The 6 most sinister human experiments in the US

Under the deceptive promise of scientific progress, some organizations may carry out illegal experiments that clearly threaten health and the integrity of the human being.

Sometimes it is good to remember that science is not beyond economic and political interests and that Human Rights are not always a factor to be respected by certain authorities.

When experiments get cruel

Experiments on suffering animals are not the only way that research can take on macabre overtones. When the scientific progress that can be made through them is added to the pressure to stay afloat as a of the first world powers, the result can be that of human experiments as brutal as morally reprehensible.

These are some of the worst experiments performed in the name of science in the USA.

1. Project MK Ultra

To the people who follow the series stranger things the term will sound MK Ultra, but the truth is that it was a project that came to exist beyond fiction. It is a set of experiments initiated during the 50s and coordinated and promoted by the CIA. His role was to explore the possibilities of creating forms of mind control that could be applied during torture sessions.

To investigate ways in which people could be coerced into confessing information, injured, given drugs or kept in solitary confinement. Many of these people they participated in these experiments without being aware of it, believing that they were simply undergoing medical treatment to mitigate the effects of the mental disorders or the diseases they suffered.

The goal of this secret investigation, led by an American doctor named john cutler, was to study the effects of penicillin in the possible prevention of venereal disease. For it dozens of people from the lowest socioeconomic strata were infected with syphilis, dying at least 83 of them. These investigations began to come to light from the year 2005, at which time a university professor found documents about it.

2. Holmesburg program and experimentation with Agent Orange

He Orange agent, a chemical warfare item widely used by the US during its invasion of Vietnam, was also used in illegal experiments.

During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, a doctor named Albert M. Kligmann Commissioned by the US Army and several private companies, he carried out an experiment in which he used 70 prisoners from a Philadelphia jail. The research had to serve to study the way in which the skin reacts when someone is inoculated with dioxin, one of the components of Agent Orange. These people developed serious skin lesions that went untreated for months..

• You can see a spectacular photo report from the Holmesbur Program at This Daily Mail article.

3. Truth serum tests

In the late 40's and early 50's, the US military promoted a series of psychological experiments based on the use of drugs known as truth serums. As their name suggests, these substances were perceived as a potential tool to make people confess confidential information without being able to avoid it.

The use of these drugs not only used to have devastating effects on the mental health of the people with whom they were experimented, but in many cases an addiction to them was created.

4. radiation experiments

During the 1960s, the Pentagon developed experiments based on subjecting cancer patients with few financial resources to intense radiation. During these sessions, the radiation levels were so high that the patients suffered intense pain and experienced nausea and other symptoms.

5. Syphilis experiments in Guatemala

In the mid-20th century, much of Latin America remained a region subject to the direct rule of the US and its intelligence services, which controlled local governments and suppressed popular revolts by financing paramilitaries.

This domain also had its side expressed through experimentation in one of the most notorious cases of illegal experimentation: the infection of people residing in Guatemala with venereal diseases during the 40s.

• If you want to know more about this terrible case, we recommend This BBC report.

6. Mustard gas resistance tests

In the 40s, thousands of US soldiers were exposed to mustard gas to test chemical warfare protective equipment. The soldiers were not informed of the risks of these tests, and many of them ended up with serious skin burns and lung lesions after being locked in chamber-like rooms Of gas.