Decades after a Cold War experiment, a scientist lives with secrets (2012) | Hacker News Reader

Decades after a Cold War experiment, a scientist lives with secrets (2012)

newyorker.com

76 pointsbenbreen14 comments

> Ketchum often hears from aging test subjects looking for information about what the Army did to them. “I need to know everything that happened to me because it could give me some peace and fewer nightmares,” one veteran wrote to him. In such cases, Ketchum responds with a mixture of defensiveness and empathy. “Well, Mike,” he wrote to another veteran, “I guess some people find it satisfying to look back and condemn what doctors and others did half a century ago, especially if it lends itself to sensationalized movies, and entitles them to disability pensions.”

Well.

This doctor is notable for the consistency of his character. The Ketchum Oath supersedes the Hippocratic one: "Do harm for the greater good!".

This greater good angle -- even God regrettably hides behind this -- is possibly the most pernicious moral puzzle presented to humanity.

But in defense of God, at least in that (hypothetical if you wish) case there is a guarantee that the asserted "greater good" and in fact the "good end" are certain to come to pass.

I think it plain evil, this greater good fig leaf, whenever we are not clearly afforded certitude of the desired outcome.

Somewhat related: In 1950 in operation Sea-Spray [1] the Navy released the bacterium Serratia Marcescens [2] over the Bay Area to gain experimental data for the development of biological weapons.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serratia_marcescens

And:

"From 1946 to 1948, American public health doctors deliberately infected nearly 700 Guatemalans — prison inmates, mental patients and soldiers — with venereal diseases in what was meant as an effort to test the effectiveness of penicillin."[1]

Also see [2] and [3]

[1] - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/health/research/02infect.h...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_experimentation_in_the_U...

[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

I've never read any of the case data, but among the articles like this I've read it often seems like people's sensitivity and reactions to these neurological drugs varies by a range of 1-8x and the resulting impairment also varies. It also seems like in some people have neurochemistry that self-amplifies effects.

Too bad we don't see long term convert studies on how MDMA has positive treatments affects on soldiers (hard to get funding for that obviously - these studies are all about finding new and better ways to harm the enemy, not help our soldiers)

Manipulation and human test subjects is an interesting mixture which seems to go hand in hand with most government funded medical professionals.

Ketchum deserves to go to a dark place if one exists.

And we wonder why some people don't trust scientists...

Another source for the "finger dipped in vx" event that was brought up in relation to the North Korean assassination.

It adds an interesting detail:

"...he would casually walk across the room and bathe his finger in a Martini to wash off the VX."

I wonder how close anyone came to drinking it afterwards.

This anecdote is recounted (among with many others) in the book by Jon Ronson, "The Men Who Stare at Goats"

I heard about the movie, didn't know there was a book. I grabbed the Kindle sample to check it out. Thanks!

> "The Men Who Stare at Goats"

This is probably the weirdest film I've seen in my life. I still can't make heads or tails of it.

Try "A Serious Man" on for size.

The book is ten times weirder. (Ten times better, too.)

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