Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-gtxcr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-23T18:33:48.494Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Mustard Gas and American Race-Based Human Experimentation in World War II

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Susan L. Smith
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During World War II, scientists funded by the United States government conducted mustard gas experiments on 60,000 American soldiers as part of military preparation for potential chemical warfare. One aspect of the chemical warfare research program on mustard gas involved race-based human experimentation. In at least nine research projects conducted during the 1940s, scientists investigated how so-called racial differences affected the impact of mustard gas exposure on the bodies of soldiers. Building on cultural beliefs about “race,” these studies occurred on military bases and universities, which became places for racialized human experimentation.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 36 , Issue 3 , Fall 2008 , pp. 517 - 521
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

The testing programs used sulfur mustard (mustard gas), nitrogen mustard, and lewisite. Pechura, C. and Rall, D. P., eds., Veterans at Risk: The Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993): At v.Google Scholar
Office of Scientific Research and Development and the National Defense Research Council, Chemical Warfare Agents, and Related Chemical Problems, Parts III-VI, Washington, D.C., 1946, at 507–508, courtesy of Dr. Florian Schmaltz, University of Frankfurt on Main, Germany [hereinafter cited as OSRD and NDRC].Google Scholar
Omi, M. and Winant, H., Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994); Kolchin, P., “Whiteness Studies,” Journal of American History 89, no. 1 (June 2002): 154–173; Guglielmo, T. A., White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004): at 9.Google Scholar
Avery, D., The Science of War: Canadian Scientists and Allied Military Technology during the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); Moreno, J., Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans (New York: Routledge, 2001).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lederer, S., Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995): At 140; Rothman, D. J., Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making (New York: Basic Books, 1991): At 30. In 1953 the U.S. Army adopted a modified version of the Nuremberg Code of 1947 in relation to the use of volunteers in chemical agent research, and in 1975 it suspended research with human subjects. Taylor, J. R. and Johnson, W., “Summary of the Department of the Army Report,” (1975) in Pechura, and Rall, , eds., supra note 1, at 379–380.Google Scholar
Bryden, J., Deadly Allies: Canada's Secret War, 1937–1947 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989); Freeman, K., “The Unfought Chemical War,” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 47, no. 10 (December 1991): 30–39.Google Scholar
In 1943 the U.S. began mustard gas testing on human subjects. At least 2,500 men were tested in gas chambers, 1,000 men in field tests, and the rest of the 60,000 with patch tests and drop tests. Id. (Freeman); see also Pechura, and Rall, , eds., supra note 1, at 10.Google Scholar
Id. (Pechura and Rall).Google Scholar
Id., at 4–5, 64–66, 388.Google Scholar
Jones, J. H., Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York: Free Press, 1981).Google Scholar
See Bryden, , supra note 6; Freeman, , supra note 6; Goodwin, B., Keen as Mustard: Britain's Horrific Chemic Warfare Experiments in Australia (Queensland, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1998); Evans, R., Gassed: A History of British Chemical Warfare Experiments on Humans (London: House of Stratus, 2000); Pechura, and Rall, , eds., supra note 1; and the films Secret War: Oddessy of Suffield Volunteers (Insight Film and Video Productions, Canada, 2001) and Keen as Mustard: The Story of Top Secret Chemical Warfare Experiments (Yarra Bank Films, Australia, 1989).Google Scholar
See OSRD and NDRC, supra note 2, at 738–746.Google Scholar
Pugliese, D., “Panama: Bombs on the Beach,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 4 (July 2002): 55–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sulzberger, M. B., Baer, R. L., Kanof, A., and Lowenberg, C., “Skin Sensitization to Vesicant Agents of Chemical Warfare,” Journal of Investigative Dermatology 8, no. 6 (1947): 365–393.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See OSRC and NDRC, supra note 2, at quotes on 507–508; emphasis in original.Google Scholar
Id., at 372, quotes at 375.Google Scholar
Id., at 507; Pugliese, supra note 13, at 55–60.Google Scholar
See Sulzberger, et al., supra note 16, at quote on 370, 390–391.Google Scholar
See OSRC and NDRC, supra note 2, at 508.Google Scholar