3,000 veteran survivors sue over chemical testing

Maybe this will give us all a glimpse of why our veterans feel as if they were all expendable and not treated as remarkable individuals. This is yet another national disgrace.

Veterans Sue CIA Over 1960s Chemical Tests on Humans
Bloomberg - USA(Update2)
By Karen Gullo

Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Vietnam Veterans of America and six former soldiers sued the Central Intelligence Agency claiming the U.S. failed to provide care for human subjects in once- secret tests of chemical and biological weapons and drugs.

The veterans say they and others were treated like guinea pigs in tests involving nerve gas, hallucinogenic drugs and mind-control experiments that left civilians and military people who unwittingly volunteered for the program with permanent disabilities. The tests, codenamed MKULTRA, began in the 1940s at a Maryland Army base and continued to about 1976, they said.

“What is not historical about these tests is the impact they had on the enlisted men,” Gordon Erspamer, an attorney with Morrison & Foerster in San Francisco, said today at a news conference. “They have never been compensated, they have been denied health care, they have been left alone for more than 30 years.”

The lawsuit, filed today in federal court in San Francisco, names as defendants the CIA, which allegedly funded the experiments, and the Defense Department. It seeks court orders declaring the experiments violated international law and forcing the government to notify and provide health care to people who participated in the tests.

3,000 Survivors

There are about 3,000 survivors of the tests conducted at the Army’s Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland and at U.S. hospitals and universities, Erspamer said. Most are in their 60s and 70s and have been denied benefits by the Army for health problems related to the experiments, he said.
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