Despite what some people might tell you, most scientists aren't cackling maniacs in a lab coat. I say most, because the following experiments really do seem like mad science. Don't believe me? Take a look at how...
- Scientists Injected Unwitting Civilians With Plutonium
- The USA Used (Not Quite) Blank Bioweapons in San Francisco and New York
- Researchers Transplanted Heads on Dogs and Monkeys
- The UK Contaminated a Scottish Island With a Real Anthrax Bomb
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| Not a safe lab... (igorovsyannykov) |
Scientists Injected Unwitting Civilians With Plutonium
Painter Albert Stevens once held one of the least welcome records on Earth - he was the most radioactive man alive.
In 1945 Stevens was misdiagnosed with stomach cancer and told that he had a mere six months to live. That's a bad situation, but it got worse due to a group of scientists involved in the Manhattan Project - a nuclear weapons development program.
Around the time Stevens received his fateful diagnosis, these scientists had become rather concerned about the effects of radiation on the human body. They decided the best way to gather data was to run human trials on unwitting civilians who were already receiving medical care, secretly injecting them with radioactive materials and monitoring the results as part of their "treatment."
The (supposedly) terminally-ill Stevens was a prime candidate - he was covertly assigned the label "Patient CAL-1" and injected with plutonium. He neither consented to (nor was fully informed about) the procedure.
Despite a dose containing many times the "lethal" amount of radioactive material, Stevens survived (and it turned out that his stomach problems were probably due to an ulcer.) The researchers behind the experiment ended up paying him to stay in the area so they could study his "remarkable recovery" and continued to collect stool and urine samples. They never did explain what was actually going on to the painter.
Ironically, Stevens lived until the age of 79 while Dr Joseph Hamilton (one of the researchers who experimented on him and a big figure in the project) died of leukemia at 49.
Despite a dose containing many times the "lethal" amount of radioactive material, Stevens survived (and it turned out that his stomach problems were probably due to an ulcer.) The researchers behind the experiment ended up paying him to stay in the area so they could study his "remarkable recovery" and continued to collect stool and urine samples. They never did explain what was actually going on to the painter.
Ironically, Stevens lived until the age of 79 while Dr Joseph Hamilton (one of the researchers who experimented on him and a big figure in the project) died of leukemia at 49.
The USA Used (Not Quite) Blank Bioweapons in San Francisco and New York
Concerned by the weapons programs of WWII (and the looming threat of the Cold War) the USA began work on its own biological weapons program. The research was intended to produce weapons of last resort (or mutual destruction, if it came to it) but these devices would need a great deal of testing to ensure they would be effective - and to see if similar attacks could be countered or contained.Now it wasn't really the lethality of the payload that was in question - what they needed to find out was how far and how quickly the weapon could spread - and they decided the best way to do that was to unleash them on the civilian population.
The researchers used "simulants" or supposedly harmless stand-ins to test the weapons. Rather than releasing a lethal bacterium, they used microorganisms that caused a mild case of the sniffles. Instead of deadly toxins, they launched zinc cadmium sulfide (a fluorescent pigment) or even soap bubbles.
The researchers picked out American areas similar to Russian locales and set their "blank" weapons loose. The subways of San Francisco and New York were infected with bacterium and fungi (to study dispersion patterns.) Meanwhile, Operation LAC (large area coverage) dropped simulants from the Rockies to the Atlantic and from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. They also contaminated the Pentagon - I suppose that's one way to make sure nobody risks reviewing your funding!
Though the tests demonstrated the effectiveness of the weaponry (almost all of the population of San Francisco were found to have been exposed) the American public was only made aware of the tests in 1977. It's quite possible that some of those infected by the tests developed illnesses (one family brought a court case over the death of the elderly Edward Nevin but were unsuccessful) because of them - but it would be nigh-on impossible to prove.
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| Seems cruel to me... (AnjaGh) |
Researchers Transplanted Heads on Dogs and Monkeys
An organ transplant can save a life - but it took a lot of research (frequently disturbing) before they had a realistic chance of working.
One of the pioneers of transplantation was the soviet scientist Dr Vladimir Demikhov. He carried out his experiments on dogs, refining the procedure and developing specialist tools along the way. His techniques had a pivotal role in transplantation surgery as we know it - but some of the experiments really do seem to stray into the realm of mad science.
Perhaps the most outlandish of Demikhov's projects was the creation of two-headed dogs. By removing most of the body of a puppy and attaching the head to an adult dog, Demikhov was able to create amalgamated animals that could live for several days. One of the resulting creations was even displayed at a meeting of the Moscow Surgical Society, where the puppy head spent plenty of the time antagonizing that of the original dog!
Demikhov isn't the only researcher to try their hand at head transplants - Dr Robert White performed such surgical swaps on Rhesus monkeys. One of these monkeys lived for eight days post-surgery, regaining consciousness and the use of its senses - it even tried to bite off a researcher's fingers (not an unreasonable response, given the circumstances.) White was unable to connect the nerves of the spinal cord though (that's beyond even modern medicine) so the monkey spent those eight days paralyzed from the neck down.
White himself acknowledged that his experiments could seem "Frankensteinian" but they did lead to a variety of lifesaving medical innovations - for example, cooling a patient to help prevent damage when the brain is deprived of oxygenated blood!
The UK Contaminated a Scottish Island With a Real Anthrax Bomb
While it may not have been quite so dramatic as the USA weapons program, the UK experimented with an anthrax bomb on their own home soil - and unlike the USA tests, the UK used a fully functional payload of lethal bacteria.
Less desirable was the fact that anthrax contaminated the soil - and that spores seem to have reached the Scottish mainland. Though they were not informed of the nature of the tests, the residents of nearby settlements started to notice unexplained livestock deaths - which the government quietly compensated. It wasn't until twenty-four years later that warning signs on the island even mentioned anthrax.
The island's fortunes changed in 1981 when a group of activists calling themselves the "Dark Harvest commandos" began placing buckets of contaminated soil collected from the island at strategic locations throughout the UK - accompanied by ominous notes about the experiments. They've never actually been identified and the "attacks" stopped as suddenly as they started - a final message pinned to a government building in Edinburgh declared that their objectives had been met.
If their intent had been to prompt a cleanup effort, they succeeded. In 1986 teams of anthrax-vaccinated scientists doused the soil of Gruinard with seawater and formaldehyde. The island was declared anthrax free in 1990... but I don't think I'd want to visit!
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