10. Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford prison experiment was a psychological study of human responses to captivity, and its behavioral effects on both authorities and inmates. Undergraduate volunteers played the roles of both guards and prisoners living in a mock prison. Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, and soon stepped beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted, leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations.

9. The Monster Study

The Monster Study was an experiment conducted on 22 orphan children in 1939. Half of the children were given positive speech therapy, in which the fluency of their speech was praised. The other half were belittled for every speech imperfection and told they were stutterers. Many of the normal speaking orphan children who received negative therapy suffered negative psychological effects and some retained speech problems during the course of their life.

8. Project 4.1

Project 4.1 was a medical study conducted by the United States of residents of the Marshall Islands exposed to radioactive fallout from the nuclear test at Bikini Atoll. In the decades that followed, children began to suffer disproportionately from thyroid cancer (due to exposure to radioiodines), and almost a third of those exposed developed neoplasms. A Department of Energy report concluded that, “The dual purpose of what is now a DOE medical program has led to a view by the Marshallese that they were being used as ‘guinea pigs’ in a ‘radiation experiment.’”

7. Project MKULTRA

Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program. There is much published evidence that the project involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function. Experiments included administering LSD to CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions. LSD and other drugs were usually administered without the subject’s knowledge or consent.

6. The Aversion Project

South Africa’s apartheid army forced white *** and gay soldiers to undergo ’sex-change’ operations in the 1970s and the 1980s, and submitted many to chemical castration, electric shock, and other unethical medical experiments. As many as 900 forced ’sexual reassignment’ operations may have been performed as part of a top-secret program to root out homosexuality from the service.

5. North Korean Experimentation

There have been many reports of North Korean human experimentation. One former North Korean woman prisoner tells how 50 healthy women prisoners were forced to eat poisoned cabbage leaves. All 50 were dead after 20 minutes of vomiting blood and anal bleeding. Kwon Hyok, a former prison head of security at Camp 22, described laboratories equipped respectively for poison gas, suffocation gas and blood experiments, in which three or four people, normally a family, were the experimental subjects.

4. Poison Laboratory of the Soviets

The Poison laboratory of the Soviet secret services, also known as Laboratory 1, Laboratory 12 and “The Chamber,” was a covert poison research and development facility. The Soviets tested a number of deadly poisons on prisoners, including mustard gas, ricin, and digitoxin.

3. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male was a clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama. Nearly 400 poor African American sharecroppers were denied treatment for syphilis so that the effects could be examined. This study became notorious and led to major changes in how patients are protected in clinical studies.

2. Unit 731

Unit 731 was a covert biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Some of the numerous atrocities committed included vivisection of living people, including pregnant women who were impregnated by the doctors, limbs amputated and reattached, and humans used as living test cases for grenades and flame throwers. Prisoners were also injected with strains of diseases to study their effects.

1. Nazi Experiments

Medical experimentation was conducted on large numbers of people by the German Nazi regime in its concentration camps during World War II. Dr. Josef Mengele performed experiments on over 1,500 sets of imprisoned twins; fewer than 200 individuals survived these studies. The tests ranged from the injection of different chemicals into the eyes of the twins to see if it would change their colors, to literally sewing the twins together in hopes of creating conjoined twins. Other experiments included forcing subjects to endure a tank of ice water for up to three hours to test hypothermia treatments, and infecting wounds with bacteria to test antibacterial treatments.

• Listverse March 14, 2008