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Hidden history of US germ testing: Biological pathogens were released in public places, tested on volunteers from a pacifist church
 Fifty years
ago, American scientists were in a frantic race to counter what they saw
as the Soviet threat from germ warfare. Biological pathogens they
developed were tested on volunteers from a pacifist church and were also
released in public places.
The remarkable story is told in a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Hotel
Anthrax.
In the 1950s, the Seventh-day Adventist Church struck an extraordinary
deal with the US Army. It would provide test subjects for experiments on
biological weapons at the Fort Detrick research centre near Washington
DC.
The volunteers were conscientious objectors who agreed to be infected
with debilitating pathogens. In return, they were exempted from
frontline warfare.
Fort Detrick was working on weapons it could use in an offensive
capacity as well as ways of defending its troops and citizens.
Hotel Anthrax uses declassified documents, evidence from Senate
investigations and personal testimony to trace the American bio-weapon
programme during this period.
The research involved anthrax, other lethal bacteria and biological
poisons. The scientists also conducted tests on an unsuspecting American
public.
Rabbit fever
More than 2,000 volunteers, nicknamed the "white coats", passed through
Fort Detrick between 1954 and 1973, where they worked as lab
technicians, as well as offering up their bodies for science.
One white coat, George Shores, tells of how he was infected with
tularaemia or rabbit fever.
A giant metal sphere, known as the Eight Ball because of its
resemblance to a snooker ball, was used in the experiment. Technicians
exploded prototype bio-weapons inside the structure.
"They had like telephone booths all the way around the outside of the
Eight Ball and you went into the telephone booth and shut the door and
put on a mask like a gas mask.
"It was hooked up to the material that was inside the Eight Ball and you
breathed it in," explained Mr Shores.
He began to feel ill before too long.
"Even my gums hurt. I don't think I have ever been so sick in all my
life. First it started as a headache and achy feelings and it just kept
progressing.
"I just wanted to breathe enough to keep alive. I would just take little
gasps of breath and I would hold it for as long as I could because it
hurt so bad.
"I can imagine if someone was using that agent in the battlefield the
soldier would just have to lie down - he would not be able to function."
The white coat volunteers were not infected with the most lethal
microbes. Their role was to test the effectiveness of new vaccines and
antibiotics and as soon as they became ill, they were given medical
treatment. Within a few days, George Shores began to recover.
But America's Institute of Medicine is conducting a study of more than
6,000 veterans who say their health has been compromised by secret tests
in the Cold War years.
Some of these were veteran sailors who were involved in tests known as
SHAD - Shipborne Hazard and Defense - which involved spraying lethal
chemicals such as sarin and nerve gases in the open sea.
The BBC programme makers also obtained declassified documents prepared
by the US Department of Veterans Affairs which refer to a study of
nearly 100 SHAD veterans who have since died.
It found the veterans were three times more likely to have developed one
of a group of killer diseases as a sample group in the general
population.
It concludes: "This study does suggest that veterans who participated in
Project SHAD may be at increased risk for cerebrovascular and
respiratory diseases."
Subway experiment
But it wasn't just the white coat volunteers and sailors who were
subject to experiments. Scientists used what they thought was a harmless
simulant in major bio-weapon tests across US cities and on public
transport.
It was a bacteria which they believed was harmless but which would mimic
the dispersal of deadly biological agents such as anthrax.
But later research showed that the strain of Bacillus globigii, or BG,
did pose a risk to people who were ill or whose immune system was
failing.
The programme hears from a retired scientist whose job in 1966 was to
drop light bulbs carrying BG on the New York subway. He would then
measure how the simulant might spread in the event of a real attack,
using a motorised vacuum devise concealed inside a suitcase.
Wally Pannier, 82, recalls: "We'd just drop light bulbs with the
powdered stimulant inside.
"I think it spread pretty good because you had a natural aerosol
developed every few minutes from every train that went past."
In 1994, the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs conducted what it
described as a comprehensive analysis stretching back 50 years of the
extent to which veterans were exposed to potentially dangerous
substances without knowledge or consent.
It was chaired by John D Rockefeller.
In a damning report, it concluded that the Department of Defense (DoD)
repeatedly failed to comply with required ethical standards when using
human subjects in military research - and that the DoD demonstrated a
pattern of misrepresenting the danger of various exposures and continued
to do so.
Dr Michael Kilpatrick, a medical adviser to the DoD, claims the concerns
which SHAD veterans have been raising may, finally, be changing that
behaviour.
"It's very hard to try and put today's ethics on standards 20, 30, 40
years ago. That's not to excuse it. I think they were trying to protect
people using the medical science that was available at that time.
"We're taking a look at any current tests that require consent of our
military personnel.
"We're making sure that there is an archive, a registry, a way to get
back to all of the information."
Hear part 1 of Hotel Anthrax at Radio 4's Listen again
page.
Part 2 is on Monday, 20 February, 2006 at 2000 GMT.
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