanche. Instead, working largely on her own time and her own dime, Welsome helped unravel one of the biggest stories of the past half-century: the identities of those anonymous US citizens drafted as human guinea pigs for America's atomic arsenal.

In a gruesome plot that is impossible to square with our triumphalist ideology, between April 1945 and July 1947 doctors and scientists working for the US atomic weapons program injected plutonium directly into the bloodstreams of eighteen unwitting Americans, thereby committing all but one to slow, painful death. Their urine and stool samples were packed up and sent to Los Alamos for study. Welsome discovered the experiments while sifting through some documents at Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque in the spring of 1987, her curiosity piqued by a report on radioactive animal carcasses. Sitting inside a safe, the reports were "stiff with age and smelled of dust." They identified the victims only by code names. Welsome's editor told her that while the story sounded very interesting, she had been hired as a neighborhood reporter. So she ended up working on the story in her spare time--tracking down retired scientists, reading the technical data, consulting historians and writing FOIA requests.

Welsome soon discovered that the experiments were part of an even more disturbing story, in which the people in charge of testing the US nuclear arsenal had exposed thousands of Americans, including soldiers, to radiation poisoning over a period of decades until 1962. While no one had discovered the identities of the eighteen victims deliberately infected--as Welsome eventually would--the larger scandal had been aired in a newsletter called Science Trends in 1976 and in Mother Jones in 1981. It had also inspired a 60 Minutes investigation and a hearing of the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight, chaired by a then-unknown Congressman, Albert Gore Jr. Gore impressively identified what he called "the critical question" facing investigators: "Were the treatments for the patients altered in order to satisfy or facilitate the acquisition of the data?" But he dodged the obvious answer. Gore's subcommittee decided that the radiation experiments were "satisfactory, but not perfect." When Ed Markey became chairman three years later, he released a thorough and damning report detailing thirty-one human radiation experiments involving 700 people. Its revelations, too, were roundly ignored.

In 1992, five years after happening upon the initial documents, Welsome was finally able to piece together the identity of one of the victims: "CAL-3" was an African-American railroad porter named Elmer Allen of Italy, Texas. Allen had received a hypodermic needle loaded with plutonium on July 18, 1947, for what was then believed to be cancer and had his leg amputated at midthigh. He had told a friend that the doctors had "put a germ cancer in his leg." Allen died in 1991 knowing nothing of his role in the experiments. At this point, the editors of the Albuquerque Tribune (circulation 35,000) realized they had a great story on their hands and soon got behind Welsome in a big way, providing high-powered legal assistance for her FOIA requests. Working full time on her investigation, Welsome began to uncover the identities of the rest of the victims. One was a housewife, another a janitor, a third owned a cigar store. Each received potentially lethal injections of plutonium from the government and nothing more: no disability, no admission of responsibility, not even an apology.

When Welsome published the results of her investigation in a three-part series in the paper in November 1993, the silence, once again, was deafening. The American media remained unfazed by what was probably--in purely human terms--the grossest human rights violation committed against any group of Americans by any nation during the entire cold war. But on December 7 then-Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, seeing the reports as a tool in her brave campaign to open up the records of her department, denounced the experiments; she later promised to compensate the victims. President Clinton appointed a committee to investigate, and finally the story exploded in the mainstream media. Suddenly Welsome and her tiny paper were deluged with requests for information. At one point every single phone in the office had someone waiting on hold to speak to her except the one she was then using.

The net result is that after a half-century of official denial and derision, the government is just now beginning to admit its responsibility for poisoning its own citizens. In late January O'Leary's successor, Bill Richardson, admitted that the government had both a moral and a financial responsibility to make amends to government workers exposed to cancer-causing radiation at nuclear-weapons-manufacturing plants. While the decision covers only a small number of the victims, the principle of official responsibility has finally been accepted.


http://www.commondreams.org/views/021100-104.htm

Plutonium Files: How the U.S. Secretly Fed Radioactivity to Thousands of Americans

Denver-based journalist Eileen Welsome reveals how as a reporter for the tiny Albuquerque Tribune (circulation 35,000) she uncovered one of the country’s great Cold War secrets: the U.S. government had knowingly exposed thousands of human Guinea pigs with radiation poisoning including 18 Americans who had plutonium injected directly into their bloodstream.


http://www.democracynow.org/2004/5/5/plutonium_files_how_the_u_s

[greyl]

2. OT: Do you live in the US?

If so, why? Earth is large.

Watch Into the Wild
In the meantime, your patriotism should be saluted. ;)

[Grateful for Hope]

3. It is very patriotic

to highlight the ills of a society in order to increase awareness. An enlightened society is a society that has the ammunition it needs to "cure" those ills.

Asking why someone who obviously loves her country very much would want to live here sounds an awful lot like asking someone "Why do you hate America?" when he or she is protesting against, say, the Iraq war.

Where have we heard that before?

[greyl]

9. Right, and America the Beautiful sounds a lot like War Pigs.

/sarc

Try again.

[Grateful for Hope]

11. As far as I am concerned

it is far better to stay and try to right the wrongs than it is to flee to someplace that has it's own set of problems.

[greyl]

12. But why? Our globalized consumer culture has created problems worldwide.

There are people in every country who need help.
If one is sincere about righting wrongs in the world, I doubt they will ever run out of things to do.
Isn't there something to be said about not participating in or contributing tax money to, a system that is hellbent on consuming the Earth?

[Grateful for Hope]

13. Perhaps I am naive

but, I believe in a dream of what this country can be (and, IMHO, should be). And, if, as you say, the US is at the core of problems worldwide, then, it seems all that more important to stay and fight. Better to get at the root cause than to "apply bandages" to the fallout.

[greyl]

14. Maybe, but I think it's more likely due to psychological inertia.

Hope2006: And, if, as you say, the US is at the core of problems worldwide...

I didn't say that. It was just your imagination.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[seemslikeadream]

18. You leave sooooooo much to the imagination

[greyl]

25. So do Rorschach inkblot tests. :)

Sometimes a question is just a question.

[seemslikeadream]

4. IS THIS AN AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT POST?

Because if it is, you are one arrogant son of a bitch, you know nothing of my life, my ancestors and what they may or may not have died for, or what may have killed them, yes maybe they're own government.
THE CROW ON THE CRADLE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Py5I8Z-aM0

Ah, this is a thing that I'll leave up to you

The sheep's in the meadow
The cow's in the corn
Now is the time for a child to be born
He'll laugh at the moon
And cry for the sun
And if it's a boy he'll carry a gun
Sang the crow on the cradle

And if it should be that this baby's a girl
Never you mind if her hair doesn't curl
With rings on her fingers
And bells on her toes
And a bomber above her wherever she goes
Sang the crow on the cradle

The crow on the cradle
The black and the white
Somebody's baby is born for a fight
The crow on the cradle
The white and the black
Somebody's baby is not coming back
Sang the crow on the cradle

Your mother and father will sweat and they'll save
To build you a coffin and dig you a grave
Hush-a-bye little one, never you weep
For we've got a toy that can put you to sleep
Sang the crow on the cradle

Bring me my gun, and I'll shoot that bird dead
That's what your mother and father once said
The crow on the cradle, what can we do
Ah, this is a thing that I'll leave up to you
Sang the crow on the cradle
Sang the crow on the cradle

Did ya hear Halliburton has electrocuted soldiers in Iraq?



Of all the posts I'v read of your's this is the most revealing, and for you to make the suggestion that I go off and die somewhere (in the freezing cold?)..............well hold your breathe sweetie it might be quite awhile before I will do that.

[greyl]

10. No, absolutely not.

I was trying to start a discussion with you about authentic freedom.
The only reason I'm still in the US is that I don't want to break my mother's heart by leaving.
I identify myself first as a human in the community of life on Earth, not as an American.
Furthermore, I certainly don't think the United States is the best country on Earth and I don't understand how any rational, thoughtful person could believe such so-called patriotic crap.

I assume you haven't seen the movie, because you've got the message of it all wrong. Plenty happens before Chris the hero dies, plus he lived and died much happier than people who muddle through a pre-ordained and unsatisfying life of school, 9 to 5 work, retirement, and death.

It was an honest question, and I didn't mind bumping your thread to ask it of you.

[HamdenRice]

16. Let's have an objective look at this

But before we do that, let me say that it is extremely rude of you to hijack this thread (par for the course), which is about (1) the military's pollution of the environment and (2) its experimentation on citizens. If you want to start a topic about neotribalism or some other related nonesense, there are other forums for that, or you could start a thread in this forum though obviously it would be out of place.

It will not "break your mother's heart" to go do something useful in another culture or country. That's just the bullshit excuse of many armchair do gooders. I lived in, traveled in, carried out or evaluted community based development projects in, or did environmental consulting in countries in Africa and China over the course of 20 odd years, and even if it meant long periods over seas, doing so never "broke my mother's heart."

Your problem is that you would have nothing useful to bring to the table. If memory serves me, you are only interested in hunter gatherer societies, and despise the 80%+ of people in the third world who farm and raise animals, which cultures you stupefyingly equate to our own industrial system. If you despise the 80%+ of humans in most of the third world who farm and keep animals, then obviously you won't take the time to learn about them and their particular problems or work toward solutions for them to live sustainably and with greater economic security.

If on the other hand, you decide to join one of the vanishingly small number of hunter gatherer societies, can you imagine what a horrific burden you would be? -- unable to hunt with their tools, unable to find game, unable to discern which plants are useful to eat -- you would become the worst kind of hunter gatherer "on the dole" case.

People in the third world have a tremendous amount of indigenous knowledge from which we can learn volumes. We (at least some of us) also have our own specialized knowledge which can benefit them. The way we solve problems is by pooling our knowledge and working together cooperatively.

Now, why not take this to the energy/environment or anthropology forum rather than hijacking this thread?

[greyl]

19. Good idea, but you failed.

"It will not "break your mother's heart" to go do something useful in another culture or country."

You don't know my mother. Another example in this thread of someone speaking with certainty on an issue they don't understand at all.

"If memory serves me, you are only interested in hunter gatherer societies, and despise the 80%+ of people in the third world who farm and raise animals..."

Your memory does not serve you, and it wouldn't matter if it did, because you have always misunderstood my positions on these issues.

"Now, why not take this to the energy/environment or anthropology forum rather than hijacking this thread?"

If I saw a thread started by seemslikeadream in those forums, I may have.

edit: Here's some objectivity for ya: The OP is specifically about the US. Allow me to refresh your memory. "The Pentagon is slated to release a suspected toxicant in Crystal City, Virginia this week, ostensibly to test air sensors.

The operation is just the latest example of the Defense Department’s long history of using service members and civilians as human test subjects, often without their consent or awareness.

Now, how the hell is asking why someone would choose to stay in this country while leaving is a valid choice, hijacking the thread?

[HamdenRice]

20. Sorry, but that's a dumb reply

1. So you mean your mother is so clingy that a two week consulting trip to another country -- something anyone with the appropriate skills can do to help out in the third world if personal or professional commitments prevent longer stays -- would break her heart? Then you need to address the real problem: your mother needs counseling in order to have a more adult relationship with her son. Or are you suggesting the only way to leave the US and "help" is to disappear into the wild in a loin cloth forever -- in which case a mother's "heartbrokenness" would be understandable?

2. Your claim that you don't despise agricultural societies flies in the face of your previous harping on the idea that "totalitarian agriculture" that developed 10,000 years ago is destroying the planet. I have never misunderstood your positions; you just try to weasel out of your positions whenever you are confronted with facts.

3. "The OP is specifically about the US." Does that mean a post about the federal reserve would be responsive to Slad, just because it is about some aspect of the US? How about a post on Brittney Spears and celebrity culture in the US? The OP is about two topics: (1) the military's flagrant discharge of pollutants and (2) the military's experimentation on citizens. Anything else is non-responsive. Which means your post is once again a thread hijacking. Which is why I will not respond any more unless you want to continue this in an appropriate forum.

[greyl]

23. Obviously, you're just saying that.

It wouldn't break my mother heart to take a damn two week trip to another country. When will you stop making shit up?

[seemslikeadream]

21. leaving is NOT a valid choice

AND I CONSIDER IT AN INSULT TO SUGGEST IT

BTW I THOUGH YOU SAID YOU WERE NOT SUGGESTING I LEAVE

[greyl]

22. Why the heck isn't it a valid choice?

I look forward to a thoughtful and direct answer.

[seemslikeadream]

5. .****HE CALLED IT THE CREMATORIUM****

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=3045065&mesg_id=3045065

[seemslikeadream]

6. DIRTY TRUTHS/HIDDEN HOLOCAUST

http://www.michaelparenti.org/HiddenHolocaust.html

.....



Left uncounted are the more than two thousand yearly deaths in the U.S. military due to training and transportation accidents, and the many murders and suicides in civilian life that are incorrectly judged as deaths from natural causes, along with the premature deaths from cancer caused by radioactive and other carcinogenic materials in the environment. Almost all cancer deaths are now thought to be from human-made causes.

Fatality figures do not include the people who are incapacitated and sickened from the one thousand potentially toxic additional chemicals that industry releases into the environment each year, and who die years later but still prematurely. At present there are at least 51,000 industrial toxic dump sites across the country that pose potentially serious health hazards to communities, farmlands, water tables, and livestock. One government study has concluded that the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food we eat are now perhaps the leading causes of death in the United States.

None of these figures include the unhappiness, bereavement, and longterm emotional wounds inflicted upon the many millions of loved ones, friends, and family members who are close to the victims.

...

In addition, more and more middle-income people are hurting from the Third Worldization of America, suffering from acute stress, alcoholism, job insecurity, insufficient income, high rents, heavy mortgage payments, high taxes, and crushing educational and medical costs. And almost all of us eat the pesticide-ridden foods, breathe the chemicalized air, and risk drinking the toxic water and being exposed to the contaminating wastes of our increasingly chemicalized, putrefied environment. I say “almost all of us” because the favored few live on country estates, ranches, seashore mansions, and summer hideaways where the air is relatively fresh. And, like President Reagan, they eat only the freshest food and meat derived from organically fed steers that are kept free of chemical hormones—while telling the rest of us not to get hysterical about pesticides and herbicides and chemical additives.

All this explains why many of us find little cause for rejoicing about America the Beautiful. It is not that we don’t love our country, but that we do. We love not just an abstraction called “the USA’ but the people who live in it. And we believe that the pride of a nation should not be used to hide the social and economic disorder that is its shame. The American dream is becoming a nightmare for many. A concern for collective betterment, for ending the abuses of free-market plunder, is of the utmost importance. “People before profits” is not just a slogan, it is our only hope.











http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1qE2vJdDw4


ARE YOU WEARING YOUR FLAG LAPEL PIN TODAY GREYL?

YOU KNOW THAT IT WON'T GET YOU INTO HEAVEN, DON'T YOU?

While digesting Reader's Digest
In the back of a dirty book store,
A plastic flag, with gum on the back,
Fell out on the floor.
Well, I picked it up and I ran outside
Slapped on my window shield,
And if I could see old Betsy Ross
I tell her how good I feel.


But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.

Well, I went to the bank this morning
And the cashier he said to me,
"If you join the Christmas club
We'll give you ten of them flags for free."
Well, I didn't mess around a bit
I took her up on what he said.
And I stuck them stickers all over my car
And one on my wife's forehead.

But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
They're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.


Well, I got my window shield so filled
With flags I couldn't see.
So, I ran the car upside a curb
And right into a tree.
By the time they got a doctor down
I was already dead.
And I'll never understand why the man
Standing in the Pearly Gates said...

But your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.
We're already overcrowded
From your dirty little war.
Now Jesus don't like killin'
No matter what the reason's for,
And your flag decal won't get you
Into Heaven any more.

Did ya drop something greyl?

[seemslikeadream]

7. She winked at me, but it was humorless; a wink of warning

Truman Capote.

[seemslikeadream]

8. Earth is large?

compared to what, someone's head, I think not?



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxZOB8jino0

[greyl]

24. Compared to the USA, the entire Earth is pretty large.

You pick some silly things to argue about, sometimes.

[Octafish]

29. America, love it or leave it. Very telling.

Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy

[HamdenRice]

17. The most basic environmental laws don't apply to the military

It's a big problem that the military has generally been exempt from environmental laws, if memory serves me. I believe that they were brought under some environmental laws during the 90s, but they often have exemptions.

For example, the typical bombing range where the air force practices should be a banned discharge of toxic material, but it isn't. The Navy is a wanton ocean polluter. It goes on and on, so their attitude that they can release toxic gas at will is par for the course.

[Laurier]

26. So, after the alleged release of the alleged "toxicant" the week of March 6, 2008,

What happened?

Surely, there must be some follow up, no?

[seemslikeadream]

27. maybe they'll follow up on this one also

Curious case of the dead scientist and the bomb experiment


http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/24/defence

Rusted torpedoes and bombs, munitions on Foulness Island, an MOD weapons testing site. Photograph: David Mansell

A mysterious bomb-making experiment that ended with the accidental death of a government scientist has remained an official secret for more than five years, leaving his family in the dark about what went wrong.

Terry Jupp, a scientist with the Ministry of Defence, was engulfed in flames during a joint Anglo-American counter-terrorism project intended to discover more about al-Qaida's bomb-making capacities.

There has been no inquest into his death, as the coroner has been waiting for the MoD to disclose information about the incident. An attempt to prosecute the scientist's manager for manslaughter ended when prosecutors said they were withdrawing the charge, but said the case was too "sensitive" to explain that decision in open court.

The Guardian has established that Jupp was a member of a small team of British and US scientists making bombs from ingredients of the sort that terrorists could obtain. There is also evidence pointing to experiments to discover more about radiological dispersal devices - so-called dirty bombs - which use conventional explosives to scatter radioactive material.

But such a project would have been controversial as the open-air experiment that ended in Jupp's death was conducted at a weapons testing centre on an island in the Thames estuary 10 miles from Southend, Essex.

[CJCRANE]

33. Very interesting....! n/t

[bobthedrummer]

28. "It's bizarre but true: Nonconsensual human experiments have been legal for nearly twenty years

How did this happen and how is it that most experts, the media, and the public did not find out until know?" by Cheryl Welsh JD (Mind Justice)
http://www.mindjustice.org/legalhuman.htm

[Octafish]

31. Incredible!

Yet, true.

Thanks, bobthedrummer!

For those interested in the subject:

http://www.naturalnews.com/human_experimentation.html

[MrMickeysMom]

30. Hey!

I'm just kicking this as a salute to the OP!

:hi:

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

32. oh shit

wait until they come into your home and drug you to put a microchip in you. Then they will be able to read your mind/thoughts and use weapons to manipulate muscles in your body. They'll use commercials on the Big Brother TV to communicate things to you and sirens to warn you when they think they might be exposed.

Watch out for all the sleepless nights awaiting you when they begin the noise campaign. Be mindful that if you leave your home they will come and move things around to make you begin to believe your going crazy. They might also steal personal things and bring those things back at a later time when you're out. Oh, and forget about privacy too for things like Sex, shitting, showering, or simple conversation.

And then when you begin telling people about this they think you're crazy and won't have anything more to do with you. So you'll probably try to get some Legal representation like the ACLU or someone else famous for taking on the Govt. but they will not help either. If you are lucky some Attorney will acknowledge that the Govt. does these things but since you have no money and the Govt. will Stonewall they won't help either.

Then there is always those in the media who you think might care, and they don't. So you are basically on your own Jerome Malone. Just don't get too sick_n_tired of hearing about this great land of Freedom and Liberty, the Constitution and all the Rights, or our Core Values. Cause if you do the game will be over before you have a chance at watching your Life pass before your Eyes looking out the window watching seasons and years and people and holidays and Presidents come and go.

Really who believes any of this stuff about what the Govt. can and will do for crazy experiments anyways?



:redbox: :tv:

[SDuderstadt]

34. All I know is...

while I was gone, someone came into to My house, stole ALL my stuff and replaced them with exact duplicates.

[SidDithers]

35. Oh. Old post...

for a minute there, I thought slad had returned from the grave. Maybe a zombie-slad.

Sid

[SDuderstadt]

36. How would you be able to tell the difference?n/t

n/t

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.