CROSSING THE ETHICAL BOUNDARIES: MISTREATMENT AND ABUSE OF MILITARY OFFICERS 100%
There is a thin, often overlooked line existing between research and ethics. If you ever took the time to sit and read about all the clandestine and heinous acts of crimes that military officers were put through, you’d be in for a real surprise. The stories of these experiments were buried deep inside the pages of history, undisclosed to the eyes of most, until recently; the more you dive into the depths of these experiments, the more you’ll start questioning the reality that you live in. Let’s turn back time to the mid 90s to get an idea about where it all began. With the World Wars, came a surge in the need to develop different areas of research using experimentation. Although it seemed like a way to bring about improvement in the world, its aftermath resulted in more damage than it did good. The mid 20th century marked the birth of once secretive, but now infamous experiments which led to military destruction. Given the countless number of unethical experiments to pick from, it is safe to say that by the end of this blog, we might be spoilt for choices. So, WHERE DO WE BEGIN?
LOBOTOMY
In the 1940s and 50s, lobotomy— procedure commonly used to treat patients dealing with severe mental illnesses— was a favourite method of torture in the name of treatment, used by the Veterans Association on military war veterans. Lobotomy involves the slicing of connections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain as a method of treating extreme cases of mental illness. A recent report published by the Wall Street Journal, revealed the records of over 2000 war veterans, suffering from mental illnesses, having undergone lobotomy; as per the reports, the procedure was carried out on veterans of war, diagnosed with disorders like depression, PTSD, and schizophrenia; to make it all worse, there was occasional conduction on those officers who identified as homosexuals. Initially developed to help mentally disturbed individuals, post war events led to its exploitation, for its own personal benefits. In most cases, effects of the procedure included cognitive impairment, poor bowel movement, apathy, and in extreme cases, death. This is just the first of the many cases of mistreatment that were thrown in the face of military officers.
THE CIA’S SECRET PROJECTS
When you read stories about fraud, betrayal, and hate crimes, we get an idea that these are often committed by those closest to the victims. The Central Intelligence Agency of the USA is notoriously known for the secret operations they used to carry out on their own army officers and agents . The “PROJECT ARTICHOKE”, formerly known as “BLUEBIRD” was a secret mind control operation developed as a technique for interrogation. Operated by the CIA’s office of scientific intelligence, its key goal was to find out if it was possible to scientifically manipulate an army man into involuntarily performing assassination. The manner in which this was tested was rather scary, but nothing that has not been previously practiced. Conducted mainly on American prisoners of the Korean War, one of the project techniques included administering drugs like LSD and Morphine, forcibly and on a frequent basis in extremely large doses on these servicemen; this administration was reported to have caused a peculiar mental state, marked by anxiety, mood alterations, perceptual disorientation, and feelings of depersonalisation among many other things in these individuals.
THE EDGEWOOD ARSENAL EXPERIMENTS
Colonel James S. Ketchum in the early 1960s was the mastermind behind the conduction of another unethical experiment known as The Edgewood Arsenal Experiment or OPERATION DELIRIUM. Carried out inside the closed doors of Edgewood Arsenal, a US army facility in Maryland, this particular study was an extension of the Chemical Corps Study. It was a method of understanding the effects that certain drugs and chemicals might have on military officers; subjects of this study were administered Sarin, VX, LSD, Teargas and PCP. Archival records of this experiment showcased reports of victims suffering from temporary blindness, increased aggression or wanting to harm themselves, decreased speech and brain functioning, etc. In worst cases, they would even experience delirium for more than three days.
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR EXPERIMENTS DURING THE VIETNAM WAR
If you were presented with an opportunity to skip three days of work/college as a reward for taking part in an experiment, you’d without a doubt jump at the chance. So when soldiers of the Vietnam War were asked to volunteer for the program, they did so without hesitation. But little did they know about the real extremities of the same. The soldiers in question were forcibly exposed to hallucinogens and mustard gas as part of the Conscientious Objector Experiments. As per the recent studies revealed by the U.S military, the heavy experimentation on human participants were performed on nearly 70,000 recruited troops dating from 1922 to 1975.
These are just among the very few examples of mistreatment and trauma that military officers were made to undergo. Although in present times, there has been a major decrease in such events, it hasn’t completely perished and hence needs to be spoken or written about as often as possible.
REFERENCES:
https://www.healthline.com/health/what-is-a-lobotomy#risks
https://www.afba.com/military-life/va-performed-lobotomies-on-world-war-ii-veterans/
https://www.publichealth.va.gov/epidemiology/studies/vietnam-army-chemical-corps.asp
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/secrets-of-edgewood
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=operation+delirium&btnG
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sparsha Rai
Head of Psycreative Column
Second-year student, B.Sc. Applied Psychology, SDSOS, NMIMS.
More South Indian than ‘IDLI-VADA-DOSA’, Sparsha Rai is a self-proclaimed hilarious, and creative 19-year-old. She originally hails from a small yet stunning city known as Mangalore (often confused with Bangalore), located in the beautiful state of Karnataka. She believes in singing and joking her way through the difficulties in life. She aspires to become a psychologist in the future and intends to be the best and most original version of herself.
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