Anonymous
10th June 2002, 11:32
The U.S. government has a long history of using Americans as guinea pigs, from dosing unsuspecting civilians with LSD, to marching troops into clouds of radioactive dust after early atomic bomb tests, to injecting whole groups of people with diseases like Syphilis.
Since the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been receiving complaints from American servicemen who believe they have health issues that are the result of various chemical and biological tests that were conducted on them by the Department of Defense.
New documents obtained by Black Vault detail a series of biological and chemical tests on Navy personnel - all without their knowledge.
The tests were codenamed Project SHAD, short for "Shipboard Hazard and Defense." They were designed to test the vulnerabilities of ships to biological and chemical attacks. Much of the information is still classified, however the Department of Defense is actively pursuing the declassification of material related to Project SHAD.
The most recently declassified documents detail a rather nasty litany of chemicals and biological agents used in the tests. Take Staphylococcal Enterotoxin, Type B. The documents say this agent, "may be used to sabotage food supplies causing food poisoning. Symptoms are present within three to twelve hours after aerosol exposure and are characterized by fever, chills, headache, myalgia, and nonproductive cough."
This is obviously not something you would want floating in the air, especially without your permission or your knowledge. This was just one strain used, and there were many others.
Also listed are agents that caused infections in the blood, severe stomach cramps, eye irritation, nose/throat irritation, and vomiting. No shipmate gave their permissions for the tests, and some still feel the effects over 40 years later.
As Alexander Cockburn writes in Counterpunch, despite America’s moral condemnation of countries like Iraq for developing and using chemical and biological weapons (also remember when Saddam famously gassed the Kurds, he was our ally), the U.S. government has a long history of poisoning its enemies, and friends:
The U.S. experimentation with bio-weapons goes back to the distribution of cholera-infect blankets to American Indian tribes in the 1860s. In 1900, U.S. Army doctors in the Philippines infected five prisoners with a variety of plague and 29 prisoners with Beriberi. At least four of the subjects died. In 1915, a doctor working with government grants exposed 12 prisoners in Mississippi to pellagra, an incapacitating disease that attacks the central nervous system.
After World War I, the United States went on a chemical weapons binge, producing millions of barrels of mustard gas and Lewisite. Thousands of U.S. troops were exposed to these chemical agents in order to "test the efficacy of gas masks and protective clothing". The Veterans Administration refused to honor disability claims from victims of such experiments. The Army also deployed mustard gas against anti-U.S. protesters in Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1931, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, then under contract with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, initiated his horrific Puerto Rico Cancer Experiments, infecting dozens of unwitting subjects with cancer cells. At least thirteen of his victims died as a result. Rhoads went on to head of the U.S. Army Biological Weapons division and to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission, where he oversaw radiation experiments on thousands of U.S. citizens. In memos to the Department of Defense, Rhoads expressed his opinion that Puerto Rican dissidents could be "eradicated" with the judicious use of germ bombs.
In 1942, U.S. Army and Navy doctors infected 400 prisoners in Chicago with malaria in experiments designed to get "a profile of the disease and develop a treatment for it." Most of the inmates were black and none was informed of the risks of the experiment. Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago malaria experiments as part of their defense.
Since the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has been receiving complaints from American servicemen who believe they have health issues that are the result of various chemical and biological tests that were conducted on them by the Department of Defense.
New documents obtained by Black Vault detail a series of biological and chemical tests on Navy personnel - all without their knowledge.
The tests were codenamed Project SHAD, short for "Shipboard Hazard and Defense." They were designed to test the vulnerabilities of ships to biological and chemical attacks. Much of the information is still classified, however the Department of Defense is actively pursuing the declassification of material related to Project SHAD.
The most recently declassified documents detail a rather nasty litany of chemicals and biological agents used in the tests. Take Staphylococcal Enterotoxin, Type B. The documents say this agent, "may be used to sabotage food supplies causing food poisoning. Symptoms are present within three to twelve hours after aerosol exposure and are characterized by fever, chills, headache, myalgia, and nonproductive cough."
This is obviously not something you would want floating in the air, especially without your permission or your knowledge. This was just one strain used, and there were many others.
Also listed are agents that caused infections in the blood, severe stomach cramps, eye irritation, nose/throat irritation, and vomiting. No shipmate gave their permissions for the tests, and some still feel the effects over 40 years later.
As Alexander Cockburn writes in Counterpunch, despite America’s moral condemnation of countries like Iraq for developing and using chemical and biological weapons (also remember when Saddam famously gassed the Kurds, he was our ally), the U.S. government has a long history of poisoning its enemies, and friends:
The U.S. experimentation with bio-weapons goes back to the distribution of cholera-infect blankets to American Indian tribes in the 1860s. In 1900, U.S. Army doctors in the Philippines infected five prisoners with a variety of plague and 29 prisoners with Beriberi. At least four of the subjects died. In 1915, a doctor working with government grants exposed 12 prisoners in Mississippi to pellagra, an incapacitating disease that attacks the central nervous system.
After World War I, the United States went on a chemical weapons binge, producing millions of barrels of mustard gas and Lewisite. Thousands of U.S. troops were exposed to these chemical agents in order to "test the efficacy of gas masks and protective clothing". The Veterans Administration refused to honor disability claims from victims of such experiments. The Army also deployed mustard gas against anti-U.S. protesters in Puerto Rico and the Philippines in the 1920s and 1930s.
In 1931, Dr. Cornelius Rhoads, then under contract with the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Investigations, initiated his horrific Puerto Rico Cancer Experiments, infecting dozens of unwitting subjects with cancer cells. At least thirteen of his victims died as a result. Rhoads went on to head of the U.S. Army Biological Weapons division and to serve on the Atomic Energy Commission, where he oversaw radiation experiments on thousands of U.S. citizens. In memos to the Department of Defense, Rhoads expressed his opinion that Puerto Rican dissidents could be "eradicated" with the judicious use of germ bombs.
In 1942, U.S. Army and Navy doctors infected 400 prisoners in Chicago with malaria in experiments designed to get "a profile of the disease and develop a treatment for it." Most of the inmates were black and none was informed of the risks of the experiment. Nazi doctors on trial at Nuremberg cited the Chicago malaria experiments as part of their defense.