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The military tested bacterial weapons in San Francisco in 1950

businessinsider.com

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

#21

Post by halviti »

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...

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

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

#22

Post by Houshalter »

I'm just asking because I am curious. If someone's immune system is so weak they can die of a common "harmless" bacteria, would they probably have died of something else anyway? We are surrounded by and filled with millions of bacteria at all times.

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

#23

Post by pdkl95 »

onewaystreet wrote: post #8

The US government did all sorts of crazy tests on people in the 50s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra

Not just MKUltra - there is a long history of what I would describe as "shockingly unethical" experimentation in the US. The US Government (usually military) is probably the most common actor and/or funder, but they are not the only responsible parties.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unethical_human_experimentatio...

This is why a lot of people (myself included) take a hard-line position of any kind of testing involving humans. Yes, it's often a waste of time to run many trivial experiments by an IRB first, but history has shown that some people seem unable to make this kind of judgement call probably. Really, in many case, an IRB simply serves the same purpose as assert(3); it's a "sanity-check". Like all sanity check, in theory it shouldn't be necessary, but history shoes it's worth checking anyway.

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

#24

Post by cristianpascu »

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…

There is no such a thing as demo-cracy.

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

#25

Post by rayiner »

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.

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.

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

#26

Post by TeMPOraL »

Houshalter wrote: post #22

I'm just asking because I am curious. If someone's immune system is so weak they can die of a common "harmless" bacteria, would they probably have died of something else anyway? We are surrounded by and filled with millions of bacteria at all times.

Hospitals are somewhat controlled environments and they try to account for every pathogen they expect to find. But they didn't expect a biological attack with an airborne bacteria.

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

#28

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

Shivetya wrote: post #5
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…

I would hope NO state would do such a thing in the current time. We are well past the point in civilization to accept this type of action from any state or organization.

Pre 2001 a lot of people would claim that we are also against torture, extrajudicial kidnapping, secret trials, locking people up without trial, mass surveillance, and unprovoked wars. Things change.

Just as between WWII and the cold war people likely claimed "we'll never let stuff like what the Nazi's did happen again!" then the country(s) feel threatened and the gloves come off.

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

#30

Post by dr_zoidberg »

halviti wrote: post #21
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...

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 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.
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