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The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

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Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#91

Post by marcosdumay »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #73
wodzu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I find fascinating about the conspiracy theories is that the moment you start believing in one you will start believing in most of them. As if the logic gate in the brain suddenly stopped working.

To look at it the other way, the unwillingness to accept "alternative" theories is probably gated more by emotion than by logic. We need to believe in the basic good of humankind, even in spite of such aberrations as genocide, syphilis experiments, etc. But, when we look at history, it is probably more logical to be skeptical. Our history is replete with Massively Bad Things that are nearly unbelievable in scale, and…

> Where I believe skeptics get into trouble is when they move beyond questioning to actually posing an alternative story that is no more provable than the official one.

Those are not skeptical. They are believers, just like the people that believe on the official version.

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#92

Post by logfromblammo »

pyre wrote: post #81
WorldWideWayne wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...the moment you start believing in one you will start believing in most of them. Maybe what you're seeing is more like belief in the possibility rather than belief in the fact. For instance, after I learned about Operation Northwoods and a half a dozen other cases, I am completely open to the possibility that 9/11 was an inside job. (edit: And people who are not open to that possibility seem completely illogical…

> inside job An "inside job" comes across like the government explicitly set the terrorists on the path they took (or some of the terrorists were government agents). It seems more likely to me that certain elements in the government could have become aware of the plot and turned a blind eye.

The necessary element is not what you call it, but rather that the event is presumed to be evidence that the implied compact between government and the governed had been violated in some way by the government.

Loyalty and support in exchange for protection. Scholarship and industriousness in exchange for liberty. Moral behavior in exchange for justice. Voluntary taxation in exchange for uniform public benefits.

You need not show that the government was directly involved, if you can support the assertion that the government did not effectively use its granted authority for the benefit of the public. Conspiracy theories are primarily useful for convincing those people who demonstrate too much faith in their public institutions that they should be a bit more skeptical.

Whether you think that 9/11 was the work of Al Qaeda terrorists or CIA terrorists, the facts remain that the efforts of the government were ineffective to prevent the deaths, injuries, or destruction of property, and the resulting public grief and outcry was used inappropriately to justify almost entirely unrelated shifts in policy.

The idea that someone, somewhere might have said, "That many deaths? Hooray! We can go have a war now!" is just grossly abhorrent to me, and I can't shake the feeling that it actually happened.

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#93

Post by ObviousScience »

dmlorenzetti wrote: post #79
andreyf wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was a violation of the Nuremberg code How so? The article is a bit biased in calling humans the subjects of the test, where it doesn't sound to me like an objective definition of the word supports that framing in the least. A subjects of an experiment is the entity being observed and on which data is being gathered. In this case, it is the bacteria, and the data that was gathered was their movement through the c…

The article is a bit biased in calling humans the subjects of the test... A subjects of an experiment is the entity being observed It's actually pretty conventional to label any research that involves changing the environment of people as involving "human subjects" -- even if the purpose of the research is not directed at understanding how the change affects people. Here [0], for example, is a U.S. Department of Ener…

> (All that said, it's possible that the military did go through an internal "human subjects" review, which might have concluded that the trials were OK, on the basis that the agents were supposed to be harmless.)

I find it likely that the military assessed the risk that their alteration posed (the inclusion of a single additional strain of "harmless" bacteria to the many that live in a city) against the danger posed by not understanding the spread of bacteria introduced to a city, and concluded that the research was a reasonable use of human subjects.

Just like the NSA concluded that it was reasonable to do what they did.

The frightening thing about the government is not that they do these things without concern for the moral implications, but rather that the government as a system fosters a disconnect from the people they govern and a fanaticism towards duty that drives reasonable people to unreasonable ends.

Very rarely does the government do atrocities without considering the moral implications: they simply believe they're doing good by them.

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#94

Post by [deleted] »

iamben wrote: post #12

The UK did the same between 1940 and 1979 in various tests with zinc cadmium sulphide, e.coli and bacillus globigii. I suspect these kind of things are largely the basis for the Chemtrails conspiracy theories. More: http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicalsc...

[deleted]

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#95

Post by baddox »

abhinai wrote: post #10

"... the court held that the government was immune to a lawsuit for negligence and that they were justified in conducting tests without subjects' knowledge.". I sincerely hope there was some rationale to this decision that I do not know or understand. Otherwise it would be very hard for me to have any faith left in our judicial system.

I'm not sure if it counts as a rationale, but the incentives are pretty clear. The court, after all is part of the government. There is very little incentive for them to rule in such a way as to reduce the power or increase the accountability of another part of government. As for having faith in our judicial system, well this is just one in an enormous list of reasons why any such faith is profoundly uncalled for.

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#96

Post by baddox »

wodzu wrote: post #47
halviti wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're curious about the chemtrail crowd, I'd recommend the "documentary" 'what in the world are they spraying' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf0khstYDLA It's one of the many conspiracy type videos out there, and I don't endorse the content in any way.. I just find this stuff fascinating

What I find fascinating about the conspiracy theories is that the moment you start believing in one you will start believing in most of them. As if the logic gate in the brain suddenly stopped working.

And how do you reconcile your condescending dismissal with the reality that some conspiracy theories, even some pretty grand ones, have turned out to be true?

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#97

Post by nnbvv »

nsxwolf wrote: post #85
elchief wrote: post #77

So, do the astroturfers get a heads-up when articles like this appear so they can prepare?

Why would you think there are astroturfers for this? Do you really believe the government hangs out on Hacker News to propagandize support for testing biological weapons on unwitting citizens? That sounds really paranoid.

Many large governments do this. The US does too probably:

"It has been reported that HBGary Federal was contracted by the U.S. government to develop astroturfing software which could create an "army" of multiple fake social media profiles.[36][37]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBGary#Astroturfing

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#98

Post by DINKDINK »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #3

To their defense, they seem to have thought that they were using harmless bacteria. The background seems to be that they wanted to test the distribution of the bacteria rather than the effects on humans (which they thought to be zero any way). Add to that the fact that bacterial infections often hitchhike on other injuries, infections or conditions, it's not clear that the death was entirely the fault of the particul…

>To their defense, they seem to have thought that they were using harmless bacteria.

Ignorance is no excuse especially when non consenting people's health is at risk.

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#99

Post by discardorama »

bayesianhorse wrote: post #3

To their defense, they seem to have thought that they were using harmless bacteria. The background seems to be that they wanted to test the distribution of the bacteria rather than the effects on humans (which they thought to be zero any way). Add to that the fact that bacterial infections often hitchhike on other injuries, infections or conditions, it's not clear that the death was entirely the fault of the particul…

> To their defense, they seem to have thought that they were using harmless bacteria.

It's the "seem to have thought" that I have a problem with. How thoroughly did they do their research? It is one thing if someone puts his finger up and says, "hmm, I think it's safe". It's another if rigorous, thorough tests are done that show conclusively that the bacteria is safe.

Analogy: I fire a gun straight into the air. The bullet eventually comes down and kills someone. Is a defense that "I thought it was safe" valid?

Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

#100

Post by rayiner »

rroriz wrote: post #83
rayiner wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Countries are in general immune to lawsuits (sovereign immunity). The federal government has waived that immunity in many cases (e.g. Federal tort claims act) but it's still the overriding rule.

I have to disagree: a lazy search on Google shows only a few countries where this doctrine is legal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_immunity I was alarmed that this concept (sovereign immunity) could even exist. I thought, at first, that only in monarchies this could be a thing.

Sovereign immunity is an Anglo concept, but almost every country on your list has some form of sovereign immunity. And sovereign immunity is a well-accepted principle of international law (to the extent that exists): http://ejil.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/4/853.full ("Foreign sovereign immunity belongs without doubt to the traditional domains of public international law.")

Sovereign immunity serves important purposes: 1) keeping courts from getting tangled up in political matters; 2) keeping the actions of individual officers from leading to claims against the public treasury.

Note that just because the sovereign is immune (the government itself) does not mean that individual officers of the government cannot be sued. That's why you see all these lawsuits styled Somebody v. Secretary of State.

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