edgewood military experiments

Edgewood Arsenal: When the Army Drugged Soldiers Like Guinea Pigs

Remember when the Nazis committed terrible human experiments on their prisoners? Remember how many of those scientists were sent to the United States to escape their fates in Europe? Well, the Army sure doesn’t want you to because then you might start remembering how they used those same people at Edgewood Arsenal. In a dark period of history for the Army, there was a two-decade period where the Edgewood experiments tested Soldiers by drugging them with numerous substances without their consent or the care for their well-being.

Where Is Edgewood Arsenal?

You can find Edgewood Arsenal in Aberdeen, Maryland, located on the southwestern portion of the Aberdeen Proving Ground.

Originally, the facility was a classified location within Harford County. It would become known for holding and maintaining chemical and biological weapon programs for the United States, along with heinous human experiments on Soldiers.

The Horrors of the Edgewood Arsenal Experiments

The Edgewood Arsenal human experiments took place between 1955 and 1975. They occurred at a classified US Army facility, exposing around 7,000 Soldiers to more than 250 chemicals.

Many of those administering the experiments at Edgewood Arsenal under the direction of Dr. James Ketchum, who had ties to Nazi Germany. Additionally, they were already aware of unethical, experimental health studies.

Soldiers were exposed to drugs, chemical warfare agents, and a number of substances to test their effects, evaluate protective measures, and ultimately, to find a way to incapacitate humans. However, some Soldiers were simply given placebos.

Exposure levels were initially based on known safe limits from animal studies, and volunteers received minimal treatment for adverse effects if needed.

Additional chemical agent testing occurred outside the official program from 1951 to 1972, primarily in 1959, known as the Medical Research Volunteer Program.

While some tests involved nerve agents, irritants, and hallucinogens, some participants were involved in non-chemical performance and equipment tests.

Even though Soldiers were allowed to volunteer, the complete nature of the experiments, including what they were being exposed to, how much, the effects they would experience, and the healthcare, or lack thereof, was not explicitly laid out for those who were a part of these experiments.

Some of the agents Soldiers were exposed to during their time at Edgewood Arsenal, include:

Alcohol and caffeine
Anticholinesterase nerve agents (e.g., sarin and common organophosphorus (OP), and carbamate pesticides)
Incapacitating agents (e.g. BZ (2-quinuclidinyl benzilate))
Irritants and riot control agents
Mustard agents
Nerve agent antidotes atropine and scopolamine
Nerve agent reactivators (e.g., the common OP antidote 2-PAM chloride)
Psychoactive agents (ex., LSD, PCP, and cannabinoids)

Health Effects and Benefits for Veterans

Those exposed to the U.S. military experiments on Soldiers at the Edgewood Arsenal shouldn’t expect much in the form of care or compensation.

Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) didn’t include long-term care or follow-up as a part of its plan.

Today, it’s hard to say what the exact lingering effects from those tests would be because of the passage of time, and the fact that no system of care has been put into place.

Some physical and even long-term psychological effects developed as a result of the experiments, and the aftermath of the Edgewood Arsenal experiments may never be known.

Veterans can speak to their VA healthcare provider; however, there isn’t an official environmental health registry connected to these events.

Dr. Delirium and the Edgewood Experiments

Since 2019, Dr. James Ketchum has passed away. But, his story lives on in more ways than one.

The documentary Dr. Delirium and the Edgewood Experiments explores the shocking acts behind the DoD, Dr. Ketchum, and his crew.

This isn’t some conspiracy theory exposé nor is it a movie based on true events, stylized for entertainment.

Before his death, Dr. Ketchum was interviewed by director and executive producer Nick Brigden, and would explain his role in everything.

Most disturbingly of all, Ketchum shows no remorse and believes that what he did was a good thing. This is despite the backlash that would come after the truth came out.

If you’re looking to stream Dr. Delirium and the Edgewood Experiments , you can do so on Discovery Plus or Max.

Edgewood Arsenal Today

Thankfully, the weird, unethical experiments on Soldiers are no more—hopefully. However, you can still find Edgewood Arsenal, MD, in existence today.

It’s still a nationally recognized research center for developing, testing, and understanding biological and chemical warfare.

The Edgewood Area of Aberdeen Proving Ground is run by the Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) as one of three sites of its kind in the country.

Since WWI, the grounds of Edgewood Arsenal near the Chesapeake Bay have been used for manufacturing, testing, and disposing of chemical weapons.

Many unexploded chemical weapons remain on site, both on land and underwater, as they are too dangerous to move.

If you’d like to visit the Edgewood Arsenal Cemetery, you’ll need to contact the Aberdeen Proving Ground Directorate of Emergency Services. You can reach them at (410) 306-2380 to learn more about obtaining proper access.

VA Public Health , Accessed September 2024.

Military Health System , Accessed September 2024.

The Center for Land Use Interpretation , Accessed September 2024.

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Meet the Veterans Who Survived the Army's Edgewood Experiments

From 1955 to 1975, the Army conducted chemical weapons testing on volunteer soldiers at the Edgewood Arsenal facility in Maryland in pursuit of an agent that could disable enemy troops on the field of battle without killing them.

"Dr. Delirium & the Edgewood Experiments" is a new Discovery+ documentary (available on June 9, 2022) that chronicles the program and its long-term effects on the soldiers who participated in the testing. Dr. James Ketchum led the experiments, and we've got a clip in which he defends his methods.

The heart of the film is interviews with a group of veterans who participated in the testing program, mostly during the Vietnam War era. These men make a convincing case that they were not briefed about the risks involved in the program and did not understand the potential for the long-term effects they've endured.

On the other side is an in-depth and wide-ranging interview with Ketchum filmed shortly before his death in 2019. The Army colonel had no regrets about the experiments and believed he was acting in the best interests of the nation as it faced a Cold War threat.

Former ABC and Politico correspondent Tara Palmeri leads a team of investigative journalists as they reexamine a dark chapter of Army history. The documentary was produced by Zero Point Zero Production, the production company behind Anthony Bourdain's "Parts Unknown," so there's more visual flash and on-camera time for reporters than PBS viewers might expect.

However, much of that flash comes from recordings made during the actual experiments. Watching soldiers suffer through delirium and panic attacks while older survivors describe their experiences makes for powerful viewing.

While early experiments with marijuana and LSD get plenty of discussion, much of the long-term damage seems to result from experimentation with the powerful incapacitating agent 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate, commonly known as BZ. The chemical caused a delirium that included hallucinations and an inability to carry out tasks.

"Dr. Delirium & the Edgewood Experiments" gives ample airtime to theories that Edgewood hosted Nazi scientists given asylum under the Pentagon's notorious Operation Paperclip program, but never quite manages to tie the Germans to Ketchum's experiments.

The truth about the CIA is quite another story, one that should've been a huge news story a decade ago but gets fully recounted here for anyone who missed the truth the first time. There's a reason we have such incredible details about the program available now, and this film makes excellent use of the truths revealed during a massive lawsuit.

In the end, the focus is on the veterans who endured these experiments and the struggles many have faced since. These men aren't polished or rehearsed, and the filmmakers let them have their say, even when things veer into pure speculation. They deserve that respect and the audience this documentary can bring.

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Inside Edgewood Arsenal, The U.S. Military’s Top-Secret Human Experiment Program During The Cold War

Between 1948 and 1975, the u.s. army tested chemical weapons like mustard gas and lsd on american soldiers at maryland's edgewood arsenal facility..

Chemical Weapon Test At Edgewood Arsenal

Baltimore Sun A chemical weapons test conducted at Edgewood Arsenal in September 1957.

Developed by the Nazis during World War II, sarin is a deadly chemical that can kill in minutes. And for years, the U.S. military secretly tested sarin gas on its own soldiers in a series of classified experiments at Edgewood Arsenal, a government facility in Maryland.

But sarin wasn’t the only lethal chemical weapon used in the human experiments at Edgewood Arsenal. From roughly 1948 to 1975, the Army experimented with multiple chemical warfare agents, exposing around 7,000 soldiers to chemicals like tear gas, mustard agents, and other dangerous drugs.

Soldiers who volunteered for the program were reportedly often misled about what they were signing up for. And after they arrived, many volunteers were administered drugs without being told what they were.

“If they had told me what it did, I never would have taken it,” one test subject said after learning he’d been given LSD.

This is the story behind the nightmarish human experiments the U.S. Army conducted at Edgewood Arsenal.

Human Experiments In The Name Of National Security

Initially, the Army argued that the Edgewood Arsenal experiments were necessary for national security. With the Cold War raging, the military needed to know which chemicals might harm U.S. troops — and also wanted to develop its own chemical weapons to use offensively.

So, for over two decades, the Army tested chemical weapons on volunteer soldiers. Allegedly, the U.S. even consulted the former Nazi scientists who developed chemicals like sarin to help with the experiments.

Library of Congress Edgewood Arsenal housed the Chemical Warfare School in World War II, where soldiers tested gas masks. After the war, the Army began conducting human experiments at the facility.

Psychiatrist Colonel James Ketchum, who later became known as “Dr. Delirium,” joined Edgewood in the 1960s, spearheading its mind-altering drug tests as the head of psychochemical research. A zealous defender of the experiments until his death in 2019, Ketchum insisted that the chemical weapons they were testing were more humane than traditional weaponry and were a necessary precaution during the Cold War.

“We were in a very tense confrontation with the Soviet Union, and there was information that was sometimes accurate, sometimes inaccurate, that they were procuring large amounts of LSD, possibly for use in a military situation,” Ketchum said, as reported by the New Yorker .

L. Wilson Greene, the scientific director at Edgewood, argued that chemical warfare could lead to fewer casualties on the battlefield.

“Throughout recorded history, wars have been characterized by death, human misery, and the destruction of property; each major conflict being more catastrophic than the one preceding it,” Greene wrote in 1949. “I am convinced that it is possible, by means of the techniques of psychochemical warfare, to conquer an enemy without the wholesale killing of his people or the mass destruction of his property.”

But despite these intentions, Edgewood Arsenal’s critics say the experiments — and the manner in which Ketchum and his team conducted them — were far from “humane.”

U.S. Army Films made by the U.S. Army demonstrated the effects of chemical weapons and drugs on soldiers.

The Soldiers Recruited For Edgewood Arsenal’s Human Experiments

The Army claimed that soldiers volunteered for the project. But the truth was more complicated.

“They were told that they were going to be testing army equipment,” Nick Brigden, director of the documentary Dr. Delirium and the Edgewood Experiments , told The Guardian . “There was no mention of drugs.”

After shipping out to Maryland, the soldiers were pressured into dangerous experiments.

“Once they got into Edgewood, from what I’ve heard from these vets, they were threatened with court martials if they didn’t participate,” said Brigden, who interviewed Edgewood Arsenal veterans for his documentary.

Officially, the Army told a different story. The Armed Forces Medical Policy Council decided in the early 1950s that without human volunteers, the project could not continue, according to research by the National Center for Biotechnology Information . So the Council authorized using soldiers in the medical experiments.

Edgewood Arsenal Soldier Inhaling Chemicals

US Army A soldier inhaling Agent BZ, a dangerous chemical, during a test at Edgewood Arsenal.

The Army later claimed that all participants voluntarily consented and received a full briefing on the tests. But the veterans who had participated in the tests disagreed.

“They told me it would be like taking aspirin,” one test subject told the Baltimore Sun . But the drug tests he endured left him suicidal for years.

“The fact that they were allowed to do it without people who knew what they were doing was very, very scary,” a physician named Mark Needle told the New Yorker . “There was no humanity in it. There was no morality in it.”

Testing Chemical Weapons On Soldiers

What did the tests at Edgewood Arsenal look like? L. Wilson Greene, the director at Edgewood Arsenal, had a specific type of reaction that he wanted to see.

“The symptoms which are considered to be of value in strategic and tactical operations include the following,” he wrote. “Fits or seizures, dizziness, fear, panic, hysteria, hallucinations, migraine, delirium, extreme depression, notions of hopelessness, lack of initiative to do even simple things, suicidal mania.”

As a result, the volunteers took drugs that rendered them terrified and debilitated, including dangerous toxins like sarin and Agent BZ. Researchers also gave the soldiers doses of LSD and PCP to test their reactions.

In some experiments, doctors dripped deadly chemicals on the arms of volunteers to see how they reacted. In others, men popped pills without knowing exactly what they contained. Some men went temporarily blind during the tests or tried to harm themselves. Some experienced hallucinations that lasted for days.

US National Archives A U.S. Army film from around 1960 demonstrated the effects of LSD on troops by drilling a unit before and after they were administered the drug.

The tests left some volunteers hospitalized. When psychotropic drugs left one soldier paranoid even after the dose wore off, he spent six weeks in the hospital.

The Horrific Impacts Of The Edgewood Drug Tests

Perhaps the most dangerous chemical the Army experimented with was sarin. In one year of sarin tests, seven technicians required immediate medical treatment after they were accidentally exposed to the chemical, and birds passing over the gas chambers’ flues following sarin tests dropped dead and regularly had to be removed from the facility’s roof.

The healthy volunteers who were administered the toxic chemical, meanwhile, had severe reactions, including twitching, vomiting, and struggling to breathe.

In 1961, one Edgewood volunteer named John Ross was administered a nerve agent called soman — and just as he was being injected, he overheard the doctors say the chemical was lethal.

“I started having convulsions,” he later told the New Yorker . “I started vomiting. One of the guys standing over me said, ‘We gave you a little too much.’ They told me to walk it off. I started to panic. I thought I was going to die.”

Ross lived. But for years, he experienced depression and insomnia.

In another experiment, a test subject who’d been administered BZ said he felt he was in danger at Edgewood Arsenal.

“I feel like my life is not worth a nickel here,” he said. “I just don’t feel that I am safe, here, in the house.”

The Aftermath Of Edgewood Arsenal

In 1975, the human experiments at Edgewood Arsenal ended after a Congress investigation exposed the program for its coercive recruiting process and repeated failure to obtain informed consent from volunteers.

But the soldiers who’d been subjected to the experiments felt their effects for decades. Many of them struggled with depression and suicidal ideation. Others suffered from nervous system disorders

“I need to know everything that happened to me because it could give me some peace and fewer nightmares,” a veteran of the Edgewood Arsenal experiments wrote to Dr. Ketchum. And it was far from the only letter of its kind Ketchum received.

“I guess some people find it satisfying to look back and condemn what doctors and others did half a century ago,” Ketchum shot back to another veteran who questioned him. “Especially if it lends itself to sensationalized movies, and entitles them to disability pensions.”

US National Archives After receiving LSD, the soldiers in an experiment were unable to follow orders.

The Edgewood Arsenal Lawsuit

In 2009, a group of former Edgewood Arsenal volunteers filed a class action lawsuit against the Army, Department of Defense, and CIA. Rather than asking for compensation, the veterans simply wanted to know what drugs they’d received, to be released from their oaths of secrecy, and to gain access to Veterans Affairs medical benefits.

A U.S. District Court ruled in favor of the veterans in 2013. And in 2015, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the Army was also required to provide the veterans with medical care related to the experiments.

Over 60 years since the human experiment program at Edgewood Arsenal began, the veterans were still dealing with the lasting effects of the tests they’d undergone. Only now, at least in a literal sense, the Army was finally paying for what they’d subjected them to.

Edgewood Arsenal wasn’t the only top-secret military project that used human test subjects. Next, read about MK-Ultra , the CIA’s brutal Cold War research program. Then, learn about other horrific human experiments performed by the U.S. government.

PO Box 24091 Brooklyn, NY 11202-4091

Decades After Secret Chemical Tests, Veterans Await Notification and Medical Care

Bob Krafty was just out of his teens when he was offered temporary duty at Edgewood Arsenal in 1965.

Top secret Army experiments exposed thousands of veterans to potential chemical and biological weapons. Some are still waiting for follow up medical care.

Carson Frame reports on veterans who participated in chemical and biological agents testing during the Cold War.

For decades during the Cold War, the Army carried out chemical and biological testing experiments on more than 7,000 of its own soldiers at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. The service members - all volunteers - were sworn to secrecy and told they would experience no long-term health effects.

Some soldiers tested protective clothing, while others were exposed to nerve agents, mustard gas, and psychoactive drugs. Most didn't realize what they'd signed up for.

Bob Krafty was just out of his teens in 1965 when the Army offered him temporary duty at Edgewood. The offer was attractive: it would mean no kitchen duty, a private room and three days off per week. The Army told him he'd be helping to end the war in Vietnam.

"I was naive. I was patriotic," said Krafty, who now lives in Venice, Fla. "My government would never hurt me. You know, at first it's embarrassing to know you were sucked in."

Once he arrived at Edgewood, Krafty heard talk of a new chemical warfare strategy that would minimize American casualties.

"I was told that, theoretically, we could take a chemical and dump it behind the enemy lines," he said. "Then in 12 hours, 24 hours, go behind there and gather them up. This way, you're not being killed. You're not killing them."

Decades after he left the Army, Bob Krafty is still trying to learn about how the Edgewood tests may have affected his health.

Krafty remembers the experiments vividly. The Army once put him in a padded room for three days and made him breathe an aerosol pesticide used by the military as a nerve agent.

"They put it over my nose and mouth," he said. "I felt weak - dizzy. They tested us day and night - woke us up during the night taking blood pressure, asking what sensations we're feeling."

Krafty left Edgewood after two months and remained stateside instead of going to Vietnam.

By the time he reached his mid-20s, his hands shook so badly he couldn't do simple tasks. He later developed other health problems, including prostate cancer and symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

It was only decades later that he found out through his own research that he had been exposed to dangerous chemicals. But when Krafty obtained his Army health records and applied for VA disability benefits, he was rejected. The VA said it lacked adequate evidence to show that Krafty's health problems were connected to his time in service.

Notifications slow, incomplete

In 2013, a federal court ruled that the Army had to notify veterans of possible long-term health effects from their time at Edgewood. The same court later required the Army to provide the Edgewood veterans medical care as well.

"Notice is important," said attorney Ben Patterson, "so vets can get proper medical treatment and understand the diagnosis for their particular health problems." Patterson's firm, Morrison and Foerster, is representing the Edgewood test veterans .

In November, the Army began mailing about 4,000 letters to veterans around the country. The letters included applications for medical care, but made no direct mention of Edgewood Arsenal. They also didn't provide any information about the specific chemicals vets were exposed to.

"It's so generic," said Frank Rochelle, who is one of the original plaintiffs in the case. "It's obvious that they didn't even know what they were doing."

Some veterans - like Krafty - never received a letter. Others that did, like Rochelle, face an uphill battle to qualify for care and get their health information.

Bob Krafty's records from 1965 provide some details about the experiments he underwent at Edgewood. This excerpt says the men were sprayed with uranin, a fluorescent dye.

"The forms they want you to fill out are basically just delaying the whole system, Rochelle said. "They're hoping that we'll die."

But the Army said notifying vets isn't as easy as it sounds.

Bill Fitzhugh at the Army Public Health Center said officials first have to validate where veterans are before releasing any private health information. That's difficult, he said, because some of the records from Edgewood have been destroyed or are difficult to make sense of.

The Army said some veterans didn't receive letters because parts of their names, social security numbers, or serial numbers are missing from its database.

"The major issues that we're talking about is our data is incomplete. The data that we're dealing with sometimes is handwritten notes, notebooks," Fitzhugh said. "It's definitely not automated."

'How many are dying off?'

As of Feb. 1, the Army had received only 64 medical care applications from veterans - 41 of which were complete. An estimated 1,000 test veterans from Edgewood are still alive.

"We have sent over 265 letters to Veteran/Military Service Organizations requesting that they share the information with their members," said a statement from Army Public Health. "We have reached out to the VA, and they have placed the link to our website and a brief description of this program on their websites."

Fitzhugh said it will be a while before the Army's outreach gains traction.

"I was surprised to see how many responses we got as quickly as we did," he said. "But we're expecting to see the number increase over time. And that's just for the known veterans - the ones that we sent out notification letters to. So that's one of the big things we're working on right now: How do we reach out to all of these veterans?"

That's a question Bob Krafty spends a lot of time thinking about. He managed to get a copy of the Army's medical care application on his own. But he says his fellow aging veterans can't wait any longer.

"Let's face it. With the age, how many are dying off? How many don't know about it? In another 30 years, we're all gonna be gone," he said. "Then Edgewood Arsenal is kind of going to go away."

Soldiers with the 18th Airborne Corps grab a quick nap during an exercise at Fort Liberty, N.C. Army commanders are more systematically encouraging sleep as a performance enhancer.

Edgewood Arsenal human experiments

From 1948 to 1975, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps conducted classified human subject research at the Edgewood Arsenal facility in Maryland . [1] These experiments began after the conclusion of World War II , and continued until the public became aware of the experiments, resulting in significant outcry. The purpose was to evaluate the impact of low-dose chemical warfare agents on military personnel and to test protective clothing , pharmaceuticals , and vaccines . A small portion of these studies were directed at psychochemical warfare ; grouped under the title "Medical Research Volunteer Program" (1956–1975), driven by intelligence requirements and the need for new and more effective interrogation techniques. [1]

Background and rationale

The experiments, acetylcholine related experiments, psychochemical related experiments, scandal and termination, government reports, safety debates, list of notable ea (edgewood arsenal) numbered chemicals, list of notable cs (chemical structure) and cas (chemical abstracts service) numbered chemicals used in the edgewood arsenal experiments, general sources, external links.

Overall, about 6,720 soldiers took part in these experiments that involved exposures to more than 250 different chemicals, according to the Department of Defense (DoD). [2] Some of the volunteers exhibited symptoms at the time of exposure to these agents but long-term follow-up was not planned as part of the DoD studies. [3] The experiments were abruptly terminated by the Army in late 1975 amidst an atmosphere of scandal and recrimination as lawmakers accused researchers of questionable ethics. Many official government reports and civilian lawsuits followed in the wake of the controversy.

The chemical agents tested on volunteers included chemical warfare agents and other related agents: [3]

Anticholinesterase nerve agents ( VX , sarin ) and common organophosphorus (OP) and carbamate pesticides
Mustard agents
Nerve agent antidotes including atropine and scopolamine
Nerve agent reactivators, e.g. the common OP antidote 2-PAM chloride
Psychoactive agents including LSD , PCP , cannabinoids , and BZ
Irritants and riot control agents
Alcohol and caffeine

After the conclusion of World War II , U.S. military researchers obtained formulas for the three nerve gases developed by the Nazis— tabun , soman , and sarin .

In 1947, the first steps of planning began when Dr. Alsoph H. Corwin, a professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University [4] [5] wrote the Chemical Corps Technical Command positing the potential for the use of specialized enzymes as so called "toxicological warfare agents". He went on to suggest that with intensive research, substances that depleted certain necessary nutrients could be found, which would, when administered on the battlefield, incapacitate enemy combatants. [4]

In 1948, the US Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center began conducting research using the aforementioned nerve gases. These studies included a classified human subjects component at least as early as 1948, when "psychological reactions" were documented in Edgewood technicians. Initially, such studies focused solely on the lethality of the gases and its treatment and prevention.

A classified report entitled "Psychochemical Warfare: A New Concept of War" was produced in 1949 by Luther Wilson Greene , Technical Director of the Chemical and Radiological Laboratories at Edgewood. Greene called for a search for novel psychoactive compounds that would create the same debilitating mental side effects as those produced by nerve gases, but without their lethal effect. In his words,

Throughout recorded history, wars have been characterized by death, human misery, and the destruction of property; each major conflict being more catastrophic than the one preceding it ... I am convinced that it is possible, by means of the techniques of psychochemical warfare, to conquer an enemy without the wholesale killing of his people or the mass destruction of his property. [6]

In the late 1940s and early '50s, the U.S. Army worked with Harvard anesthesiologist Henry K. Beecher at its interrogation center at Camp King in Germany on the use of psychoactive compounds ( mescaline , LSD ), including human subject experiments and the debriefing of former Nazi physicians and scientists who had worked along similar lines before the end of the war. [7] In the 1950s, some officials in the U.S. Department of Defense publicly asserted that many "forms of chemical and allied warfare as more 'humane' than existing weapons. For example, certain types of 'psychochemicals' would make it possible to paralyze temporarily entire population centers without damage to homes and other structures." [8] Soviet advances in the same field were cited as a special incentive giving impetus to research efforts in this area, according to testimony by Maj. Gen. Marshall Stubbs , the Army's chief chemical officer.

In June 1955, the United States Department of Defense appointed a so-called Ad Hoc Study Group on Psychochemical Agents, which seems to have acted as a central authority on the research of psychochemical at Edgewood Arsenal and other installations where such experimentation occurred. [4]

General William M. Creasy , former chief chemical officer, U.S. Army, testified to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1959 that "provided sufficient emphasis is put behind it, I think the future lies in the psychochemicals." [9] This was alarming enough to a Harvard psychiatrist, E. James Lieberman , that he published an article entitled "Psychochemicals as Weapons" in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in 1962. Lieberman, while acknowledging that "most of the military data" on the research ongoing at the Army Chemical Center was "secret and unpublished", asserted that "There are moral imponderables, such as whether insanity, temporary or permanent, is a more 'humane' military threat than the usual afflictions of war." [10]

The Edgewood Arsenal human experiments took place from approximately 1948 to 1975 at the Medical Research Laboratories—which is now known as the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense (USAMRICD)—at the Edgewood Area, Aberdeen Proving Ground , Maryland. The experiments involved at least 254 chemical substances, but focused mainly on midspectrum incapacitants , such as LSD , THC derivatives, benzodiazepines , and BZ . Around 7,000 US military personnel and 1,000 civilians were test subjects over almost three decades. [11] [12] [13] A result of these experiments was that BZ was weaponized, although never deployed. [14]

According to a DOD FAQ, the Edgewood Arsenal experiments involved the following "rough breakout of volunteer hours against various experimental categories": [15]

Experimental category	Percentage of volunteer hours
	29.9%
Lethal compounds	14.5%
Riot control compounds	14.2%
Protective equipment and clothing	13.2%
Development evaluation and test procedures	12.5%
Effects of drugs and environmental stress on human physiological mechanisms	6.4%
Human factors tests (ability to follow instructions)	2.1%
Other (visual studies, sleep deprivation, etc.)	7.2%

Much of the experimentation at Edgewood Arsenal surrounded the modulation of Acetylcholine or Acetylcholinesterase, or the deactivation and reactivation of substances which did the same. [1] These experiments represented a significant enough proportion of the total experimentation to earn a dedicated volume in the main experimental documentation. Much of the follow up data on the acetylcholine related experiments are lacking or entirely missing, due to a combination of remaining classification and failures on the part of the United States Department of Veterans Affairs and United States Department of Defense to follow the subjects of the experimentation. [16]

Anticholinesterase Experiments

Anticholinesterases are substances that interfere with the Central nervous system and the Peripheral nervous system by inhibiting acetylcholinesterase and therefore sustaining the effect of acetylcholine or butyrylcholine within the chemical synapses , [17] resulting in a cholinergic crisis , and possibly death if untreated. [18]

Long term side effects of exposure to Anticholinesterases , including at levels below the threshold for profound illness and death can include paralysis and peripheral neuropathy , [19] sleep disturbance , [20] genetic mutation and cancer. [1] In total, 1,406 subjects were tested with 16 agents, some of which included reactivating agents and protective agents. [1]

Anticholinergic Experiments

Anticholinergics are substances that interfere with the Central nervous system and the Peripheral nervous system by inhibiting acetylcholine , resulting in what is essentially the opposite effect of an cholinesterase inhibitor to the extreme. [21] This can result in anticholinergic syndrome, and possibly death if untreated. [22] [23]

Available data from both experiment patients [1] and pharmaceutical research indicates that short-term exposure to anticholinergic compounds, especially the extremely limited exposures described in the documentation is associated with no long-term effects. It is important to note however, that in the decades since their introduction to medical use, research has begun to suggest a causal relationship between long term anticholinergic drug use and later development or worsening of dementia . [24] In total, 1,752 subjects were tested with 21 agents, some of whom received exposure to more than one chemical agent. [1]

Cholinesterase Reactivator Experiments

Cholinesterase Reactivators are substances which reactivate acetylcholinesterase which has been inactivated by an anticholinesterase . [25] [1] This action can be precipitated through a variety of mechanisms, including directly binding and deactivating the anticholinesterase itself, [26] blocking the reaction between the anticholinesterase and the acetylcholinesterase, [27] changing the release of acetylcholine, [28] blocking acetylcholine's cholinolytic effect, [29] or by increasing the excretion of the anticholinesterase. [30]

Available data from the experiments [1] and from prescribing information [31] from modern marketing of these substances concludes that little risk exists of long term effects from exposure. It is noted, however, in both the prescribing information for modern variants and in toxicological research on the subject that it has been the subject of insufficient research to conclude this beyond a reasonable doubt. [32] [31] In total, 219 subjects were tested with 4 agents. [1]

The 1976 report on the matter identifies the sole objective of the psychochemical experiments as determining the impact on morale and efficacy such agents would have on military units. [4] It appears that these experiments specifically were first called for in 1954 after the attendees of the First Psychochemical Conference informed the Department of Defense that human trials were indicated. In 1957, the first report of such trials were received, detailing a four-person experiment wherein they attempted to successfully decontaminate themselves of a mock agent while under the influence of LSD . [33]

LSD Experiments

The LSD experiments are perhaps the best documented of the psychochemical experiments of the time, garnering at least two significant independent reports. [4] [33] [34] LSD is a Psychedelic drug that acts as a dopamine and serotonin agonist [35] [36] precipitating a hallucinogenic effect, leading to hallucinations , euphoria , and a wide variety of physiological symptoms. [37]

Available data describes a wide range of doses used in the experiments, from approximately 2μg/kg to 16μg/kg [33] A typical dose for recreational use is around 100μg, [38] [39] [40] or about 1.1μg/kg for the average adult male in the U.S., [41] meaning the lowest dose used in experimentation was almost twice the typical recreational dose, and the highest dose exceeded fifteen times the typical recreational dose. Because of limited documentation, it is difficult to ascertain which experiments occurred at which installations, but available documentation describes several general types of experiments; which included presenting individuals with radar symbols for interpretation, having them track a simulated aircraft, having them read a map, having them interpret meteorological data, and having them attempt to defend an installation against a simulated hostile air craft attack with 40-mm antiaircraft automatic weapons. [33] Results varied between experiments, but typically showed significant impairment at all doses, with impairment increasing as dose did. [4] [33] [34]

Available data from the experiments [34] concluded that long term effects from LSD exposure in not only the Edgewood Arsenal Experiments, but in the other associated experiments conducted concurrently by the Army Chemical Corps as well were minimal, with the exception of a possible small increase in congenital heart disease in offspring of the experimental subjects, and neuropsychological abnormalities in 9% of the participants which could not be explained by etiological explanations other than LSD exposure, most of which were considered mild. It is reported that all testing of LSD at Edgewood Arsenal and in general on behalf of the Army Chemical Corps was abandoned on or around April 1963. [4]

BZ Experiments

3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate , or BZ is a substance that interferes with the Central nervous system and the Peripheral nervous system by inhibiting acetylcholine . Existing documentation admits only that the substance was tested at Edgewood Arsenal, and all other data, including the medical records from the subjects are completely missing. [4] Because of the extremely limited data, speculation on possible side effects from exposure is impossible.

In September 1975, the Medical Research Volunteer Program was discontinued and all resident volunteers were removed from the Edgewood installation. The founder and director of the program, Van Murray Sim , was called before Congress and chastised by outraged lawmakers, who questioned the absence of follow-up care for the human volunteers. An Army investigation subsequently found no evidence of serious injuries or deaths associated with the MRVP, but deplored both the recruiting process and the informed consent approach, which they characterized as "suggest[ing] possible coercion".

1982-85 IOM report The Institute of Medicine (IOM) published a three-volume report on the Edgewood research in 1982–1985, Possible Long-Term Health Effects of Short-Term Exposure to Chemical Agents . [42]

The three volumes were:

Vol. 1, "Anticholinesterases and Anticholinergics" (1982).
Vol. 2, "Cholinesterase Reactivators, Psychochemicals and Irritants and Vesicants" (1984)
Vol. 3, "Final Report: Current Health Status of Test Subjects" (1985)

The National Academy of Sciences , which oversees the IOM, sent a questionnaire to all of the former volunteers that could be located, approximately 60% of the total. The lack of a detailed record hampered the investigation. The study could not rule out long-term health effects related to exposure to the nerve agents. It concluded that "Whether the subjects at Edgewood incurred these changes [depression, cognitive deficits, tendency to suicide] and to what extent they might now show these effects are not known". With regard specifically to BZ and related compounds, the IOM study concluded that "available data suggest that long-term toxic effects and/or delayed sequellae are unlikely".

2004 GAO report A Government Accounting Office report of May 2004, Chemical and Biological Defense: DOD Needs to Continue to Collect and Provide Information on Tests and Potentially Exposed Personnel (pp. 1, 24), stated:

[In 1993 and 1994] we [...] reported that the Army Chemical Corps conducted a classified medical research program for developing incapacitating agents. This program involved testing nerve agents, nerve agent antidotes, psycho chemicals, and irritants. The chemicals were given to volunteer service members at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland; Dugway Proving Ground, Utah; and Forts Benning, Bragg, and McClellan. In total, Army documents identified 7,120 Army and Air Force personnel who participated in these tests. Further, GAO concluded that precise information on the scope and the magnitude of tests involving human subjects was not available, and the exact number of human subjects might never be known. [43]

The official position of the Department of Defense, based on the three-volume set of studies by the Institute of Medicine mentioned above, is that they "did not detect any significant long-term health effects on the Edgewood Arsenal volunteers". [13] The safety record of the Edgewood Arsenal experiments was also defended in the memoirs of psychiatrist and retired colonel James Ketchum , a key scientist: [44]

Over a period of 20 years, more than 7,000 volunteers spent an estimated total of 14,000 months at Edgewood Arsenal. To my knowledge, not one of them died or suffered a serious illness or permanent injury. That adds up to 1,167 man-years of survival. Statistically, at least one out of a thousand young soldiers chosen at random might be expected to expire during any one-year period. By this logic, Edgewood was possibly the safest military place in the world to spend two months.

As late as 2014, information was incomplete; IOM could not conduct adequate medical studies related to similar former US biowarfare programs, because relevant classified documents had not been declassified and released.

The committee's understanding is that additional, and potentially relevant, material on SHAD tests exists and remains classified. The IOM committee requested declassification of 21 additional elements from at least nine documents from DoD in August 2012. In January 2014, an additional request was made for release of multiple films made of Project SHAD tests. None of the requested materials were cleared for public release as of this writing (2016). [45]

Even a book critical of the program, written by Lynn C. Klotz and Edward J. Sylvester, acknowledges that:

Unlike the CIA program, research subjects [at Edgewood] all signed informed consent forms, both a general one and another related to any experiment they were to participate in. Experiments were carried out with safety of subjects a principal focus. [...] At Edgewood, even at the highest doses it often took an hour or more for incapacitating effects to show, and the end-effects usually did not include full incapacitation, let alone unconsciousness. After all, the Edgewood experimenters were focused on disabling soldiers in combat, where there would be tactical value simply in disabling the enemy. [12]

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The U.S. Army believed that legal liability could be avoided by concealing the experiments. However once the experiments were uncovered, the US Senate also concluded questionable legality of the experiments and strongly condemned them.

In the Army's tests, as with those of the CIA, individual rights were ... subordinated to national security considerations; informed consent and follow-up examinations of subjects were neglected in efforts to maintain the secrecy of the tests. Finally, the command and control problems which were apparent in the CIA's programs are paralleled by a lack of clear authorization and supervision in the Army's programs.(S. Rep., at 411.[5]) [46]

In the 1990s, the law firm Morrison & Foerster agreed to take on a class-action lawsuit against the government related to the Edgewood volunteers. The plaintiffs collectively referred to themselves as the "Test Vets".

In 2009 a lawsuit was filed by veterans rights organizations Vietnam Veterans of America , and Swords to Plowshares , and eight Edgewood veterans or their families against CIA, the U.S. Army, and other agencies. The complaint asked the court to determine that defendants' actions were illegal and that the defendants have a duty to notify all victims and to provide them with health care. In the suit, Vietnam Veterans of America, et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, et al. Case No. CV-09-0037-CW, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Cal. 2009), the plaintiffs did not seek monetary damages. Instead, they sought only declaratory and injunctive relief and redress for what they claimed was several decades of neglect and the U.S. government's use of them as human guinea pigs in chemical and biological agent testing experiments.

The plaintiffs cited:

The use of troops to test nerve gas, psychochemicals, and thousands of other toxic chemical or biological substances.
A failure to secure informed consent and other widespread failures to follow the precepts of U.S. and international law regarding the use of human subjects, including the 1953 Wilson Directive and the Nuremberg Code.
A refusal to satisfy their legal and moral obligations to locate the victims of experiments or to provide health care or compensation to them
A deliberate destruction of evidence and files documenting their illegal actions, actions which were punctuated by fraud, deception, and a callous disregard for the value of human life.

On July 24, 2013, United States District Court Judge Claudia Wilken issued an order granting in part and denying in part plaintiffs' motion for summary judgment and granting in part and denying in part defendants' motion for summary judgment. The court resolved all of the remaining claims in the case and vacated trial. The court granted the plaintiffs partial summary judgment concerning the notice claim: summarily adjudicating in plaintiffs' favor, finding that "the Army has an ongoing duty to warn" and ordering "the Army, through the DVA or otherwise, to provide test subjects with newly acquired information that may affect their well-being that it has learned since its original notification, now and in the future as it becomes available". The court granted the defendants' motion for summary judgment with respect to the other claims. [47]

On appeal in Vietnam Veterans of America v. Central Intelligence Agency , a panel majority held in July 2015 that Army Regulation 70-25 (AR 70-25) created an independent duty to provide ongoing medical care to veterans who participated in U.S. chemical and biological testing programs. The prior finding held that the Army has an ongoing duty to seek out and provide "notice" to former test participants of any new information that could potentially affect their health. [48]

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EA 1152 - Diisopropyl fluorophosphate (DFP)
EA 1205 - Tabun (GA)
EA 1208 - Sarin (GB)
EA 1210 - Soman (GD)
EA 1212 - Cyclosarin (GF)
EA 1285 - Tetraethyl pyrophosphate (TEPP)
EA 1298 - Methylenedioxyamphetamine (MDA) , an analogue and active metabolite of MDMA
EA 1508 - VG
EA 1517 - VE
EA 1653 - LSD in tartrate form [49]
EA 1664 - Edemo (VM)
EA 1701 - VX
EA 1729 - LSD in free base form
EA 1779 - CS gas
EA 2092 - Benactyzine
EA 2148-A - Phencyclidine (PCP) [50]
Eight individual isomers numbered EA-2233-1 through EA-2233-8
EA 2277 - BZ ("Substance 78" to Soviets)
EA 3148 - A "V-series" nerve agent, Cyclopentyl S-2-diethylaminoethyl methylphosphonothiolate ("Substance 100A" to Soviets)
EA 3167 - A BZ variant
EA 3443 - A BZ variant
EA 3528 - LSD in maleate form
EA 3580 - A BZ variant
EA 3834 - A BZ variant
EA-4929 - An enantiomer of the drug Dexetimide , also known as benzetimide
EA 4942 - Etonitazene in free base form
EA 5365 - GV
EA 5823 - Sarin (GB) as a binary agent from mixing OPA ( isopropyl alcohol + isopropyl amine ) + DF

The following chemicals were identified by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine as having been used in the Edgewood Arsenal Experiments, though they did not receive an EA number designation. [1]

CS 12602 - Tacrine an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor and indirect cholinergic agonist ( parasympathomimetic )
CS 58525 - Eserine a highly toxic parasympathomimetic alkaloid , specifically, a reversible cholinesterase inhibitor
CAS 59-99-4 - Neostigmine an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor
CAS 317–52–2 - Hexafluronium bromide a nicotinic acetylcholine receptor antagonist related to Curare
CAS 155–97–5 - Pyridostigmine bromide an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor implicated in Gulf War syndrome
CAS 121–75–5 - Malathion an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor and organophosphate pesticide
CAS 62–51–1 - Methacholine , a synthetic choline ester that acts as a non-selective muscarinic receptor agonist
CAS 674-38-4 - Bethanechol , a parasympathomimetic choline carbamate
CAS 51–34–3 - Scopolamine an anticholinergic drug studied by the CIA as a truth serum
CAS 8015–54–1 - Ditran an anticholinergic drug mixture, related to the chemical warfare agent 3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate
CAS 101-31-5 - Hyoscyamine a levorotary isomer of atropine
CAS 155–41–9 - Methylscopolamine bromide a muscarinic antagonist scopolamine derivative
CAS 31610-87-4 - Methylatropine a belladonna derivative
THC-O-acetate
CB military symbol
United States chemical weapons program
Edgewood Chemical Biological Center
Human experimentation in the United States
Swords to Plowshares
United States v. Stanley


Units, formations, centers and institutes	(USAMRICD)
Industrial facilities
Operations and projects
Operational
Disposal


By country
Events
Media	(1942) (1933)

Veterans In Army's Chemical Experiments Say Time Is Running Out

For decades during the Cold War, the Army carried out chemical and biological testing experiments on more than 7,000 of its own soldiers at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. The GIs — all volunteers — were sworn to secrecy and told they would experience no long-term health effects.

Some soldiers tested protective clothing, while others were exposed to nerve agents, mustard gas, and psychoactive drugs with no plan for follow-up care.

Most didn’t realize what they’d signed up for.

Bob Krafty was just out of his teens when — in 1965 — he was offered temporary duty at Edgewood. The offer was attractive: it would mean no kitchen duty, a private room and three days off per week. The Army told him he’d be helping to end the war in Vietnam.

“I was naive. I was patriotic,” Krafty said. “My government would never hurt me. You know, at first it's embarrassing to know you were sucked in.”

Once he arrived at Edgewood, Krafty heard talk of a new chemical warfare strategy, one that would minimize American casualties.

“I was told that, theoretically, we could take a chemical and dump it behind the enemy lines,” he said. “Then in 12 hours, 24 hours, go behind there and gather them up. This way, you're not being killed. You're not killing them.”

Krafty remembers the experiments vividly. The Army once put him in a padded room for three days and made him breathe an aerosol pesticide used by the military as a nerve agent.

“They put it over my nose and mouth,” he said. “I felt weak — dizzy. They tested us day and night — woke us up during the night taking blood pressure, asking what sensations we're feeling.”

Krafty left Edgewood after two months and remained stateside instead of going to Vietnam.

By the time he reached his mid-20s, his hands shook so badly he struggled to countersink a nail. He later developed other health problems, including prostate cancer and symptoms of post-traumatic stress.

It was only decades later that he found out through his own research that he had been exposed to dangerous chemicals. But when Krafty obtained his Army health records and applied for VA disability benefits, he was rejected. The VA said it lacked adequate evidence to show that Krafty’s health problems were connected to his time in service.

Ordered To Notify

In 2013, a federal court ruled that the Army had to notify veterans of possible long-term health effects from their time at Edgewood. That same court later required the Army to provide them with medical care as well.

“Notice is important; one, so vets can get proper medical treatment and understand the diagnosis for their particular health problems, but also because (of) benefits claims processes,” said Ben Patterson of Morrison and Foerster, the law firm representing the Edgewood test veterans . “For example with the VA, they need that additional support in order to get their claims granted.”

Starting in November, the Army mailed about 4,000 letters to test vets around the country. They included applications for medical care, but made no direct mention of Edgewood Arsenal. They also didn’t provide any information about the specific chemicals vets were exposed to.

“It’s so generic. It’s obvious that they didn’t even know what they were doing,” said Frank Rochelle, who is one of the original plaintiffs in the case, which began in 2009. “The forms they want you to fill out are basically just delaying the whole system.

“They’re hoping that we’ll die.”

Some veterans — like Krafty — never received a letter. Others that did, like Rochelle, face an uphill battle to qualify for care and get their health information.

“I don't think these guys are acting in good faith,” Krafty said. “I didn't receive any notification or application from them. But I know they have my files — they sent them to me three times.”

But the Army said notifying vets isn’t as easy as it sounds.

Bill Fitzhugh, who is the program director of the medical care injunction for participants of chemical or biological substance testing programs at the Army Public Health Center, said the Army first has to validate where veterans are before releasing any private health information.

“So they've got to get their DD214 (discharge paperwork) and figure out where it is,” Fitzhugh said. “Then they have to show proof of participation, so that might be in some other different place. The last piece is to get the application form signed by their physician.”

The Army said some veterans didn’t receive letters because parts of their names, social security numbers, or serial numbers were missing from its database.

Some of the records from Edgewood have been destroyed – or are difficult to make sense of.

“The major issues that we’re talking about is our data is incomplete. The data that we’re dealing with sometimes is handwritten notes, notebooks,” Fitzhugh said. “It’s definitely not automated.”

Bureaucratic Obstacles

As of Feb. 1, the Army had only received 64 medical care applications from veterans — 41, of which, were complete. There are an estimated 1,000 living test veterans from Edgewood.

According to a statement from Army Public Health: “We have sent over 265 letters to Veteran/Military Service Organizations requesting that they share the information with their members. We have reached out to the VA and they have placed the link to our website and a brief description of this program on their websites.”

"Let's face it. With the age, how many are dying off? How many don't know about it? In another 30 years, we're all gonna be gone."

Fitzhugh said it will be a while before the Army’s outreach gains traction.

“I was surprised to see how many responses we got as quickly as we did,” Fitzhugh said. “But we're expecting to see the number increase over time. And that's just for the known veterans — the ones that we sent out notification letters to. So that's one of the big things we're working on right now: How do we reach out to all of these veterans?”

That’s a question Bob Krafty spends a lot of time thinking about. He managed to get a copy of the Army’s medical care application on his own. But he says his fellow aging veterans can’t wait any longer.

“Let's face it. With the age, how many are dying off? How many don't know about it? In another 30 years, we're all gonna be gone,” he said. “Then Edgewood Arsenal is kind of going to go away.”

Eligible veterans can call the Army's hotline at 1-800-984-8523 for more information.

This story was produced by the American Homefront Project, a public media collaboration that reports on American military life and veterans. Funding comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Bob Woodruff Foundation.

Carson Frame can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @carson_frame

Messed-Up History

The Messed Up Truth Of The Edgewood Experiments

From at least 1948 to 1975, the U.S. Army was involved in human experimentation involving chemical agents at Edgewood Arsenal (via the Journal of Psychoactive Drugs ). But over half a century later, they continue to be less than forthcoming about the experiments, even with their own subjects. And while information has slowly trickled out over the years, the military and Department of Veterans Affairs have done their best to try to evade responsibility at every turn.

For years, these experiments were kept a secret even from the soldiers who were being tested on. After years of being evasive, the U.S. Army was finally forced to admit that they were conducting chemical tests on human subjects. But while they've always insisted that the subjects were volunteers, the lack of documentation regarding these experiments makes it questionable if the people involved were actually giving their full and informed consent.

This isn't the first time that the United States government has experimented on its own citizens . But many of their experiments had their origins at Edgewood. Even the well-known Project MKULTRA had its budding start at thee facility. This is the messed-up truth of the Edgewood experiments.

Creating the Edgewood Arsenal

The Edgewood Arsenal facility, located in the U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland, was built during the end of the First World War to study and weaponize chlorine and mustard gas. After breaking ground a year earlier, by October 1, 1918, the Edgewood facility had over 585 buildings, a hospital with over 250 beds, and barracks for 8,500 officers and enlisted men (via " Environmental Histories of the First World War "). The New Yorker writes that the U.S. Army promptly built laboratories and gas chambers in order to run experiments on human subjects after witnessing the effects of chemical warfare during WWI.

According to " The Chemist's War " by Gerard J. Fitzgerald, by the end of the First World War, the Edgewood facility was "the most advanced chemical weapons facility in the world and the only facility capable of producing all four of the Great War's war gases [chloropicrin, phosgene, chlorine, and mustard gas]." In 1918, The Baltimore Sun described it as "the largest poison gas factory on earth." At least one private also wrote in 1918 about hearing "about the terrors of this place [...] Everyone we talked to on the way out here said we were coming to the place God forgot! They tell tales about men being gassed and burned."

Recruiting Nazi scientists

After the Second World War, the U.S. Army put some of its efforts toward studying the nerve gasses that the Third Reich had invested in, including tabun, soman, and sarin. According to The New Yorker , both the Soviet Union and the American governments were interested in acquiring Nazi knowledge about chemical weapons. While the Soviet Union reportedly relocated a nerve-gas plant behind the Iron Curtain, the Americans recruited the Nazi scientists who developed the chemical formulas.

In " Hard Right Turn ," Jerry Carrier writes that many Nazi doctors and scientists were recruited by the United States as part of Operation Paperclip, and many were brought to the Edgewood facility. And most of the scientists brought over had already been identified as Nazi war criminals during the Nuremberg Trials. "Several secret U.S. government mind control projects grew out of these Nazi experiments at the Edgewood Arsenal. These projects included Project Chatter in 1947, and Project Bluebird in 1950 [later renamed Project Artichoke]," Carrier writes.

Recruited scientists included Freidrich Hoffman and Dr. Karl Tauboeck, who were both involved in chemical experiments for the Nazi Reich. The Alliance For Human Research Protection writes that not only did they continue working on chemical experiments for the U.S. Army and CIA, but they also conducted tests on soldiers using oxygen deprivation. A CIA memorandum noted that "some subjects became exhilarated, talkative, or quarrelsome, with emotional outbursts or fixed ideas. Some complained of headache or numbness. Voluntary coordination and attention are impaired ... burns and bruises are not noticed."

The Edgewood Arsenal human experiments

Along with the testing of nerve gasses, L. Wilson Greene, Edgewood's scientific director, reportedly wrote in 1949 that psychochemical warfare was the next stage of warfare. "Throughout recorded history, wars have been characterized by death, human misery, and the destruction of property; each major conflict being more catastrophic than the one preceding it. I am convinced that it is possible, by means of the techniques of psychochemical warfare, to conquer an enemy without the wholesale killing of his people or the mass destruction of his property," he wrote the classified report "Psychochemical Warfare: A New Concept of War," per The New Yorker . As such, this became the foundational understanding behind the Edgewood facility, and in order to manifest this new concept of warfare, thousands of people were experimented upon between 1948 and 1975.

Estimates of how many soldiers were used in human experiments by the U.S. Army and the CIA vary. According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs , up to 6,720 service members participated in chemical experiments involving over 250 different chemical agents. The All Native Group's Ho-Chunk Technical Solutions Healthcare Division conducted a report ⁠— Assessment of Potential Long-Term Health Effects on Army Human Test Subjects of Relevant Biological and Chemical Agents, Drugs, Medications and Substances ⁠— that found that 12,000 men in the military were used in human experiments for biological and chemical warfare programs. Meanwhile, the 1993 and 1994 reports by the U.S. General Accounting Office state that "hundreds of radiological, chemical, and biological tests were conducted in which hundreds of thousands of people were used as test subjects."

Informed consent?

Although some sort of consent form was given to the service members at some point, it's questionable if any of the soldiers were fully informed about the experiments they were participating in. NPR reports that while the soldiers did sign consent forms, they didn't know what they were being exposed to, and "some of the soldiers have suffered physical and psychological trauma since the tests." The 1994 General Accounting Office report on human experimentation also notes that many of the people subjected to the human experimentation "complained that they had not been fully informed about risk involved," according to " Military Neuroscience and the Coming Age of Neurowarfare " by Armin Krishnan.

The 1975 U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Health and Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure also found that "the consent information was inadequate by current standards," per Possible Long-Term Health Effects of Short-Term Exposure to Chemical Agents . But according to The Baffler , informed consent has never really been extended to people in the military. Court cases like Chappell v. Wallace, Feres v. United States, and United States v. Stanley have repeatedly set the precedent that the state has broad immunity from wrongdoing when it involves people in the military since any damages are considered to be "incident to service."

Nerve agents

Experiments involving nerve agents at the Edgewood facility were already in progress by July 1953. According to the U.S. Army Inspector General's report on the "Use of Volunteers in Chemical Research," the experiments included exposing nerve gas liquid to human skin and nerve gas vapor to the respiratory tract, studying the effects of nerve gas on nervous and mental functions, and comparing the effects of nerve gas liquids, vapors, and aerosols on skin.

The Baltimore Sun reports that some of the tests involved releasing nerve agents in open-air testing, and while the subjects were dressed in protective suits and masks in some of the tests, "not all of them were informed that chemical and biological agents were being used." It's also unclear how many people were involved in these experiments. Open-air testing of toxic agents was banned in 1969, but indoor tests reportedly continued until 1981.

According to " Medical Aspects of Chemical Warfare ," the U.S. Army also conducted nerve agent testing experiments in Hawaii between 1966 and 1967.

Mustard agents

Mustard gas test subjects Edgewood facility

Mustard agent was also used in the human experiments at the Edgewood facility in various forms. Acutely toxic levels of mustard liquid were reportedly used and would often cause immediate poisoning symptoms. And according to Military Medicine , the rate of documented injuries was incredibly high. At one point over a two-year period, over 1,000 cases of acute mustard agent toxicity were reported. Experiments were also conducted using gas chambers, and they often lasted between one to four hours. People who were given less protection often suffered from "severe burns to the genital areas, including cases of crusted lesions to the scrotum."

Although these experiments were more common at the Edgewood facility during the Second World War, they continued well after the conflict ended. Some service members were only notified in 1996 that they'd been a participant in mustard agent testing, per the " Chemical Weapons Exposure Project: Summary of Actions and Projects ." In addition, NPR reports that sometimes, the experiments were also grouped by race "to see what effect these gasses would have on black skins."

Psychoactive agents

In addition to chemical agents that could be used during warfare, the U.S. Army also tested numerous psychoactive agents on soldiers at the Edgewood facility. The New Yorker reports that psychochemical warfare was officially added to Edgewood's research roster in the mid-1950s, and soldiers were recruited from all around the country using the Medical Research Volunteer Program. (Many of these experiments can also be linked with Project MKULTRA .) According to Military Medicine , LSD was tested on at least 741 people, while PCP was tested on at least 260 people. "With rare exceptions, all LSD-exposed subjects [reportedly] voluntarily participated in the chemical warfare testing and were informed ahead of time that they would be receiving a psychoactive agent," the U.S. Army Chemical Corps and the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps claimed.

But Army Master Sergeant James B. Stanley was one of the many people who wasn't informed of the fact that he was being used to test LSD. The Baffler writes that in the winter of 1958, Stanley was given water secretly infused with LSD once a week for over four weeks in addition to being injected. Even after leaving Edgewood, Stanley continued to suffer reactions to the druggings, sometimes manifesting in violent behavior. He wouldn't discover the cause of his behavior until 1975, when he received a letter from the U.S. Army asking him if he'd like to participate in a study of long-term effects of LSD on volunteers from the 1958 tests.

Riot control agents

Customs and Border Protection and riot gas

Riot control agents, including irritants and blister agents, were also tested at the Edgewood facility. Military Medicine writes that about 1,500 people were involved in the human testing experiments of riot control agents, including CS, chloropicrin, Adamsite, and other ocular and respiratory irritants. Exposure was typically through aerosol, dermal, or eye application. For some people, exposure to CS lead to erythema, vesicles, burns, hepatic dysfunction, and urinary abnormalities. Some even showed allergic dermatitis after repeated exposure.

According to " Celebrating 85 Years of CB Solutions ," the Edgewood facility was instrumental in supporting the Vietnam War with riot control agents. Even the Army Research and Development wrote in 1968 that Edgewood developed three munitions that were being used in Vietnam "with very good results." Meanwhile, " Inhalation Toxicology ," edited by Harry Salem and Sidney A. Katz, notes that the United States doesn't recognize riot control agents to be chemical warfare agents.

The Report of the Comptroller General of the United States also confirms that during at least one point, the U.S. Army also used dogs in their "experiments on new nonlethal riot gasses."

Government revelations

The 1975 report by the U.S. Army Inspector General on the " Use of Volunteers in Critical Agent Research " was one of the first official revelations regarding human experimentation at the Edgewood facility. And NPR reports that in 1975, the military's chief of medical research admitted that they didn't have any way to monitor people's health after the tests were done. Further confirmations came in the 1980s, when the Institute of Medicine produced a three-volume report at the Army's request regarding the long-term health of Edgewood veterans entitled " Possible Long-Term Health Effects of Short-Term Exposure to Chemical Agents ." According to CNN , the Institute of Medicine determined that there wasn't enough information to form "definitive conclusions."

In 1993 and 1994, the General Accounting Office reported on the human experimentation at Edgewood Arsenal as well as the human experimentation at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, Fort Benning, Fort Bragg, and Fort McClellan. But considering the limited information provided by the U.S. Army, the General Accounting Office concluded that "precise information on the scope and the magnitude of tests involving human subjects was not available, and the exact number of human subjects might never be known."

In 2004, the General Accounting Office also determined that although some of the people used in human experimentation were eventually identified and informed of their contact, there were likely "service members and civilian personnel potentially exposed to agents who have not been identified for various reasons."

Lack of a paper trail

The 1975 report by the U.S. Army Inspector General called " Use of Volunteers in Critical Agent Research " writes that "the lack of factual information available to quickly respond to the inquiries illustrated an inadequacy of the Army's institutional memory on this subject area. This inadequacy was aggravated by inconsistencies in the limited data which was available." These sentiments were echoed by the General Accounting Office . The IG report also notes that many of the requests for experiment approvals failed to even mention what specific nerve gas agents would be used under which circumstances. "The available records gave the impression that the submission of the initial request[s] amounted to nothing more than a perfunctory action for the purpose of obtaining blanket approval for ongoing research projects," it reads.

According to the " Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists ," the U.S. Army also failed to provide any follow-up medical care and failed to anticipate any long-term health consequences. And even when veterans like Nathan Schnurman, a Navy test veteran, continued to suffer from long-term health problems and got the Department of Veterans Affairs to admit that human experimentation had occurred on him, he was unable to get them to admit that it had any relation to his current health problems. Even the Navy records he was able to find were " erroneous and incomplete ."

Veterans et al v. the CIA et al

In 2009, a group of veterans organizations filed a suit against the CIA and the United States Department of Defense, stating that the government was obligated to contact all their subjects of the human experimentation and give them proper medical care. The Guardian reports that while the veterans acknowledge that they volunteered for the experiments, "we were not fully aware of the dangers. None of us knew the kind of drugs they gave us or the after-effects they'd have." Instead, they were told that the experiments were harmless and that their health would be monitored throughout the tests as well as afterward.

NPR reports that a court ruled in favor of the veterans in 2016, but the U.S. Army has reportedly been "falling short of meeting its obligations and that it's withholding details veterans are seeking about what agents they were exposed to." And rather than sending veterans an account of their medical history, the army has sent out form letters that state that the recipient may be eligible for medical care if they previously volunteered for "medications or vaccines."

Long-term effects

Although the three-volume study published by the Institute of Medicine between 1982 and 1985 claimed that there were no "significant long-term health effects in Edgewood Arsenal volunteers," many veterans have reported experiencing long-term health effects that can be attributed to the human experimentation at the Edgewood facility (per the " Deployment Health Support Directorate "). Unfortunately, NPR reports that many who participated in the experiments have also since passed away.

Black Then writes that many servicemen suffered from a variety of adverse health effects following the Edgewood human experiments, including peeling skin, cancer, motion disorders, and psychological issues. And although many veterans meet all of the requirements to apply for benefits if they can prove that they have an illness linked to a chemical the U.S. Army exposed them to, NPR reports that the Department of Veterans Affairs continues to press for more information and proof and will deny benefits to veterans for decades.

Per NPR, though veteran Harry Bollinger, who participated in the human experiments, is proud of his service, "that time in his life is tainted: by the pain he felt as a human test subject in military experiments, and by the VA that told him it wasn't real."

Manufacturing Madness

For decades, the United States Army conducted human experiments with chemical weapons at Edgewood Arsenal, a military facility located on the Chesapeake Bay. The experiments began before the Second World War, focussing on mustard gas; after the war, the focus shifted to nerve agents, and, later, to psychochemicals. The notion of psychochemical warfare was one of the most unusual to emerge from the Cold War. Clinical researchers working for the Army tested well-known drugs, like mescaline and PCP, and also rare ones, known only by their secret Edgewood Arsenal codes: EA 3167, for instance. Their ambition was to identify a chemical with the right balance of properties: one that causes no physical harm but also triggers mental disruptions so profound that they can incapacitate enemy soldiers.

Many of the experiments were documented on film—some for propaganda purposes, some for research—and we have compiled some of the footage here, in “Manufacturing Madness,” a companion to “ Operation Delirium ,” my story in The New Yorker this week. The footage documents soldiers in various states of euphoria, agitation, or physical agony, while Army doctors interview them, or measure their level of incapacitation by asking them to count backward by increments of seven. Not all the drugs stimulate the same type of behavior. A soldier on LSD giggles. A soldier on BZ scratches his back, and is so immersed in his delirium that he does not even realize the nonsensical nature of his calculations.

The most famous bit of footage in “Manufacturing Madness” is of a cat locked in a cage with a mouse; it is from an Army propaganda reel that was widely circulated in the nineteen-fifties. The cat, once dosed with LSD, appears to run in fear from the mouse; the normal power balance is reversed. “These effects upon the human are substantially the same as those demonstrated on the cat,” an Army official told Congress. But not everyone at Edgewood thought the demonstration was worth much.

“The point of this work is not that the cat is afraid of the mouse but simply that we have changed the normal psychological reaction of the animals,” Colonel Douglas Lindsey, the arsenal’s chief medical officer, told a gathering of military doctors in 1959. “Some cats are not afraid of the mouse, but appear to show deep affection for it, and mother it as a kitten. So much for psychological incapacitation.”

See more of The New Yorker’s “Secrets of Edgewood” content , including Raffi Khatchadourian’s original article, “Operation Delirium,” along with more videos, documents, and a post about the Army’s use of LSD during the Cold War.

“In the Dark” Reports on the Lack of Accountability for a U.S. War Crime

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Investigations

Veterans used in secret experiments sue military for answers.

Caitlin Dickerson

Historic images from the Naval Research Laboratory depict results of a test subject who was exposed to mustard gas. Naval Research Laboratory hide caption

American service members used in chemical and biological testing have some questions: What exactly were they exposed to? And how is it affecting their health?

Tens of thousands of troops were used in testing conducted by the U.S. military between 1922 and 1975. As one Army scientist explained, the military wanted to learn how to induce symptoms such as "fear, panic, hysteria, and hallucinations" in enemy soldiers. Recruitment was done on a volunteer basis, but the details of the testing and associated risks were often withheld from those who signed up.

Many of the veterans who served as test subjects have since died. But today, those who are still alive are part of a class action lawsuit against the Army. If they're successful, the Army will have to explain to anyone who was used in testing exactly what substances they were given and any known risks. The Army would also have to provide those veterans with health care for any illnesses that result, in whole or in part, from the testing.

The law firm representing the veterans estimates at least 70,000 troops were used in the testing, including World War II veterans exposed to mustard gas , whom NPR reported on earlier this summer.

Bill Blazinski has chronic lymphocytic leukemia, which he thinks may have been caused by the military tests. He was 20 years old when he volunteered in 1968.

"There would be a guaranteed three-day pass every weekend unless you had a test," he says. "There would be no kitchen police duties, no guard duties. And it sounded like a pretty good duty."

What sounded more like a vacation than military duty quickly changed, he says. In one test, doctors said they would inject him with an agent and its antidote back to back.

"We were placed in individual padded cells. And you know the nurse left and I'm looking at this padded wall and I knew it was solid but all of a sudden started fluttering like a flag does up on a flag pole," he recalls.

To learn about what substances made him hallucinate, in 2006, Blazinski requested the original test documents under the Freedom of Information Act. "It showed an experimental antidote for nerve agent poisoning with known side effects, and another drug designed to reverse the effects of the first," he says.

World War II Secret Mustard Gas Testing

Secret world war ii chemical experiments tested troops by race.

The VA's Broken Promise To Thousands Of Vets Exposed To Mustard Gas

Alan Oates was exposed to herbicides, such as Agent Orange, while serving in Vietnam in 1968. Decades after returning home, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and because Congress passed the Agent Orange Act, he's able to receive VA benefits.

Can The Agent Orange Act Help Veterans Exposed To Mustard Gas?

Researchers kept information about which agents they were administering from test subjects to avoid influencing the test results. A lawyer representing the veterans, Ben Patterson of the law firm Morrison and Foerster, says that's a problem.

"They don't know what they were exposed to. You know, some of these substances were only referred to by code names," Patterson says.

Code names such as CAR 302668. That's one of the agents, records show, that researchers injected into Frank Rochelle in 1968.

During one test, Rochelle remembers that the freckles on his arms and legs appeared to be moving. Thinking bugs had crawled under his skin, he tried using a razor blade from his shaving kit to cut them out. After that test, he says he hallucinated for 40 hours.

"There were animals coming out of the walls," he says. "I saw a huge rabbit and he was solid white with red eyes."

In 1975, the Army's chief of medical research admitted to Congress that he didn't have the funding to monitor test subjects' health after they went through the experiments. Since then, the military says it has ended all chemical and biological testing.

Test subjects like Rochelle say that's not enough.

"We were assured that everything that went on inside the clinic, we were going to be under 100 percent observation; they were going to do nothing to harm us," he says. "And also we were sure that we would be taken care of afterwards if anything happened. Instead we were left to hang out to dry."

The Department of Justice is representing the Army in the case and declined to comment for this story. In June, an appeals court ruled in favor of the veterans. On Friday, the Army filed for a rehearing.

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7 Unusual Experiments by the U.S. Military

By: Evan Andrews

Updated: June 1, 2023 | Original: May 18, 2015

1. The U.S. Camel Corps

Horses were the Army’s primary form of transport during the 19th century, but things might have been very different if not for the failure of the U.S. Camel Corps. This unlikely experiment began in 1856 after Secretary of War Jefferson Davis imported a herd of several dozen camels from North Africa and Turkey. Davis believed the “ships of the desert” would flourish in the arid climate of America’s newly acquired territories in the Southwest, and early tests and supply runs seemed to back him up. The camels could go days without water, carried heavy loads with ease and navigated harsh terrain better than mules and horses. One previously skeptical surveyor even dubbed them “noble and useful brutes” after they impressed during an expedition to the Arizona-California border. But while the camels’ hardiness was never in doubt, the Civil War effectively ended their stint in the armed services. Army brass lost interest in the outfit during the march to war, and it was finally disbanded after the Confederacy—ironically, with Davis as its president—captured its base at Camp Verde, Texas. Most of the remaining camels were later auctioned off to circuses and private citizens. Others were turned loose, and their descendants were still being sighted in the wild as recently as the 1940s.

2. Project Iceworm

In 1958, the U.S. Army launched one of the most audacious experiments of the Cold War. As part of a top-secret project dubbed “Iceworm,” they drew up plans to hide hundreds of ballistic missiles under Greenland’s ice caps. Once operational and concealed beneath the Arctic snows, the sites would be poised for potential nuclear strikes on the Soviet mainland. To test out their designs, the Army first built Camp Century, a prototype ice base constructed under the guise of being a scientific research facility. This sprawling outpost consisted of some two-dozen underground tunnels carved out of the ice sheet and reinforced with steel and snow. It had living quarters for more than 200 people and boasted its own laboratories, hospital and theater—all of it powered by a state-of-the-art portable nuclear reactor. Camp Century may have been a technological marvel, but it was no match for Mother Nature. After only a few years, shifts in the ice caps caused many of its tunnels to become warped and structurally unsound. Convinced Greenland was no place for nuclear weapons, the Army reluctantly scrapped the project in 1966.

3. The FP-45 Liberator

Shortly after the United States entered World War II, its Joint Psychological Warfare Committee began searching for a way to arm resistance fighters in Axis-occupied countries. The result was the FP-45, a small, single-shot .45 caliber pistol that could be manufactured on the cheap and airdropped into enemy territory. The theory was that resistance fighters would use crude pistols to assassinate enemy troops and then take their weapons. The guns would also have a psychological effect, since the thought that every citizen might be armed with a “Liberator” would strike fear into the hearts of occupying soldiers. The U.S. produced 1 million FP-45s between June and August 1942, but the pistols failed to ever catch on in the field. Allied commanders and intelligence officers found them impractical, and European resistance fighters tended to favor the “Sten”—a British-made submachine gun. While some 100,000 Liberators did find their way to Pacific Theater, there’s no documentation on how widely used or effective they were. The remaining FP-45s have since become something of a collector’s item, and working models occasionally sell for upwards of $2,000.

4. Project Pigeon

During World War II, psychologist B.F. Skinner received military funding for a seemingly outrageous weapon: a pigeon-guided missile. The famed behaviorist got the idea for his “Bird’s-Eye Bomb” while watching a flock of pigeons in flight. “Suddenly I saw them as ‘devices’ with excellent vision and extraordinary maneuverability,” he wrote. “Could they not guide a missile?” The project that followed was as brilliant as it was weird. After using conditioning to train pigeons to peck at pre-chosen images—an enemy battleship, for instance—Skinner placed the birds inside a specially designed missile nosecone. This tiny cockpit contained a plastic screen that projected an image of the weapon’s flight path. By pecking at the screen, the pigeons could change the missile’s coordinates and effectively “steer” it toward its intended target. Early simulations showed that the birds were ace pilots, and the project won endorsements from physicists and psychologists. Unfortunately for Skinner, the military balked at funding such an outlandish idea. Convinced the kamikaze pigeons would never work in the field, they pulled the plug in October 1944.

5. Flying Aircraft Carriers

Airborne aircraft carriers might seem like the stuff of science fiction, but the U.S. Navy actually experimented with a pair of dirigible “motherships” in the years before World War II. The U.S.S. Akron and the U.S.S. Macon were both rigid airships—a lighter-than-air craft that used helium to float through the skies. Unlike most airships, these 800 - foot-long behemoths sported built-in hangars that allowed them to launch, retrieve and store as many as five Curtiss Sparrowhawk biplanes during flight. The planes were launched from a T-shaped opening in the bottom of the hull and could be recaptured in mid-air by lowering a trapeze arm and seizing a “skyhook” attached to their wings. The Navy had high hopes for using the Akron and Macon for reconnaissance, but both of the plane-carrying airships eventually crashed. The Akron went down in high winds off the coast of New Jersey in April 1933, and the Macon fell victim to a storm near California in February 1935. Faced with the deaths of some 75 crewmen, the Navy abandoned its flying aircraft carrier program in favor of non-rigid blimps.

6. The Edgewood Arsenal Drug Experiments

The paranoia of the Cold War inspired the military to attempt some highly dubious experiments, but few compare to their nearly 20-year-long dalliance with illicit substances. Beginning in the 1950s, Maryland’s Edgewood Arsenal was home to a classified Army research program on psychoactive drugs and other chemical agents. More than 5,000 soldiers served as guinea pigs for the project, which was intended to identify non-lethal incapacitating agents for use in combat and interrogations. Unsuspecting Army grunts were given everything from marijuana and PCP to mescaline, LSD and a delirium-inducing chemical called BZ. Some were even dosed with potentially lethal nerve agents such as sarin and VX. While the tests produced reams of documentation on the effects of the substances, they discovered no wonder drugs and created very little practicable intelligence. Many of the subjects, meanwhile, were left with psychological trauma and lingering health problems. Following a public outcry and a Congressional hearing, the drug experiments were terminated in 1975.

7. The Peacekeeper Rail Garrison

Artist’s rendition of a missile in a rail car. (Credit: San Diego Air & Space Museum)

In the late-1980s, military officials were concerned that the United States' stationary missile silos would be easy targets in the event of a shootout with the Soviets. Enter the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison, a mobile nuclear arsenal consisting of 50 MX missiles kept in specially designed Air Force train cars. The plan called for the trains to spend most of their time stored in reinforced buildings around the country, but during periods of heightened alert, they could scatter across 120,000 miles of commercial railroad track to frustrate Soviet attempts to destroy them. Each of the 25 trains carried two rail cars that housed nuclear missiles. By opening the car’s roof and raising a special launch pad, they could even fire their weapons on the go. President Ronald Reagan approved plans for the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison in 1986 amid criticisms that it was unnecessary and overly pricey. The project got the axe only five years later when the end of the Cold War reduced the need for nuclear defense. One of the prototype rail cars now sits on display at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

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Edgewood Arsenal human experiments
The Edgewood Arsenal human experiments took place from approximately 1948 to 1975 at the Medical Research Laboratories—which is now known as the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense (USAMRICD)—at the Edgewood Area, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland.The experiments involved at least 254 chemical substances, but focused mainly on midspectrum incapacitants, such as LSD ...
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The Horrors of the Edgewood Arsenal Experiments. The Edgewood Arsenal human experiments took place between 1955 and 1975. They occurred at a classified US Army facility, exposing around 7,000 Soldiers to more than 250 chemicals. Many of those administering the experiments at Edgewood Arsenal under the direction of Dr. James Ketchum, who had ...
Meet the Veterans Who Survived the Army's Edgewood Experiments
"Dr. Delirium & the Edgewood Experiments" is a new Discovery+ documentary (available on June 9, 2022) that chronicles the program and its long-term effects on the soldiers who participated in the ...
Edgewood/Aberdeen Experiments
Edgewood/Aberdeen Experiments. From 1955 to 1975, the U.S. Army Chemical Corps conducted classified medical studies at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. The purpose was to evaluate the impact of low-dose chemical warfare agents on military personnel and to test protective clothing and pharmaceuticals. If you are concerned about exposures during ...
Edgewood Arsenal: When The U.S. Tested Chemicals On Soldiers
Inside Edgewood Arsenal, The U.S. Military's Top-Secret Human Experiment Program During The Cold War. Between 1948 and 1975, the U.S. Army tested chemical weapons like mustard gas and LSD on American soldiers at Maryland's Edgewood Arsenal facility. Baltimore Sun A chemical weapons test conducted at Edgewood Arsenal in September 1957.
Secrets of Edgewood
Using Army footage of the clinical research at Edgewood, "Manufacturing Madness" provides a look inside the secret padded wards where experiments with psychochemicals were conducted. Primary ...
Vets feel abandoned after secret drug experiments
CNN —. The moment 18-year-old Army Pvt. Tim Josephs arrived at Edgewood Arsenal in 1968, he knew there was something different about the place. "It just did not look like a military base, more ...
The VA's Broken Promise To Thousands Of Vets Exposed To Mustard Gas
Courtesy of Edgewood Arsenal hide caption. toggle caption. Courtesy of Edgewood Arsenal ... by the pain he felt as a human test subject in military experiments, and by the VA that told him it wasn ...
'Operation Delirium:' Psychochemicals And Cold War : NPR
Throughout the 1950s and '60s, at the now-crumbling Edgewood Arsenal by the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland, military doctors tested the effects of nerve gas, LSD and other drugs on 5,000 U.S. soldiers ...
Decades After Secret Chemical Tests, Veterans Await Notification and
For decades during the Cold War, the Army carried out chemical and biological testing experiments on more than 7,000 of its own soldiers at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
Operation Delirium
Military doctors who helped conduct the experiments have long since moved on, or passed away, and the soldiers who served as their test subjects—in all, nearly five thousand of them—are ...
Secret World War II Chemical Experiments Tested Troops By Race
U.S. troops in Panama participate in a chemical warfare training exercise with smoke during World War II. Howard R. Wilson/Courtesy of Gregory A. Wilson. In it, she suggested that black and Puerto ...
The Edgewood Arsenal
The Chemical Warfare was published monthly by the enlisted men of Edgewood Arsenal in Edgewood, Maryland "to bring the news—to stimulate [them] in [their] work—to make for happiness—to cheer and to educate." This issue was the fifth and final number in the magazine's publication run, and it includes a history of Edgewood Arsenal and a general roster of all men stationed at the arsenal on...
High Anxiety: LSD in the Cold War
For decades, the U.S. Army conducted secret clinical experiments with psychochemicals at Edgewood Arsenal. In the nineteen-sixties, Army Intelligence expanded the arsenal's work on LSD, testing ...
Edgewood-Aberdeen Experiments
Edgewood-Aberdeen Experiments and Public Health. Between 1950 and 1975, about 6,720 service members took part in experiments involving exposures to 254 different chemicals. These experiments were conducted at US Army Laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal, MD. These experiments were conducted primarily to learn how various agents would affect humans.
Edgewood Arsenal human experiments
The Edgewood Arsenal human experiments took place from approximately 1948 to 1975 at the Medical Research Laboratories—which is now known as the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Chemical Defense ... By this logic, Edgewood was possibly the safest military place in the world to spend two months. As late as 2014, information was ...
Veterans In Army's Chemical Experiments Say Time Is Running Out
Listen • 3:52. Records courtesy of Robert Krafty. Robert C. Krafty was just out of his teens when he was offered temporary duty at Edgewood Arsenal in 1965. For decades during the Cold War, the Army carried out chemical and biological testing experiments on more than 7,000 of its own soldiers at the Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland.
The Messed Up Truth Of The Edgewood Experiments
The Edgewood Arsenal facility, located in the U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Aberdeen, Maryland, was built during the end of the First World War to study and weaponize chlorine and mustard gas. After breaking ground a year earlier, by October 1, 1918, the Edgewood facility had over 585 buildings, a hospital with over 250 beds, and ...
Manufacturing Madness
Manufacturing Madness. By Raffi Khatchadourian. December 10, 2012. For decades, the United States Army conducted human experiments with chemical weapons at Edgewood Arsenal, a military facility ...
Veterans Used In Secret Experiments Sue Military For Answers
The U.S. military exposed tens of thousands of troops to chemical and biological agents before 1975. Today, those vets are seeking health care and details on what substances they were given.
How The US Experimented On Soldiers At Edgewood Arsenal
Located at Edgewood Arsenal near Baltimore, MD, the facility conducted military experiments on soldiers by testing hundreds of chemicals, psychedelic substances, and nerve agents, all in the name of national defense. The volunteer participants became unsuspecting guinea pigs exposed to nefarious contaminants and dangerous conditions that ...
7 Unusual Experiments by the U.S. Military
The Edgewood Arsenal Drug Experiments Getty Images / Jonnie Miles The paranoia of the Cold War inspired the military to attempt some highly dubious experiments, but few compare to their nearly 20 ...
'Dr. Delirium & Edgewood Experiments' Trippy Documentary Trailer
This one is an 80 minute feature doc about the true story of what happened at the Edgewood Arsenal facility in Maryland years ago. This is different than the CIA experiments with "Project MKUltra" and LSD, and it's not the same as the military's investigation into recreational drugs and psychoactive compounds. From 1955 to 1975, the US Army ...