7,800 veterans as human guinea pigs may finally get justice

VA Must Disclose Veteran Drug Test Documents
By ANNIE YOUDERIAN

(CN) - Veterans won another court order requiring the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to hand over more documents about its Cold War-era drug experiments on thousands of Vietnam veterans.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in Oakland, Calif., said the documents requested were "squarely relevant" to the claim that the government failed to adequately notify veterans of the chemicals they were exposed to and what that exposure might do to their health.

The Army and the CIA, with the help of Nazi scientists, used at least 7,800 veterans as human guinea pigs for testing the effects of up to 400 types of drugs and chemicals, including mescaline, LSD, amphetamines, barbituates, mustard gas and nerve agents, the Vietnam Veterans of America and individual soldiers claim in a 2009 class action.

The government covered up the true nature of its experiments, which began in the 1950s under code names such as "Bluebird," "Artichoke" and "MKUltra."

In "Project Paperclip," the Army and CIA allegedly recruited Nazi scientists to help test various psychochemicals and develop a new truth serum using its own veterans as test subjects.

"Over half of these Nazi recruits had been members of the SS or Nazi Party," according to the class action. "The 'Paperclip' name was chosen because so many of the employment applications were clipped to immigration papers." read more here

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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