Secret Army volunteer's widow blames VA for spouse's death

Secret Army volunteer's widow blames VA for spouse's death
By Saundra Young, CNN
March 3, 2012

STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Secret Cold War program tested chemical and biological agents on 7,000 soldiers
Program vet Wray Forrest died in 2010 after he was diagnosed with heart trouble and cancer
Widow accuses VA of neglecting her ailing husband
VA wouldn't answer questions about the case due to a pending lawsuit

(CNN) -- "I promised Wray I would never give up the fight." It was a wife's final pledge to her dying husband, who was once identified as Medical Volunteer No. 6692 at Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland.

In 1973, Army Pvt. Wray Forrest spent two months at Edgewood as a volunteer human test subject in a top secret Cold War research program studying chemical and biological weapons.

His widow, Kathryn Forrest, says those tests were his undoing.

During his time at Edgewood, Wray participated in at least five different tests. In one, Kathryn says he was given high doses of Ritalin. In a deposition he gave before his death, Wray described the effect it had on him.

"It wound up making me want to do things very rapidly and in a rushed manner," he says in the deposition. He says he was "wound up like a golf ball teed off in a tile bathroom. Bouncing off the walls."

Ritalin is a Schedule II drug -- a class of drugs considered dangerous and addictive. Large doses can cause dizziness, jitteriness, cardiac arrhythmia, stroke, high blood pressure, even sudden death. Wray was injected with various substances at Edgewood, according to court documents. And his story is just one of many.

In fact, from 1955 to 1975 more than 7,000 soldiers each spent two months at Edgewood. Overall, they tested at least 250 different chemical and biological agents.
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