On February 28, 2008 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) the only branch of the government I trust at this point released this report on the progress or rather the lack of progress by the Department of Defense in looking for tens of thousands of Cold war era veterans used in several programs that used enlisted men and a few officers as "test vets" or "med vols" in programs known as SHAD/112 which was primarily a program that used unwitting naval personnel on ships at sea where they sprayed them with biological agents and in some cases had caged animals on deck and the crew then had to collect the dead animals for the scientists to do autopsies on them. They then had to decontaminate the ships before the crew could come back on deck. This is the link to the SHAD/112 website Project Shad.com. This is just one of many Cold War Era programs, to me this is the worst one, they never told the sailors what they were involved in and kept in the dark for over thirty years until DOD admitted to the experiments in the late 1990s.
The GAO report on PDF is located here and is very informative:
Why GAO Did This Study
Highlights
Accountability IntegrityReliability
February 2008
CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL DEFENSE
DOD and VA Need to Improve Efforts to Identify and Notify Individuals Potentially Exposed during Chemical and Biological Tests
Highlights of GAO-08-366, a report to congressional requesters
Tens of thousands of military personnel and civilians were potentially exposed to chemical or biological substances through Department of Defense (DOD) tests since World War II. DOD conducted some of these tests as part of its Project 112 test program, while others were conducted as separate efforts. GAO was asked to (1) assess DOD’s efforts to identify individuals who were potentially exposed during Project 112 tests, (2) evaluate DOD’s current effort to identify individuals who were potentially exposed during tests conducted outside of Project 112, and (3) determine the extent to which DOD and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) have taken action to notify individuals who might have been exposed during chemical and biological tests. GAO analyzed documents and interviewed officials from DOD, VA, the Department of Labor, and a veterans service organization.
What GAO Recommends
GAO suggests that Congress direct DOD to develop guidance to notify potentially exposed civilians. GAO also recommends that DOD and VA take steps to improve their efforts to obtain, share, and use available information to more effectively identify and notify individuals. DOD and VA generally agreed with most of the recommendations. However, DOD did not agree with the recommendation to conduct a cost-benefit analysis regarding additional Project 112 research. As a result, GAO suggests that Congress direct DOD to conduct such an analysis.
Since 2003, DOD has stopped actively searching for individuals who were potentially exposed to chemical or biological substances during Project 112 tests, but did not provide a sound and documented basis for that decision. In 2003, DOD reported it had identified 5,842 servicemembers and estimated 350 civilians as having been potentially exposed during Project 112, and indicated that DOD would cease actively searching for additional individuals.
However, in 2004, GAO reported that DOD did not exhaust all possible sources of information and recommended that DOD determine the feasibility of identifying additional individuals. In response to GAO’s recommendation, DOD determined continuing an active search for individuals had reached the point of diminishing returns, and reaffirmed its decision to cease active searches. This decision was not supported by an objective analysis of the potential costs and benefits of continuing the effort, nor could DOD provide any documented criteria from which it made its determination.
Since June 2003, however, non-DOD sources—including the Institute of Medicine—have identified approximately 600 additional names of individuals who were potentially exposed during Project 112. Until DOD provides a more objective analysis of the costs and benefits of actively searching for Project 112 participants, DOD’s efforts may continue to be questioned.
DOD has taken action to identify individuals who were potentially exposed during tests outside of Project 112, but GAO identified four shortcomings in DOD’s current effort. First, DOD’s effort lacks clear and consistent objectives, scope of work, and information needs that would set the parameters for its effort. Second, DOD has not provided adequate oversight to guide this effort. Third, DOD has not fully leveraged information obtained from previous research efforts that identified exposed individuals. Fourth, DOD’s effort lacks transparency since it has not kept Congress and veterans service organizations fully informed of the progress and results of its effort. Until DOD addresses these limitations, Congress, veterans, and the American public cannot be assured that DOD’s current effort is reasonable and effective.
DOD and VA have had limited success in notifying individuals potentially exposed during tests both within and outside Project 112. DOD has a process to share the names of identified servicemembers with VA; however, DOD has delayed regular updates to VA because of a number of factors, such as competing priorities. Furthermore, although VA has a process for notifying potentially exposed veterans, it was not using certain available resources to obtain contact information to notify veterans or to help determine whether they were deceased. Moreover, DOD had not taken any action to notify identified civilians, focusing instead on veterans since the primary impetus for the research has been requests from VA. DOD has refrained from taking action on notifying civilians in part because it lacks specific guidance that defines the requirements to notify civilians. Until these issues are addressed, some identified veterans and civilians will remain unaware of their potential exposure.
To view the full product, including the scope
and methodology, click on GAO-08-366.
For more information, contact Davi M. D'Agostino at (202) 512-5431 or dagostinod@gao.gov.
The information I have gathered from my research over the years indicates there are 2100 men used in Operation White Coat at Fort Detrick in biological weapons experiments from 1953 thru 1972.
Then there are the 7120 men used at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland in the chemical weapons and drug experiments explained in this Health Effects from Chemical, Biological and Radiological Weapons published in October 2003, pages 5-37 deal with the Edgewood experiments.
The amount of men used in the SHAD experiments are less reliable the numbers range from 5000 to 8000 depending on which reports are accurate and if all of the experiments were actually run, which no one is actually sure of at this point.
The point of all of this is the fact that here we are more than 33 years since the human experiments became public knowledge with the release of the Department of the Army Inspector General Report on Human Experimentation in 1975.
Due to a 1953 secret memorandum signed off by then Secretary of Defense Wilson which authorized the human experiments in violation of the Nureberg Codes of 1947, this was just 6 years after they were pushed into international law by the United States and the other Allied Powers so they could prosecute the Nazi Heriarchy for the experiments they did on the concentration camp detainees.
I have heard excuses that we had to understand the time, that the Chinese and the Russians were doing the human experiments and we had to keep pace with the perceived research, no matter the cost, now here we are 50 years later, with many disabled veterans and many deceased veterans that their deaths may be linked to the exposures incurred due to these experiments from the long term effects.
One problem with this, is the fact that the military did not fund any follow up medical research to see what the long term effects were or would be. Now they claim there is no proof and refuse to accept known research from the national Institute of Health as in this January 1994 Toxicity of the Organophosphate Chemical Warfare Agents GA, GB, and VX: Implications for Public Protection
Conclusions
The overreaching concern with regard to nerve agent exposure is the extraordinarily high acute toxicity of these substances. These agents were designed to produce rapid incapacitation or death at exceedingly low doses. Inability to perform complex tasks or tasks requiring good vision (especially night vision) can result from low to moderate nerve agent doses. Such incapacitation may be a consequence of psychological effects alone or in combination with gastrointestinal, ocular, or respiratory effects and could have a significant negative impact on a population's ability to respond to emergency warnings and instructions.
The congressional mandate to destroy U. S. stockpiles of unitary chemical warfare agents by the end of this decade was the stimulus for gathering and analyzing the widely scattered literature on the toxicity of the stockpiled warfare agents as summarized here and, to some extent, in other reviews. The U. S. Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program (CSDP) is currently designed to carry out on-site, high-temperature incineration of organophosphate nerve agents stored in bulk or incorporated into munitions. The potential for an inadvertent release with off-site consequences is considered exceedingly small (probabilities of 10-4 to 10-10 for individual incidents) during continued storage or on-site stockpile destruction. The continued storage option is estimated to entail greater risks of fatalities than on-site disposal. The potential for low-probability but high-consequence releases has raised public concern in the vicinity of the stockpile sites and is resulting in an extensive upgrading of emergency preparedness in the civilian sector in advance of the CSDP. This analysis was prepared to assist the medical and emergency planning communities and to address various issues emerging as concerns in the course of public participation in the planning process.
Then there is the SIPRI study based on Wermacht soldiers of the German Army from WW2 the study was based on a Dr Karl heinz Lohs work from 1945 thru 1975 and he discovered all body systems were affected by low level exposures by the soldiers who handled chemical weapons the study is Delayed Toxic Effects of Chemical Weapons
here are the conclusions and the medical problems known to be caused by exposure to mustard agents and Sarin
To conclude this section, the closing observations from Spiegelberg’s monograph
will be cited (these remarks do not refer exclusively to organophosphorus
CW agents) [2]:
A psychiatric delayed-effect syndrome was found as a result of systematic investigations
on former members of CW production and testing stations for the Wehrmacht. In
terms of frequency, two groups of symptoms can be distinguished–each consisting of
four separate symptoms or signs.
(1) The great majority of persons examined showed:
(a) persistently lowered vitality accompanied by marked diminution in drive;
(b) defective autonomic regulation leading to cephalalgia, gastrointestinal and
cardiovascular symptoms, and premature decline in libido and potency;
(c) intolerance symptoms (alcohol, nicotine, medicines);
(d) impression of premature aging.
(2) Further, one or more symptoms of the second group were found:
(a) depressive or subdepressive disorders of vital functions;
(b) cerebral vegetative (syncopal) attacks;
(c) slight or moderate amnestic and demential defects;
(d) slight organoneurological defects (predominantly microsymptoms and singular
signs of extrapyramidal character).
Our results are a contribution to the general question of psychopathological delayed
and permanent lesions caused by industrial poisoning. On the basis of our studies of
the etiologically different manifestations of toxication, the possibility of a relatively
uniform–though equally unspecific–cerebro-organic delayed effect syndrome is conceivable
Given the extensive medical problems related to exposures to chemical weapons I can see why the Department of Defense and the Veterans Administration to ignore the SIPRI study and the NIH study from 1994, given the tens of thousands of Cold War vets, and the hundreds of thousands of Gulf War one veterans exposed at Kamisayah, Iraq in March 1991 when the Army destroyed the Iraqi ammunition bunkers containing artillery and rockets containing Sarin and mustard agents that were spread all over the Persian Gulf on the winds that day. The military did not admit to the presence of chemical weapons at kamisayah until 1996, after CIA documents were released showing the presence of these weapons.
The NAS/IOM reports have ignored known medical studies when they wrote their reports that favored the DOD position that no damage was done by the release. Despite the fact that the March 2003 IOM report matched no other known studies for chemical weapons exposures and is considered a joke by most scientists and researchers. Donald Rumsfeld got the report he wanted in March 2003.