The Minnesota starvation experiment

[muriel_volestrangler]

During World War Two, conscientious objectors in the US and the UK were asked to volunteer for medical research. In one project in the US, young men were starved for six months to help experts decide how to treat victims of mass starvation in Europe.

In 1944, 26-year-old Marshall Sutton was a young idealist who wanted to change the world for the better. As a conscientious objector and Quaker, he refused to fight in the war but he still craved the chance to help his country.
...
The experiment started in November 1944 and for the first three months they were fed to their optimum weight and monitored. Then their rations were cut dramatically. Food quickly became an obsession.

"I ate what I had in about three minutes and got out of there - I didn't want to stay," says Sutton, remembering mealtimes in the canteen.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25782294

[yurbud]

1. this reminds me of how they justified teaching torture to special forces...

They said they were teaching them "resistance to interrogation," which of course meant that they were exposed to the torture methods.

How to starve somebody without quite killing them could have other uses besides nursing starvation victims back to health.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. My father was a conscientious objector in World War II and was in those experiments

They not only starved them but also gave them various diseases and subjected them to sleep deprivation (not all at once, fortunately). He said he learned to play poker during the sleep deprivation experiments.

Most of his fellow "guinea pigs" were Quakers or Mennonites, but my dad was more of a free-lance pacifist.

Years later, when I was in graduate school, I was talking to one of my housemates and found out that her father had been in those same experiments, and yes, my dad and her dad remembered each other.