can we change the title to be a little less click-baity? even just adding "in 1950" would make it less like a tabloid cover article.
The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
131–140 of 142 posts
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#132Does this have anything to do with the measles outbreak and the ensuing vaccination/anti-vaccination debate in California?
Just marginally.
AFAIK, the bacteria used in this experiment is not related to measles.
However, there is the fact that the US government (all governments really) have repeatedly been found to inflict these kinds of nefarious deeds on their own people AND that they have a tendency to cover up those facts (not all governments are such hypocrites, some are proudly jerks) AND that the general public is often unaware or unwilling to admit it after the fact has been brought to light.
So, this is the kind of thing that reinforces the world view of the AntiVaxer side. Every time you try to reason with them, the label "cover-up" comes to their mind and they just disengage and shut down whatever you are trying to convey. Keep trying long enough, and they will label you as a "sheep" (a member of the willingly unaware public) or a "wolf in sheep skin" (basically, and agent provocateur).
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you attempting to justify this? If I ran a "harmless" experiment over a population of 100M that happened to kill 10 or 20 "outliers" should I be exempt from consequences as well?
I understand the vitriol, and I'm not even sure where I stand on the issue, but this quickly gets into a philosophical debate. This is something akin to the "railroad switch" question. Do you pull the level and divert a railroad car killing one person, but saving five or do you let the runaway care run its course and kill the 5. If the impetus for the experiment was to test some potential attack vector as the grandpa…
> This is something akin to the "railroad switch" question. Do you pull the level and divert a railroad car killing one person, but saving five or do you let the runaway care run its course and kill the 5.
In the railway scenario, you know you'll save 5. In this case, they were just experimenting to see if a certain attack was possible. Avoiding the experiment would not have resulted in any deaths.
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#134To 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…
> Add to that the fact that bacterial infections often hitchhike on other injuries, infections or conditions Who could possibly foresee that there could be other injuries, infections or conditions present in a fucking city.
Actually the few cases (out of a population of a couple hundred thousands) of any symptoms would be well within the tolerance of a drug trial today.
First stage clinical trials have a much higher risk for the subjects, arguably stage two and three also. Even Aspirin has a higher fatality rate.
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#135To 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…
I'd hope no democratic state would do such a thing in the current time. Wishful thinking. Let's hope we can meet again in 50 years and chat about the good old times.
I'm pretty sure that such a trial would come out within years. The wikileaks and Snowden affairs have shown that it is virtually impossible for a reasonably democratic state to keep such secrets for long.
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#136"... 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.
"rationale to this decision that I do not know or understand" I imagine the rationale went like this: We have intelligence that the soviets are developing weapons with deadly bacteria X with delivery mechanisms {Y, Z, ...}. We believe they can deliver an attack on this set of cities and we have this set of probabilities of stopping it. We've conducted experiments on animals and understand how X would affect an organi…
the rationale is clear. We are cattle, and should feel blessed when the government's Big Boy decisions do not harm us.
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
When was this "in between" you speak of? The cold war pretty much started with WWII.
Per Wikipedia: "Historians have not fully agreed on the dates, but 1947–1991 is common" (WWII ended in 1945 for reference). But the cold war was a slowly building thing that took many more years to reach fruition. So now that we've dealt with pedantic complaints that are wrong anyway, do you have any substantive problems with what I said?
This comment is so utterly generic, uninformed, condescending and pretentious, I have no words...
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
What I always found "fascinating" about conspiracy theories is how educated, smart people can be convinced by some of them. It's just something that I can't understand.
>> educated, smart people can be convinced by some of them I love this implication that you're probably dumb if you think the government sometimes engages in conspiracy. Like mass surveillance. Or bacterial experiments in San Francisco.
No, you're dumb when you turn and twist the available evidence to considerable degrees to get to your crazy conclusion. Snowden is an educated and smart man with the proper evidence to back his claims (mass surveillance). What was exposed in this case is proper evidence (bacterial experiments in SF).
What is dumb is seing a few bright pixels in a New Horizons image and saying "that's a swarm of alien space ships", when in fact it's just a cosmic ray distorted by the JPG lossy compression algorithm.
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Add to that the fact that bacterial infections often hitchhike on other injuries, infections or conditions Who could possibly foresee that there could be other injuries, infections or conditions present in a fucking city.
I'm not clear on how this is a productive comment. We have 60 years more science on how bacterial infections work. It was only 10 years ago that it was found to be dangerous. How many things are you doing today that will be found appalling in 60 years?
Fitting username.
Re: The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> the military assessed the risk [of including] a single additional strain of "harmless" bacteria to the many that live in a city
This does not seem as if it should have a very high risk...
> Just like the NSA concluded that it was reasonable to do what they did [...] they do these things without concern for the moral implications
Which NSA activity do you mean? Bulk collection of phone metadata on US residents? If the legal folks said they have a way of defending it as long as certain internal checks are in place, I don't think there are many "moral implications" to collecting data as an agency devoted to signals intelligence does all over the world, aside from the moral implications of signals intelligence itself.
> rarely does the government do atrocities without considering the moral implications
Now you're really escalating. "The government doing atrocity" usually involves intentionally killing a lot of people, not spraying the equivalent of sugar water or collecting phone records.