Army Ordered to Keep Cold War Drug-Test Subjects Up to Date

[jakeXT]

Source: NBC News

A federal judge has ordered the Army to track down soldiers who were subjected to secret medical experiments during the Cold War and warn them of any newly discovered health hazards they could face.

In a ruling (PDF) entered Thursday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, Calif., Judge Claudia Wilken lifted a stay she had briefly imposed on her earlier ruling that the Army must keep soldiers who took part in the tests up to date. The government wanted the ruling to remain shelved while it pursued appeals.

The experiments, many of them conducted as part of a program called Operation Paperclip, tested hundreds of chemical and biological agents — including LSD, the nerve gas sarin, mustard gas and amphetamines — on soldiers beginning in the early 1950s.

President Richard Nixon ended the program in 1969, and all chemical testing on humans is believed to have ended in 1976.

Read more: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/army-ordered-keep-cold-war-drug-test-subjects-date-n36001

[newfie11]

1. Who's the enemy

I assume this testing was done without their knowledge.
We do this to our own people, who needs enemies.

[ReRe]

2. Hubby's father died at age 51 in 1967...

...with cancer throughout his body. He was an officer, stateside, giving chemical training to troops during WWII. I have papers that he also participated in the drug testing project. Haven't had them out for years. I think the base he was at for the drug testing experiments was in MD. Family never put two and two together, but it didn't take ME long to figure out what happened, after I entered the family picture. No one talks about it to this day.

[newfie11]

3. Do you know if he was aware of what could happen?

So sad!

[ReRe]

4. I have no earthly idea

Like I said, they wouldn't talk. The only way I figured out something was wrong was when I, the new bride I was, mentioned going to the cemetery to take flowers and a flag on Memorial Day. To my total surprise, my husband nor any of that family had been to his grave since he passed! So, I picked up the flowers and the flag stick and drug hubby to the cemetery. It took him a half hour to find his grave, as he hadn't been there since his dad was buried in 1967. It was sad. I felt so sorry for his dad. My family was not like that. Memorial Day was ALWAYS a big deal where I came from. His mother and siblings eventually gathered the courage to go as a group to his grave, to hubby's urging. When mother-in-law was moving one time, I found the papers in the attic and she said to throw them away. Ha! Fat chance of that, archivist soul that I am. Like I said, I have no idea if he knew the danger that was involved in his MO.

[newfie11]

7. I looked up Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland

Sounds pretty scary. Sure sounds like a place he might have been.

Good on you to figure it out.

[ReRe]

9. Edgewood... I think that was it!

... that is the base he was at in Maryland (I remember it now from the papers.) The family lived off base and one of hubby's sisters was born in MD while they lived there.

[myrna minx]

5. How tragic.

[merrily]

6. We hate us for our freedoms.

[TexasProgresive]

8. Not all stopped by 1970

When I began tech school at Keesler AFB in 1970 every trainee was given a inoculation that was called an experimental pneumonia vaccine. The fact is, no one who received the shot knew what it was and no one was permitted to refuse. It was part of your reception to the base. Don't know the long term effects of this shot but one friend of mine had a nasty localized reaction at the interjection site. the swelling was like half of a ball or an orange on his arm- highly discolored and painful. He reported it and the docs just jotted something down in his file and sent him on his way.

I got a lot of inoculations during my service and all were recorded in my personal shot record but not that one.

[2pooped2pop]

10. I imagine the bastards are still doing it today

the biggest part of the military is made of low and middle income families. That is the criteria for all testing it seems. Anybody but the rich.

There is a hospital in Indy that serves the poor. I remember reading about an artificial blood that they were going to use on the patients without telling them. You had to know about it going in and opt out.

They fuck us coming and going.

[L0oniX]

11. I guess that won't include those that were given LSD and VD.

Is there anyone around from the nuclear tests?

[newfie11]

12. I've wondered about that to

Those pictures of soldiers looking at a mushroom cloud in the distance. I wonder what happened to them.

[L0oniX]

13. There are claims that even movie actors doing a film at that time not far from that location...

have died from various conditions brought on from exposure. John Wane is one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conqueror_%28film%29

Starring, John Wayne .... The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to ... With 91, I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of The Conqueror would hold up in a court of law.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/374/did-john-wayne-die-of-cancer-caused-by-a-radioactive-movie-set

[bobthedrummer]

14. Operation PAPERCLIP was all about giving NAZI's American identities and "jobs" in US national

security. There is an active thread about this in Good Reads for those that have an interest in such topics.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/101685134

[gerogie2]

15. I had a great uncle that was an atomic soldier

He was at multiple nuclear detonations in the Nevada Desert. At the age of 59 we developed cancer in his spin and died from complications.