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Curious Times No. 186
April 3, 2003WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE...
What's more sickening than watching people getting bombed to death during a war? Reading about experiments in which unwitting innocent people are used as guinea pigs in outrageous experiments carried out by their own government. The Health News Network has complied a list of atrocities titled A History of U.S. Secret Human Experimentation, which details dozens of cases in which innocent Americans were used to test the effects on humans of various weapons, diseases and chemical agents. Some of the nasty lowlights of this report include the 1932 Tuskegee Syphilis Study, in which 200 black men suffering from syphilis were never told about their illness and denied treatment so that researchers could follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. In 1940, 400 prisoners in Chicago were infected with Malaria in order to study the effects of new experimental drugs. Beginning in 1947, the CIA spent many years studying the effects of LSD on military and civilian subjects, many of whom never realized they were being given the drug. During the 1950s, the Department of Defense routinely tested nuclear weapons, and then used residents living downwind as subjects to track medical problems and mortality rates. The timeline also includes three experiments in which the military sprayed chemicals over densely populated cities in order to test their biological weapons, and various experiments by the CIA to test the effects of "behaviour modification" on humans. These included MKULTRA, which used various horrifying techniques to control the minds of subjects, and MKSEARCH, which tested the ability to control subjects with mind-altering drugs. During the Vietnam war, the U.S. used prisoners to test the effects of dioxin, a highly toxic chemical agent used in Agent Orange. And while you'd think new born babies were safe from these atrocities, you'd be wrong. In 1990 more than 1500 six-month old black and hispanic babies in Los Angeles were given "experimental" measles vaccinations without their parents permission or knowledge, in order to test the side effects of the new drug. But wait, there's much, much more. Get all the nasty details at HealthNewsNet.com.SORRY, I STILL HATE GOD
A neuroscientist's machine which is supposed to induce mystical visions and cause a person to believe in God has failed its first scientific test carried out by the BBC. Laurentian University's Dr. Michael Persinger believes so strongly that religion is all in the mind that he created the "Transcranial Magnetic Stimulator," a helmet which uses electromagnetic fields to induce electrical changes in the brain's temporal lobes, and which, according to the doctor, can induce mystical feelings in the majority of those who try on his gadget. BBC Science brought in Richard Dawkins, a self-professed militant atheist who calls religion an "infantile regression", and hooked him up to the machine. Alas, Dawkins felt only "strange experiences and tinglings," but no visions of God. "It was a great disappointment," he claims. (Telegraph)UNIDENTIFIED FLAMING CAT
Officials in Lardal, Norway were have a tough time finding a scientific explanation for a flaming object which crashed to the ground until someone found the scorched remains of a cat lying under an electric pole. It turns out that the UFO which people had been reporting - many had heard a loud explosion and witnessed a fireball fall to Earth - was actually a cat which had climbed up to the high wires of a utility pole and burst into flames after coming in contact with the high voltage tail. (Norway Aftenposten)NEWEST OXYMORON: FRENCH MILITARY VICTORIES
While some stoopid Americans express their displeasure with the French by renaming their french fries "freedom fries", a student in Toronto has actually used his brain to create a clever parody of the French on the popular web search engine Google. Thanks to Steve Lerner's prank, for a few days last week a search on the phrase "French military victories" came back with a page which listed no search results, and the question "Did you mean French military defeats?" Lerner said he created the fake pages as "a humourous way of showing political opposition against France's weaseling." (Newsday)THEY LOVE YOU WHEN YOU'RE THROWING MONEY AROUND
Among the stranger tales of the war comes the news that Saddam Hussein actually possesses a key to the city of Detroit. According to the Associated Press, shortly after Hussein's rise to power in the late 1970s, he visited Reverend Jacob Yasso of the Chaldean Sacred Heart church, and donated about $250,000 to the ministry. In return, the mayor of Detroit at the time laid out the red carpet for Saddam and honoured him with a key to the city. "He was very kind person, very generous, very cooperative with the West," said Yasso, now 70. "Lately, what's happened, I don't know...Money and power changed the person."SHOULD I CHEW IT, OR GRIND IT UP AND SNORT IT?
A Peruvian company is waiting on Department of Health approval and then plans to market a new candy made out of a mixture of cocaine and caramel. The makers of "Cocomal" promise it will help you unwind from a stressful day. The company's president, Rosario Lazo, claims that "it will surprise everyone and give people more than a smile." (Ananova)
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