-Caveat Lector-
fwd from L Moss Sharman - CIA brainwashing to medical breakthroughs: study to look at Cold War research 7/15/07 Dene Moore - Montreal (CP) ....Suddenly, the human psyche was the new frontier and, thanks to a now-notorious CIA-funded experiment, Montreal found itself an unlikely hub of activity. At McGill's Allen Memorial Institute, Dr. Ewen Cameron believed he could "depattern" patients - an idea that cost the federal government an undisclosed amount of money this month in an out-of-court settlement with one former patient. Her lawyer said lawsuits involving other people are in the works. While Cameron's work was the most notorious, he was hardly alone. Over the next few years, Andrea Tome, a medical historian at McGill University, will try to document Canada's dubious Cold War psychiatric history. "It was happening all over," Tome said in a recent interview. "It's a race; not an arms race but a race for science, for technological improvement." Montreal became a "medical mecca" of sorts, due in no small part to Cameron's work and the research training program he established at McGill. Cameron served at various times as president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric Association. His patients were put into drug-induced comas, given LSD and exposed for days or weeks at a time to recorded messages. Cameron thought he could "program" the patients without flaw, an idea that intrigued the CIA enough to provide funding, along with the Canadian federal government. Patients like Janine Huard, who picked up her settlement cheque from the Canadian government a few weeks ago, suffered lifetime effects. "I was a guinea pig," Huard told The Canadian Press in an earlier interview. The CIA previously settled lawsuits with several of Cameron's former patients, including Huard. It was unusual, even in the context of the times but it's important to understand that it was the 1950s," said Dr. Frederick Lowy, who was a junior colleague of Cameron at the institute. There was a lot of research and not a lot of rules. "Doctors who thought they could help a patient by doing something different and new, just did it," said Lowy, who went on to become head of psychiatry and dean of medicine at the University of Toronto.... With the CIA financing, Cameron's work became part of a project code-named MK-Ultra, which oversaw 149 similar experiments. More details about the project surfaced last month in declassified CIA documents. Among the 700-plus pages was a memo to the CIA Management Committee acknowledging that the agency accepted experimental drugs that were rejected by commercial manufacturers because of "unfavourable side-effects." The drugs were tested on monkeys and mice and, eventually, armed forces volunteers. "CIA projects weren't just being carried out in Montreal," Tome said. “ Clearly there was something larger going on than just one lunatic fringe doctor at work." Indeed, the CIA and Cameron were not alone. In 1961, 23 inmates at the Kingston Prison for Women were given LSD, one of many studies across the country of the drug which was not yet outlawed. Not all the prisoners consented. Tome said prisons were, at the time, "the No. 1 source of clinical trial research." While Cameron was conducting his experiments, Dr. Heinz Lehmann was pioneering the use of anti-psychotic drugs at the Verdun Protestant Hospital in Montreal. Like Cameron, he was doing it without supervision and without informed patient consent. Unlike Cameron, his experiments worked. Lehmann had read about a sedative he thought would be effective for psychiatric patients. "He thought he would give it a try on some of his schizophrenic patients," Tome said. "Within weeks, he had these incredible remission rates." The drug was thorazine, the first anti-psychotic drug to offer any hope for psychiatric patients. While Cameron's experiments were partially funded by the CIA, Lowy said they were not performed at the behest of the U.S. spy agency. _http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/070715/x071504A.html_ (http://www.cbc.ca/cp/health/070715/x071504A.html) Bad memories can be suppressed - People are able to make themselves forget disturbing images. Kerri Smith 7/12/07 People can will themselves to forget traumatic or emotional scenes, researchers have found. When the brain conducts such deletions, brain regions that process vision and emotion go quiet. Knowing that memories can be consciously suppressed, and the brain areas involved, could point to therapies for people who struggle to forget traumatic experiences, such as those with post-traumatic stress disorder or obsessive-compulsive disorder. Neuroscientist Brendan Depue, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, wanted to find out what goes wrong in the brains of sufferers of such conditions. Previous studies have shown that people can suppress memories of words. But to make the test relevant to traumatic memories, Depue's team included an emotional component. They showed volunteers pairs of pictures: one of a face, and one to evoke an emotional response — a car crash, or a wounded person....Depue, B. et al. Science 317, 215-219 (2007). _http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070709/full/070709-10.html_ (http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070709/full/070709-10.html) ************************************** Get a sneak peek of the all-new AOL at http://discover.aol.com/memed/aolcom30tour www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! 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