“All I saw before me were acres of skin,
it was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time.” If you saw part one of this show, you will
have heard those words. They were spoken by a doctor who entered a
prison in the USA loaded with chemicals to test on humans. Imagine that, you’ve been punished, are
serving time, and then you are punished again because someone has been given the green light
to use your skin as a testing surface. Much of the time when such prisoners are used
in testing they agree to do it, but often in the past what they weren’t told is exactly
what was being tested and the possible dangers involved. Let’s now have a look at how this was done. It's ancient history
We are going to start with a man that is sometimes called the “the father of anatomy.” That’s a compliment of course, but his ways
could be said to have been rather unethical. We are talking about a Greek physician called
Herophilos of Chalcedon. We are told that this physician did occasionally
use dead people for his work in understanding the human anatomy, but that didn’t always
happen. The website researchgate tells us that in
ancient Greece and ancient Egypt looking under the hood of dead folks was plain taboo, but
this physician did do it and educated Greece on anatomy like no one had done before. But he also performed what are call live vivisections,
which basically means opening a person up while they are well and truly aware of it. A Greek encyclopedist known as Celsus wrote
in a second century medical book that Herophilos used around 600 live prisoners for his research. His work was groundbreaking as we said, and
he was a gift to medical science. But as one scientific paper asks, was he a
butcher or an innovator? In this paper Celus is quoted as saying, “Herophilus
and Erasistratus did this in the best way by far, when they laid open men whilst alive—criminals
received out of prison from the kings—and whilst these were still breathing, observed
parts which beforehand nature had concealed.” According to that thesis, this was a kind
of execution, but still one that many people at the time thought was very cruel. No kidding. Radiation experiments
If you read the book, “The Plutonium Files” you can find many, many examples of when the
USA tested dangerous levels of plutonium on American citizens. The U.S. and other countries were trying to
develop the atomic bomb and no one was exactly sure what high levels of radiation would do
to a person. Some of these people were patients in hospitals
and some were prisoners. Sometimes they were just sick children and
on one occasion pregnant women were chosen. In Massachusetts, it’s said that 57 kids,
many who were mentally retarded, were give oatmeal poisoned with radioactive tracers
and that was conducted by MIT and sponsored by the Quaker Oats Company. This was well after the development of the
atomic bomb, and it was all about proving the nutrients in the oatmeal. It sounds like fake news, but it’s not. The Smithsonian wrote that these boys were
already maltreated and so seen as kids that didn’t matter, adding, “As part of the
study, the boys were fed oatmeal and milk laced with radioactive iron and calcium; in
another experiment, scientists directly injected the boys with radioactive calcium.” These kids weren’t exactly prisoners, but
they were in the care of the authorities and didn’t have any say in the matter. That same article mentions a few instances
when mentally handicapped kids, kids in institutions, minorities, were tested on and given all kinds
of ailments. Back to radiation, in all, you can read about
100s, maybe 1000s, of people that were made very sick as American scientists tried to
figure out how the body dealt with radiation. All these experiments remained top secret
until the 90s when President Bill Clinton said it’s time we talked about radiation
experiment cover-ups. The Plague in the Philippines
During the second world war the Japanese were trying to figure out how to drop diseases
on the USA, but before this time the U.S. was trying to figure out how to treat major
diseases. It’s said that while in the Philippines
the U.S Army along with scientists purposely gave five prisoners the bubonic plague and
caused something called beriberi in another 29 prisoners. Four of these people died. According to the book, “When doctors kill:
Who, Why and How,” they did this not to try and spread disease but just to better
understand it. That book also says that one particular Harvard
professor over there gave other Filipino prisoners cholera. The books says all became very sick and 13
people died. Thankfully these experiments were investigated
and they were called highly unethical. In the book it is also written that during
the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors, who had done a lot of awful stuff themselves, tried
to justify their work by using the American scientists in the Philippines as an example
of similar malpractice. Torture
We should say here that we haven’t purposefully picked out the USA and no doubt awful experiments
have been done elsewhere, it’s just that there is a lot of literature available on
what the USA has done. We can take torture for example, and as you
probably know, many prisoners in the US have been given mind-altering drugs that has had
very negative consequences. One of the most famous experiments was at
Holmesburg Prison and it took place with 320 inmates from 1964-1968. This is the same prison where that doctor
talked about acres of skin. Prisoners there were also subjects for radiation
experiments. But the torture experiment we are talking
about involved incredibly powerful hallucinogens. The scientists wanted to know how much they
could give a person so they were completely useless. They tested 100s of people. One person said later of this prison that
has become well known for human Guinea pigs, “He had a dozen or two experiments going
at one time... He turned Holmesburg into the K-Mart of human
experimentation. It was a real industry.” He was talking about the head doctor there. The doctor later told the press that he did
everything according to what was asked of him and followed protocol. Even before the place became a giant lab it
was terrible. In 1938 a bunch of prisoners on hunger strike
were sent to what were called bake ovens for punishment. It’s said four prisoners roasted to death. But you don’t even have to go that far back
to see how prisoners have been used so the CIA can figure out the effects of torture. When the CIA just a few years back had prisoners
holed up at black sites it wasn’t just torturing people to get information. According to a paper written by the Physicians
for Human Rights, waterboarding and sleep deprivation and all manner of other tortures
were merely tested on prisoners to see how they might best work. How else would they know? They needed living, breathing subjects and
human rights didn’t seem to be an issue. Companies were brought in to what the report
said was to “calibrate the level of pain experienced by detainees during interrogation.” The CIA denied this and the government didn’t
investigate the matter. Then in 2010 the authorities wanted to know
just how effective its Active Denial System was. This is a powerful laser that can hit a person’s
body, say people in a riot or protest, and heat them up. It was first made, though, for war. It was decided that prisoners at Pitchess
Detention Center in Los Angeles could be the Guinea pigs for this laser. The ray is said to cause intense heat, pain,
but when taken off the body everything is back to normal. It’s also said, though, that there is a
potential for death and there might be some terrible long-term effects such as eye damage
if it gets you there or even more chance of developing cancer. We should add that while this prison took
the laser as an experimental trial, it did that to use on people only if they got out
of hand. Mutants
Welcome Dr. Carl Heller. This man’s experiments were said by one
person to have a bit of the “Buchenwald touch”, meaning they were not unlike some
of the Nazi experiments on humans in concentration camps. But this happened in the U.S. According to Gizmodo he did the experiments
on behalf of the Atomic Energy Commission. He basically radiated the prisoners, but to
the extreme. Yes, that’s right. And he told these prisoners from Oregon and
Washington that he had to sterilize them after the radiation so they would not contaminate
the world with kids, but what he really said was that he was preventing them from passing
on what he called “radiation-induced mutants.” He did in fact sterilize them, but a few of
those guys later sued the government. The experiments went on from 1963 to 1973
and each got around $5 for losing the ability to make children and also get blasted with
radiation. There were other similar experiments performed
on mostly poor, black people, but they were often people suffering from cancer – so
not prisoners. What would happen is they would sign up for
a trial in which doctors said they were testing radiation and it might cure them of their
cancer. This was a lie. What was actually happening is the U.S. government
was trying to see what happens to the body when hit with extremely high levels of radiation,
far higher than anyone would receive now from radiation therapy. Cow Blood
“The rejection of the blood was catastrophic.” This is what one scientific paper says about
this particular study in which 64 Massachusetts prisoners were injected with cow blood in
1942 after the U.S. Navy had asked for it. Why oh why, you might be thinking right now. Well, all in the name of science, the same
as when the 400 inmates at Stateville Correctional Center in Illinois were injected with malaria;
and the same year 200 female prisoners were given viral hepatitis, or the prisoners injected
with cancer cells without their consent in the 50s by the renowned oncologist Chester
Milton Southam… or as one book says, the long list of prisoners given potentially fatal
diseases in the USA in those days. As for the cow blood, we are told that a Harvard
University scientist was asked by the navy to create a powerful biological weapon. Well one source says this, but another says
it was to purify the “process of extracting album from blood plasma” in order to make
better drugs. It’s actually quite hard to find information
about this, but some sources say the catastrophic events we mentioned ended with the death of
64 prisoners. We found another paper that said this, “Two
prisoners at the Norfolk County jail died of serum sickness induced by infusions of
crystalline bovine albumin. Harvard medical students were admitted to
the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital and bled until they went into shock.” Whatever the case, everyone agrees on, “catastrophic.” If we extended this show to include more experiments
performed on minorities, poor kids, mentally handicapped kids, sick people, pregnant women,
mentally ill people, we could have gone on and on. With that in mind, what do you think about
this? Tell us in the comments. Also, be sure to check out our other show
Worst Prison Experiments Conducted On Humans #1. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.
