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The darkest chapter of scientific advancement... Join us as we examine the most horrific human experiments ever conducted in the name of "progress." Our countdown includes MK Ultra, Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Josef Mengele's Twin Experiments, Stanford Prison Experiment, Unit 731, and more! Which unethical experiment shocked you the most? Let us know in the comments below!
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00:00The doctor had warned me that it would be bad. It was horrible.
00:04Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 30 instances of people sacrificing their own humanity in the name of scientific achievement.
00:12These researchers and organizations committed unspeakable atrocities, their efforts causing great suffering for their subjects.
00:20He eventually performed 30 operations on Anarka, and more surgeries on about 11 other female slaves.
00:27Little Albert Experiment.
00:28Little Albert did inadvertently contribute so much to our understanding of fear and to the treatments of fear.
00:37Publishing his results in 1920, psychologist John B. Watson wanted to prove that fear could be conditioned like any other behavior.
00:45His subject? An infant nicknamed Little Albert.
00:48At first, the baby showed no fear of a white rat.
00:51But after Watson began pairing the rat with loud, frightening noises, Albert quickly learned to recoil.
00:57Soon, he reacted with terror to not just the rat, but rabbits, dogs, even fur coats.
01:02What made the study infamous wasn't just the cruelty.
01:05It was the aftermath.
01:07Albert was never desensitized.
01:09And questions remain about his identity and fate.
01:12The experiment provided the field of psychology with answers about human behavior.
01:16It only cost the well-being of a baby boy.
01:19Operation Dropkick and Big Buzz.
01:22Mosquitoes have shaped human history.
01:25They are the world's deadliest animal.
01:27In the shadow of the Cold War, the U.S. military wanted to test every weapon it could find or conceive.
01:33Their fear and desire took them to one of nature's most feared killers, the mosquito.
01:38In Operation Big Buzz, planes released more than 300,000 Aedes aegypti mosquitoes over Georgia neighborhoods.
01:45This was done despite the fact that this type of mosquito was a possible carrier of yellow fever.
01:50The following year, Operation Dropkick repeated the trial in Florida towns.
01:56The insects weren't infected, but they were hungry.
01:59Residents reported being swarmed and bitten, never knowing they were part of a classified experiment.
02:05Officially, no illnesses were recorded.
02:07Yet the lesson was unmistakable.
02:10Mosquitoes could be bred, dispersed, and delivered as a weapon.
02:14Robert Heath's Electric Sex Stimulation.
02:16They say they can change me into someone else.
02:20Put electrodes in my brain.
02:22Psychiatrist Robert Galbraith Heath was a pioneer in the field of deep brain stimulation and an unethical villain.
02:29In the 1950s, he conducted a study out of Tulane University.
02:33This is perhaps the most complicated organ in the whole universe.
02:36In it, he implanted electrodes deep into patients' brains.
02:40He said he could treat depression.
02:41He claimed he could, quote-unquote, cure homosexuality.
02:44One patient, a gay man, became Heath's test case.
02:48Heath shocked his brain while showing him explicit heterosexual imagery.
02:53Later, he arranged a sexual encounter with a female sex worker, the electrodes still firing.
02:58Heath declared victory.
03:00Others saw exploitation and psychological torture.
03:03The man was clearly not cured.
03:05Meanwhile, his suffering was just another data point.
03:09Heath is sometimes called the father of deep brain stimulation.
03:12If so, the field was born in horror.
03:16The Willowbrook Experiments.
03:17Willowbrook, that we have a situation that borders on a snake pet, and that the children live in Bill.
03:26But many of our fellow citizens are suffering tremendously because of lack of attention.
03:30The Willowbrook State School was opened in 1948 as the world's largest treatment center for the intellectually disabled.
03:37In just a few years, the Staten Island School was a living nightmare, overcrowded and unsanitary.
03:44Researchers saw it as a perfect laboratory.
03:46It was hidden from prying eyes, with subjects shunned by mainstream society.
03:51They deliberately infected children with hepatitis, sometimes mixing the virus into food or chocolate milk.
03:57They hoped to track how the disease spread and test possible vaccines.
04:01Parents were pressured to give consent, told their kids would get better care if they joined the study.
04:07The doctor had warned me that it would be bad.
04:10It was horrible.
04:11Operation Sea Spray.
04:12In 1950, the U.S. Navy set out to test how vulnerable American cities were to germ warfare.
04:19Instead of theoretical exercises, they chose a live trial.
04:23Their target, San Francisco.
04:25Over several days, naval ships sprayed clouds of serratia marcescens and other bacteria into the foggy air above the bay.
04:32Residents had no idea, going about their lives, as the Navy tracked the microbe spread.
04:37Soon after, doctors at Stanford Hospital reported an unusual outbreak of serratia infections.
04:43Eleven patients were affected, and one man died.
04:46The government denied responsibility.
04:49What the test proved was chilling.
04:50A city could be blanketed with biological agents in secret.
04:54It also revealed how little regard Cold War planners had for their own citizens' safety.
05:00Holmesburg Prison Experiments.
05:02It really was the Kmart of human experimentation from 1951 to 1974.
05:08For nearly 20 years, Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison was a laboratory of human suffering.
05:14Dermatologist Albert Kligman used inmates, mostly poor, mostly black, as test subjects for hundreds of experiments.
05:21Prisoners were lured with a few dollars apiece to let researchers do whatever they wanted.
05:25In some cases, it could just be very plain soap. In other cases, it could be a carcinogenic chemical. The inmates were never told.
05:36They did everything from testing skin creams and detergents to radioactive isotopes.
05:40They even applied dioxin and other toxic chemicals tied to Agent Orange.
05:45Many were left scarred or burned, suffering lifelong health effects.
05:49Kligman so dehumanized these men, he called them acres of skin ripe for study.
05:54Consent was dubious at best, with inmates rarely told the risks.
05:59The data benefited pharmaceutical companies, the military, and Kligman's own career.
06:03For the men inside Holmesburg, it effectively became cruel and unusual punishment.
06:08He thought what took place here was fine. According to his observation, the inmates were treated fairly.
06:14Project 4.1.
06:16On March 1st, 1954, the U.S. detonated Castle Bravo, the most powerful American nuke of the decade.
06:23The biggest nuclear weapon the U.S. detonated wasn't in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
06:28It was in the Marshall Islands.
06:29Fallout swept unexpectedly across the Marshall Islands, contaminating dozens of atolls and thousands of people.
06:36In the aftermath, the government launched Project 4.1, a study of the exposed islanders.
06:41Nobody told them anything. All day long and all night long, the powder fell on the island.
06:47Officials said it was about medical care, but documents reveal it was also an experiment.
06:53Project 4.1 gave American researchers a chance to observe radiation's effects on humans in real time.
06:59All of those exposed were taken to Kwajalein, where complete physical examinations were carried out.
07:06Islanders suffered radiation sickness, burns, hair loss, miscarriages, and even cancers.
07:12For years, they endured invasive tests while their communities were displaced and stigmatized.
07:17The data was exploited by the U.S. for decades, but it came at the cost of irradiating an innocent island nation.
07:24Despite initial petitions by our people to cease the experiments, during a time where the United Nations was in control of our fate,
07:33our pleas were met with silence and resolutions to continue the destruction.
07:39Canadian nutrition experiments.
07:41365 days a year, you're hungry.
07:45Canada's residential schools have a centuries-long reputation of being torment factories for indigenous children.
07:50They were created to slowly, over generations, annihilate a culture.
07:55On top of this, they were infamous for cruelty and neglect.
07:58Sadly, the story only gets worse.
08:01In the 1940s and 50s, government researchers used these vulnerable indigenous children into test subjects.
08:07Led by health official Frederick Tisdall, they deliberately withheld food and dental care to create a baseline of poor health.
08:14Then they introduced, quote-unquote, interventions like milk, vitamin supplements, and fortified flour.
08:20The results shaped Canada's early nutrition policies, including the food guide.
08:25But parents were never informed.
08:27As wards of the state, they didn't need to be.
08:30Some children were denied medical treatment for years so that data would be, quote-unquote, clean.
08:36There was specific government policies that produced many of the health outcomes that we're seeing now in indigenous communities.
08:42Cincinnati Radiation Experiments
08:44Hidden behind these bushes at UC Medical Center is a plaque dedicated to a dark memory in Cincinnati medical research.
08:52For 11 years, from 1960 to 1971, students attended the University of Cincinnati ignorant of the unspeakable suffering on campus.
09:00The DOD had hired radiologist Eugene Sanger to study the effects of radiation on the human body.
09:06Researchers exposed more than 80 poor, mostly black patients to massive doses of radiation.
09:13The aim was to study how soldiers might survive a nuclear battlefield.
09:17The reality was unnecessary suffering inflicted on terminal cancer patients who never gave informed consent.
09:23Ma Jacobs was hospitalized after one treatment.
09:26And never left.
09:29She died in three weeks.
09:31Families were misled or never told the truth.
09:33Patients endured nausea, burns, organ damage, and rapid health decline.
09:39Some died within weeks.
09:40The Pentagon collected its data.
09:42Sanger advanced his career.
09:44The subjects, already vulnerable and desperate, were sacrificed in the name of military science.
09:51The horrific origins of modern gynecology.
09:54At the edge of Central Park in Manhattan, there's a bronze statue of a doctor named James Marion Sims,
10:00whose brilliant achievement carried the fame of American surgery throughout the entire world.
10:05Modern gynecology was built on the suffering of enslaved black women.
10:09In the mid-1800s, Alabama surgeon J. Marion Sims was a medical rock star.
10:15The doctor was hailed for pioneering techniques to repair childbirth injuries.
10:19He had tested and perfected those methods on his slaves, most notably Anarka, Lucy, and Betsy.
10:25He operated, often repeatedly, without anesthesia.
10:29He eventually performed 30 operations on Anarka, and more surgeries on about 11 other female slaves.
10:35Sims claimed black women felt less pain, a racist myth that still reverberates in modern medicine.
10:41His instruments, such as the Sims Speculum, as well as his surgical methods, shaped gynecology's future.
10:47His subjects endured agony and degradation.
10:50Sims' reputation soared.
10:52In 1876, he was elected president of the American Medical Association.
10:57The true cost of his fame was borne by the enslaved women whose bodies were treated as tools.
11:03The Aversion Project
11:04Levine made numerous TV appearances, but in public he said little about his trademark therapy.
11:11Targeting a group of people for something beyond their control is cruel enough.
11:15Subjecting them to torture under the guise of fixing them is even more insidious.
11:20The Aversion Project in South Africa had one goal, quote-unquote, curing people of being gay.
11:27For nearly 20 years, countless victims were put through increasingly painful electroshock therapy.
11:32When that didn't work, they moved on to more extreme tactics, like chemical castration and even surgery.
11:39Hundreds were forcibly operated on, with many surgeries left incomplete by the time the project ended in 1989.
11:46The horrific experiment left lasting psychological scars on the victims, many of whom ultimately took their own lives.
11:54In 2014, Aubrey Levin, the man behind the project, was sentenced to five years in prison.
11:59I would almost call him psychopathic. He has no sense of other people's humanity.
12:06He was this person with a huge amount of power, and he did what he wanted with it.
12:11Henrietta Lacks
12:12While medical breakthroughs benefit many, they sometimes come at the expense of a few, or in this case, just one person.
12:20Henrietta Lacks was only 31 when she passed from cervical cancer, but her cells lived on, without her or her family knowing.
12:28Before she died, two samples were taken without her consent, and it was discovered that her cells were able to survive for long periods.
12:35Because there had been this enormous effort to grow cells outside the body for 100 years, because we just really didn't know a lot about cells at that point.
12:44And in response to all of his colleagues asking for them, George Guy sent them to anyone who wanted to use them for research.
12:52And they spread around the world this way really fast.
12:54Since then, scientists have used them to make several important discoveries about cancer.
12:59This, however, led to her family's medical records being leaked and relatives harassed for blood samples.
13:05It wasn't until 2023, over 70 years later, that her family received compensation.
13:11Her family sued multi-billion dollar Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2021, saying the company, quote,
13:17made staggering profits by using the HeLa cell line, although it, quote, has known that HeLa cells were stolen from Ms. Lacks.
13:24To this day, Lacks' cells, and the ethical debate around using them, still live on.
13:30Feeding Children Radioactive Oatmeal
13:32What hot breakfast is as easy and fast to prepare as Quaker Oats?
13:37Some researchers will go to any length to get the results they need, including targeting vulnerable populations.
13:43Walter E. Fernald Developmental Center was originally established to care for children with developmental disabilities.
13:49But instead, they subjected them to secret tests.
13:52Between 1946 and 1953, the center fed dozens of boys with oatmeal laced with radioactive elements, in an experiment sponsored by Quaker Oats.
14:02That's why your family gets that wonderful stick-to-the-ribs feeling with Quaker Oats.
14:06That wonderful feeling of well-being.
14:08These children were misled into thinking they were part of a science club, and were given incentives to encourage their participation.
14:15However, neither them nor their families knew the true extent of the trials.
14:20While the radiation doses were low, the unethical use of children who were already at a disadvantage was condemned,
14:26and the victims finally received justice in 1998.
14:31Chimera
14:32The Cold War may have spurred advancements in various scientific fields, but some of that research was more insidious in nature.
14:40Prisoners in Soviet gulags were subject to extreme suffering, with some being sent to Chimera, a lab dedicated to testing poisons.
14:49These were prisoners who had been declared enemies of the people, and so were considered expendable.
14:54Established in 1921, the facility exposed countless victims to various lethal substances, like mustard gas, ricin, and cyanide.
15:03It was in the late 30s or 40s that the poison program would really flourish.
15:07That was the era of a Soviet biochemist named Gregory Myronovsky, a man who developed poisons and tested them out on hundreds, if not thousands, of people.
15:16Some of them were given a deadly cocktail that killed them within 15 minutes.
15:21Despite these horrors, those responsible were never brought to justice, even after the Soviet Union dissolved and the lab was shut down.
15:28There are claims that Chimera was reopened a few years later, meaning these horrific tests could still be occurring today.
15:35Human Vivisections of Herophilus
15:38Human experimentation has been a part of medicine since its very inception.
15:42As an early pioneer of human anatomy, Herophilus made several discoveries about the brain, eye, and the vascular system that are still supported by scientists today.
15:52However, these breakthroughs may have been achieved through unethical and violent means.
15:57Some have alleged that he would vivisect convicted criminals live with the help of his associate, Erisostratus, a method that was seen as controversial even back then.
16:07It is believed that hundreds of unwilling participants were subjected to Herophilus' dissections.
16:13Although his work has been undoubtedly vital to modern anatomical research, knowing how he went about it casts his accomplishments in a much darker light.
16:21Dr. Leo Stanley's San Quentin Prison Experiments
16:25Chief surgeon at San Quentin, Dr. Leo Stanley, used prisoners for various experiments from 1913 to 1951, some verging into dark territory.
16:36These experiments included sterilization and possibly finding treatments for Spanish flu.
16:41A strong supporter of eugenics, Stanley performed vasectomies on inmates who were sold on the idea of better health, reformed behavior, and a stronger sex drive.
16:51In one project that aimed to find a source of, quote, rejuvenation, Stanley used live prisoners for surgery that transplanted testicles, human or otherwise.
17:02The experiment began with testicles sourced from executed prisoners.
17:06But when the supply ran dry, Dr. Stanley began using boar and goat testes in his work.
17:12Puerto Rico Birth Control Pill Trials
17:15In 1956, contraceptive pills, 20 times as strong as the ones used today, were first tested among Puerto Rican women who lived in government housing projects.
17:25Birth control is still relatively new, and as such, is far from perfect.
17:29Before it could be marketed to the population, it first had to be tested,
17:32leading to one of the biggest controversies in recent medical history.
17:36In the 1950s, trials began in Puerto Rico, targeting impoverished, often undereducated women.
17:43They were given the contraceptives without being informed of potential side effects,
17:47resulting in several participants being caught off guard.
17:50The symptoms ranged from vomiting to menstrual irregularities, with some even being hospitalized.
18:08Their concerns were ignored for the sake of the study, causing the deaths of three people.
18:13Despite all of the negative responses, the pill was still approved,
18:16and those side effects still affect women to this day.
18:20The Boston Project
18:21Working with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1953 to 1957,
18:27Dr. William Sweet, who was the chief neurosurgeon at Harvard's Massachusetts General Hospital,
18:32gave uranium injections to 11 cancer patients.
18:36And it turned out to be even more lethal than I realized.
18:40These individuals were already terminally ill, with all but one reportedly suffering from brain tumors.
18:45Dr. Sweet was interested in learning how the distribution of uranium affected the body,
18:50and whether it could be used to treat tumors.
18:53In 1995, under testimony, Dr. Sweet claimed he had the consent from his patients for his experiments.
19:00However, a lack of supporting documents, as well as the case of one patient who was found unconscious,
19:05and later died without regaining consciousness, or being identified,
19:10makes those claims slightly dubious.
19:11University of California Experiments on Newborns
19:16Leading up to a study published in the medical journal Pediatrics,
19:20113 newborn babies, no older than three days old,
19:25were experimented on by scientists at the University of California's Department of Pediatrics in the early 1960s.
19:31Studies conducted on the babies included a battery of bizarre and seemingly unnecessary experiments
19:37regarding blood flow and pressure.
19:39In one test, over 40 babies were placed on circumcision boards and held upside down,
19:45while doctors measured how their blood flowed to their head.
19:49In another, babies were placed ankle-deep in ice-cold water,
19:52while the catheter was inserted into their aorta,
19:55in an effort to monitor their aortic pressure.
19:58Guatemala Syphilis Study
20:00Even though the experiments were conducted more than 60 years ago,
20:04there are families still suffering the consequences.
20:06The United States has a sordid history of running scientific tests on their own citizens,
20:12but that certainly hasn't stopped them from exploiting people in other countries.
20:15In the 1940s, John Charles Cutler,
20:18the same doctor behind the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study,
20:22inflicted over a thousand Guatemalans with various venereal diseases.
20:27No one gave their consent,
20:28and they were certainly not informed that they were being infected with syphilis and gonorrhea.
20:33The unknowing subjects ranged from soldiers to orphans,
20:36and of the many afflicted, only 700 received treatment.
20:40This left the majority to suffer, with 83 people even dying.
20:45When you were married,
20:45did you get that disease to your wife?
20:50More or less, yes.
20:51Despite the large amount of data they gathered,
20:54the findings were never published,
20:56making the victims' pain all for nothing.
20:58In 2010, the U.S. government formally apologized to Guatemala,
21:03but the victims and their families have received no compensation for their experience.
21:08The Monster Study
21:10Even the most seemingly simple tests can have lifelong consequences.
21:13In 1939, scientists from the University of Iowa conducted a trial
21:18to study the effects of stuttering on children.
21:21He developed the Monster Study to see if stuttering was not the result of biology,
21:26but of learned behavior.
21:27They sourced their subjects from orphanages,
21:29many of whom were unaware they were taking part in a study.
21:33Some already had a stutter, while others didn't.
21:35During the experiments,
21:37half of the subjects were praised for their speech pattern,
21:40while the rest were heavily derided.
21:41They were told things like,
21:43you must try to stop yourself immediately.
21:45Don't ever speak unless you can do it right.
21:48Several of the children displayed negative psychological effects,
21:51including refusal to speak and becoming extremely self-conscious.
21:55Reports show that these children became withdrawn,
21:58and some stopped speaking altogether.
22:00These children were as young as five years old.
22:03The results of the Monster Study were never published,
22:06and it only came to light in 2001 after a reporter stumbled upon the papers.
22:11The surviving subjects were finally compensated in 2007.
22:16The Stanford Prison Experiment.
22:18The study shows what happens when you put good people in a bad place.
22:22Designed by psychologist Philip Zimbardo,
22:25the goal of this 1971 experiment was to examine the psychological impact of imprisonment.
22:30For the experiment,
22:31the psychology building at Stanford University was turned into a prison,
22:35with 24 undergraduate students divided into two groups, prisoners and guards.
22:41They took their commitment to the roles to disturbing levels,
22:44with the guards doling out severe mistreatment and the prisoners accepting it.
22:49I shouted in their faces,
22:50I'm going to hit you so hard, it's going to kill your whole family.
22:54Things got so intense that some students had to be removed due to the trauma.
22:58Although the exercise was supposed to last two weeks,
23:01and had the interest of the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy,
23:04it was shut down after just six days when the repercussions of the experiment became clear.
23:10It's made me feel terrible my whole life.
23:12The Milgram Experiment.
23:16Fascinated by what motivated Nazi officers to commit atrocities during World War II,
23:22Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment
23:25to see how far Americans would go before their conscience intervened.
23:29120 volts.
23:36In the 1960s study,
23:38a teacher would read questions to a learner,
23:41who was actually an actor pretending to participate.
23:44For every wrong answer,
23:45the teacher gave what they believed was a real electric shock,
23:49gradually increasing to 450 volts.
23:52150 volts.
23:54Answer, force.
23:57Experimenter.
23:58That's all.
23:58Get me out of here.
23:59If the teachers objected,
24:01they were forced to administer it regardless.
24:03After being assured they would be free of responsibility,
24:06most complied,
24:07even when the learner screamed in agony.
24:09Two-thirds of the 40 participants went all the way to 450 volts,
24:14proving our deep-rooted tendency to obey authority,
24:18even against our own moral judgment.
24:20Please continue.
24:21People surprise you.
24:22Dr. Bender's Electroconvulsive Therapy.
24:25While working as a neuropsychiatrist at New York's Bellevue Hospital,
24:29Dr. Loretta Bender decided an effective treatment for children with developmental disorders or schizophrenia
24:35was electroconvulsive therapy,
24:38previously called electroshock therapy.
24:40In 1947, Dr. Bender sent small electric currents through the brains of 98 children,
24:54some of whom were as young as toddlers.
24:57Another of Dr. Bender's methods for trying to alleviate schizophrenia was to give her young patients LSD.
25:02Ted Chabuzzynski was one of the children who went through the therapy when he was six years old,
25:07and he later became a human rights activist who successfully fought against the use of electroshock therapy in Berkeley, California.
25:14You're going to find it a very liberating experience to get involved in our movement
25:20and to fight against the people who have tried to crush you when you were a child.
25:25Military experiments with mustard gas during World War II.
25:28It was a painful, horrifying, and secret part of America's history during World War II.
25:33In 1943, the Navy recruited upwards of 60,000 young men for a study.
25:39Only they weren't asked to participate.
25:41They were told.
25:42Only when they arrived at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C.,
25:46did they find the real purpose of the study.
25:48To measure the effects of mustard gas and other chemicals on humans.
25:52African-American men, shown here in protective gear,
25:56as well as Japanese-American and Puerto Rican soldiers, were singled out.
26:00Locked in chambers and exposed to the deadly gas,
26:04the men involved in these experiments suffered horrible health effects,
26:07including internal and external burns.
26:10Rollins Edwards, who I interviewed in my story, he still, more than 70 years later,
26:14he still has thick scabs on his skin, which he scratches at until they bleed.
26:20Additionally, as it was a wartime experiment,
26:22they were bound by oaths of secrecy
26:24and faced dishonorable discharge or imprisonment if they spoke of the order,
26:30the details of which were not formally declassified until 1993.
26:36Unit 731.
26:37Unit 731 compound is one of the most terrifying secrets in the 20th century.
26:43World War II was a hotbed for horrific human experimentation.
26:47Several countries took place in ghastly research,
26:50with victims still being affected by the testing today.
26:53Unit 731 in Japan was one of the worst.
26:56They were unrelenting, performing vivisections and testing out violent weaponry
27:00like grenades and flamethrowers on prisoners of war.
27:04The atmosphere here is still heavy with the terror and the torture of that time.
27:09They also utilized biological warfare, knowingly giving people frostbite
27:13and using animals to spread various harmful pathogens.
27:17Over 14,000 people were murdered directly,
27:20while an estimated 300,000 died as a result of disease.
27:24Even after the torture chamber was shut down,
27:27most of the main perpetrators faced only light sentences,
27:30and the government has yet to admit to the true extent of the war crimes committed.
27:34Now claims have surfaced that Unit 731 not only tested on POWs,
27:39but also on thousands of Chinese civilians.
27:42Vanderbilt University's Vitamin Drinks
27:44Following World War II, researchers at Vanderbilt University
27:48gave over 800 pregnant women a mysterious concoction
27:52they were told was a special vitamin drink.
27:54It was actually a mixture that contained doses of radioactive iron,
27:58as the scientists were testing its absorption rate during pregnancy.
28:02The radiation these women were exposed to
28:04was reportedly 30 times higher than normal.
28:08Around three to four children died of cancer or leukemia
28:11as a result of the experiment,
28:13and some mothers developed rashes, lost hair and teeth,
28:16and contracted various types of cancer themselves.
28:19In 1994, almost 40 years later,
28:23Vanderbilt University faced a lawsuit for the four-year study
28:26and was forced to pay out more than $10 million in damages.
28:30Josef Mengele's Twin Study
28:32known as the Angel of Death.
28:37He wanted to improve the stock of the Aryan race.
28:41Japan wasn't the only country committing scientific atrocities
28:44during the Second World War.
28:46The horrors carried out by Josef Mengele
28:48can only be described as evil,
28:50with some of his most twisted being conducted on twins.
28:53Using one as the control and the other as the experimental group,
29:12he put them through torture disguised as scientific testing.
29:16His twisted methods included amputating healthy limbs,
29:19performing blood transfusions between siblings,
29:22and in some macabre cases,
29:24sewing people together to create conjoined twins.
29:27Many died as a result of these procedures,
29:30and those who survived were often slain to be studied afterwards.
29:34Out of the 1,500 tested, only 200 made it out alive,
29:38making Mengele's experiments among the deadliest in history.
29:41The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
29:48From 1932 to 1972,
29:52600 African-American farmers from Alabama
29:55were selected for a U.S. public health service program,
29:58receiving many benefits for their cooperation.
30:01However, they were never informed that they were being studied.
30:05Of the group,
30:06399 men had syphilis,
30:09while the other 201 served as a control unit.
30:12Many of these subjects,
30:13mostly poor and illiterate sharecroppers,
30:16didn't know they were infected.
30:18Even with penicillin being developed as a cure in 1947,
30:22it was withheld from the patients.
30:24Under the false pretense of providing a special remedy,
30:27researchers performed painful and invasive spinal taps
30:30to investigate the disease's neurological consequences.
30:33Many ultimately died of syphilis,
30:35while at least 40 women contracted it from their husbands,
30:38and nearly 20 children were born with it.
30:41The study was only stopped in 1972 after an information leak.
30:45At the study's conclusion,
30:47only 74 of the original 600 men were still alive.
30:51But it wasn't until 1997,
30:54when President Bill Clinton issued a formal government apology.
30:57Before we continue,
30:59be sure to subscribe to our channel
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31:11Project MKUltra.
31:16Officially sanctioned in 1953 and backed by the CIA,
31:20this series of experiments studied the effects of mind control
31:23with methods like hypnosis, drugs, isolation, and sensory deprivation.
31:28Under the direction of infamous Scottish-American psychiatrist, Dr. Ewan Cameron,
31:32unsuspecting patients, many of whom had common ailments such as postpartum depression,
31:36were experimented on with aggressive drug cocktails and extreme techniques.
31:40The CIA enlisted the help of prisons, hospitals, and over 40 universities
31:45to perform experiments on unwitting subjects.
31:48In one of the subprojects, Operation Midnight Climax,
31:52sex workers, acting as undercover agents for the CIA,
31:55gave clients LSD,
31:57while the agency observed them through a one-way mirror.
32:01In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms
32:04ordered the destruction of all records related to MKUltra.
32:08However, subsequent investigations,
32:10led by Senator Frank Church and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller,
32:14in addition to 20,000 records recovered in 1977,
32:18helped shed light on the activities.
32:20He never came out the same.
32:21He had a blank, blank look in his eye.
32:24He didn't know who we were.
32:26He didn't know we were his daughters.
32:28Which of these human-based experiments do you find the most disturbing?
32:32Let us know in the comments below.
32:35I remember looking back
32:36and seeing her arms stretched out in despair
32:40as she was pulled away.
32:44I never got to say goodbye to her.
32:47Are there other horrific examples of man's inhumanity
32:51in the name of science?
32:52Let us know in the comments below.
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