-Caveat Lector- Dear list, Forwarded with permission. Sincerely, Neil Brick PS These may be heavy for survivors of ra/mc to read. LSD "guinea pig" wins key court victories By JIM BRONSKILL and MIKE BLANCHFIELD Southam Newspapers OTTAWA - The federal government and a former prison psychologist have confessed to battery and negligence for giving LSD to a teenaged inmate in the 1960s. The admission by the government and psychologist Mark Eveson in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice is a key victory for former prisoner Dorothy Proctor in her three-year battle for compensation. A total of 23 female inmates were administered LSD as part of a 1961 study at the now-defunct federal Prison for Women in Kingston, Ont. At 18 and serving a three-year robbery sentence, Proctor received at least one dose of the powerful hallucinogen in a 1.5-metre-by-2.5-metre windowless basement segregation cell, lit by a single bulb with only a mattress and a hole in which to pass bodily waste. In 1998, Proctor sued the government and former Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) officials for giving her the drug, saying it has caused brain damage and terrifying hallucinations. The lawsuit touched off a protracted court fight over the nature of the LSD tests, the ethics of using prisoners in the drug program and whether officials breached a duty of care to the prisoners in their charge. The case focuses on events during the early history of the fabled psychedelic drug, a pre-hippie era when LSD was known primarily to academic researchers and scientists, including some who investigated the drug for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency as part of its quest to explore the human mind. Among the correspondence filed with the court by Proctor's lawyers is a 1953 letter to the federal prison service from Dr. Ewen Cameron of Montreal, who would later undertake mind-control research funded by the CIA. The Canadian government argues LSD was administered to female prisoners with the aim of "promoting the health of individuals" - not for experimental reasons. However, the government concedes there is no record of Proctor having consented to receiving the hallucinogen among the thousands of pages of prison documents that have surfaced in the case during the past three years. The government and Eveson admitted April 30 to assault and negligence, declarations that were accepted by the court in early May. Proctor is suing for $5 million, though the court has not yet addressed the issue of damages. A primary point of contention in Proctor's suit remains unsettled because the government does not allow that officials were responsible for a fundamental lapse in care toward her. In an amended statement of claim filed in May, Proctor has asked Master Robert Beaudoin, the court official presiding over the case, to rule in her favour Aug. 28 on the final point, without a trial, on the weight of the evidence presented to date. She argues the defendants owed her a duty, "as a vulnerable minor and as an inmate," to protect her from harm and safeguard her well-being. In particular, she contends that Eveson, who ran the LSD program, and Dr. George Scott, the prison psychiatrist who oversaw the tests, were "placed in a position of trust" with her, to the point where she "saw them as father figures." Proctor claims the men, in counselling her to take the drug, were primarily motivated by their desire to use her for experimental purposes, as opposed to promotion of health and wellness. In early 1998, a Correctional Service board of inquiry recommended that Proctor receive compensation and a formal apology. However, the government referred the matter to the McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law. Proctor, who had run out of patience, went to court. A subsequent investigation by the Ottawa Citizen and Southam News showed that hundreds of federal inmates were used as test subjects in scientific experiments during the 1960s and '70s. Prisoners took part in trials of untested pharmaceuticals such as penicillin and anti-stress pills, spent days in dark cells during sensory-deprivation research and received painful shocks in studies of cigarette smokers. In a report released in May of last year, the McGill centre recommended the government stop stalling and agree to compensate prisoners who were subjected to "unethical" experiments behind bars. The authors suggested the prison service establish an independent committee to review the claims of federal inmates used as scientific guinea pigs in research. However, the prison service seems unprepared to deal with the recommendations while Proctor's suit is before the courts, indicates a briefing note obtained under the Access to Information Act. "Because of current litigation (Proctor), CSC cannot make specific comments with respect to the observations that pertain to compensation of inmates in the report." ________ (Southam News and Ottawa Citizen) Lawsuit paints LSD experiment as journey to the mind's frontier By JIM BRONSKILL and MIKE BLANCHFIELD Southam Newspapers OTTAWA - To Dr. Ewen Cameron, Canada's prisons seemed like a logical place to conduct experiments on what strange new drugs could do to the human mind. In 1953, the McGill University psychiatrist wrote to the second in command of Canada's prison service to see if he had any insights into "the pharmacological, psychological and surgical suppression or obliteration of certain functions of behaviour as a research tool." Cameron was putting together a psychiatric conference and he figured that Dr. Louis Gendreau, deputy commissioner of the penitentiary service and head of medical services, might have some insights. It's not known whether Gendreau took Cameron up on his offer. What is known is that Cameron went on to become the closest thing Canada has produced to a real-life mad scientist. In the late 1950s and early '60s, Cameron tried to reprogram the behaviour of his patients at McGill University's Allan Memorial Institute using a combination of drugs, sensory deprivation, intensive electroshock and repetition of taped messages. Cameron's research was financed from 1957 through 1960 by a New York-based society that turned out to be a covert front for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. It was revealed in the late 1970s that the McGill experiments were part of the CIA's MKULTRA program to explore the boundaries of the human mind. Nine former patients of the late psychiatrist sued the CIA. The legal battle resulted in a 1988 settlement of $750,000 US, shared by the plaintiffs. The Canadian government, which funded Cameron's later work, made payments of $100,000 to dozens of former patients on compassionate grounds. Now, Cameron's chilling mind-control legacy is coming back to haunt the Canadian government - and taxpayers - once again, as another large settlement looms in a case with overtones of government-sanctioned mind control. Former prison inmate Dorothy Proctor won a partial, but stunning, victory in her three-year-old legal fight against the Canadian government last month. Federal lawyers admitted Proctor had been the victim of battery and that the prison service was negligent for giving her LSD in the early 1960s. Proctor was then a rebellious 18-year-old inmate, and the highly experimental hallucinogenic drug was seen as a means to break down her defences and help mend her anti-social ways. Gendreau consented to using Canada's prison population as subjects in a wide array of experiments - everything from testing unlicensed drugs to sensory deprivation studies. The Aug. 2, 1953, letter from Cameron to Gendreau is among dozens of exhibits Proctor's lawyers have filed in support of their lawsuit. It is one of several pieces of evidence that attempts to forge links between Allied counterintelligence efforts during the Second World War, covert CIA mind-control experiments and the dank, cave-like prison cell in the basement of the Kingston, Ont., prison where the teenage Proctor swallowed a little blue pill and watched the bars of her cell transform into slithering, menacing snakes. Federal lawyers refuse to concede the lawsuit in its entirety. While the government and former prison psychologist Mark Eveson have confessed to negligence for the battery Proctor suffered, they maintain the action did not constitute a breach of trust - that it was not a violation of the time-honoured tradition that jailers should not abuse their prisoners under any circumstances. Far from being reckless experimentation, LSD was given to inmates with the aim of "promoting the health of individuals," insists the government. A federally commissioned review of the case completed last year by the McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law concluded it was "unethical" for inmates to be subjected to such experiments and that the government should stop stalling and settle the case. Proctor is suing for $5 million, though the court has yet to address the question of damages. On Aug. 28, Proctor's lawyers will ask Ontario's Superior Court of Justice for summary judgment on the breach of trust issue - essentially to declare them the winner of the lawsuit without a trial. Years before LSD entered the hippie culture of flower power and free love, Proctor was the subject of a federal prison service experiment into what LSD could do to the human mind. The 1961 experiment, which involved 23 female inmates at Kingston's Prison for Women, wasn't widely publicized until 37 years later when the Ottawa Citizen obtained a board of inquiry report by the Correctional Service of Canada. The March 1998 report characterized the LSD tests as "a risky undertaking." Six months later, an Ottawa Citizen-Southam News investigation uncovered widespread evidence that Canadian prisoners had donated their bodies to science in a host of experiments ranging from sensory deprivation to the testing of unlicensed drugs. Proctor's lawyers are now alleging a much broader backdrop for the LSD experiment. An affidavit sworn by a member of Proctor's team turns back the clock to 1939, when Gendreau was believed to be a member of the Associate Committee on Naval Medical Research, an organization that later evolved into the Defence Research Board. "Dr. Gendreau's interest in human experimentation appears as early as the Second World War," the affidavit alleges. "It would appear that the Allies, during and following (the war), shared medical intelligence information through the Canadian Medical Intelligence Division, Ottawa." During the 1950s, the DRB exchanged intelligence with its British and American counterparts, including the CIA. "The DRB, along with the CIA, were concerned about the state of communist Russia's knowledge in such areas as bacterial warfare (BW), chemical warfare (CW), virology, hallucinating drugs," says the affidavit. The document also alleges that Gendreau, who has since died, developed his interest in human experimentation before moving on to become deputy head of the Canadian prison service in the 1950s. Under Gendreau's watch, Canada's prisons became laboratories for numerous experiments on the inmate population. Inquiries into genetic makeup involved studying the chromosomes of prisoners. Drugs including penicillin products, sedatives and anti-bacterial agents were tested on inmates. Some prisoners spent days in dark cells to determine the effects of isolation. The lawsuit alleges that Eveson, the prison psychologist who gave Proctor LSD, became caught up in this milieu. In August 1961, Proctor was sent to solitary confinement, known as the "hole," after her second prison escape in a year. Embarrassed by Proctor's antics, the prison warden was furious, warning her to co-operate "100 per cent." Eveson, then 32, had forged a strong patient-doctor bond with Proctor, described in one court document as "a benevolent father-cum-mother image." Eveson was keen to use LSD on Proctor. He hoped the new, experimental drug might erode Proctor's defences and help speed a psychological breakthrough. Though he has denied it under oath, documents suggest Eveson was intrigued by the "psychic driving" experiments of Cameron in Montreal. The unorthodox methods involved the continuous playing of taped messages for patients. Some listened through speakers under their pillows. Others wandered about the Allan Memorial wearing football helmets outfitted with earphones. "Techniques derived from Dr. Cameron's concept of psychic driving" could be incorporated into the treatment of drug-addicted inmates, Eveson wrote to the head of the prison service in 1961. Though he was not allowed to prescribe medication, Eveson administered LSD to Proctor while in solitary confinement. The result was, quite simply, a bad acid trip, filled with horrifying hallucinations. Bureaucrats in Ottawa, including Gendreau, were informed of the LSD experiment in writing. During depositions for the lawsuit, Eveson admitted he never received written consent from Proctor or any of the other women involved in the LSD trials. He also admitted to not having "any game plan about who should do what, and what should be done to investigate LSD before using it." George Scott, a retired prison psychiatrist and co-defendant in the suit, testified during depositions that he knew some fellow Kingston psychiatrists who went to Montreal to try LSD with Cameron in the late 1950s. After taking a hit of LSD, one psychiatrist attempted to jump out of a window at the Allan Institute. Scott would later say "he felt that using LSD was like trying to land a four-engine plane in someone's backyard." The LSD experiments were quietly abandoned sometime in late 1962, as Parliament considered banning a series of harmful drugs, including thalidomide, which caused numerous deformities in newborns after it was prescribed to pregnant women. In 1968, the government again became curious about LSD because of reports of an unusual shoplifting case. Ruth Bauman, a former Kingston inmate, was charged in 1967 with stealing a sweater. She pleaded not guilty, saying she was in a state of "non-insane automatism" at the time - a result of having been given LSD in prison in 1961. As it turned out, Bauman was the first of the 23 women to receive LSD as part of the Kingston experiment. Proctor had been among the first five. Bauman was acquitted after a psychiatrist testified that LSD exposure could have long-term negative effects. The case caught the eye of Ottawa officials. On Jan. 25, 1968, the Commissioner of Penitentiaries asked what followup had been done on the women involved in the LSD study. Gendreau responded that "the Penitentiary Service does not have the staff available" to look into the matter. Indeed, there was no followup for almost 30 years, when the Correctional Service board of inquiry began delving into the LSD experiment as a result of a complaint by Proctor about continuing flashbacks from receiving the drug in Kingston. Two investigators began an exhaustive search of prison archives, turning up documents that supported Proctor's very unusual claim. Months later, she filed suit against the Canadian government, Eveson and Scott alleging she was the victim of "callous and reckless" treatment. Proctor, now in her 50s, firmly disputes the notion the prison service had her best interests at heart. Shortly after filing the lawsuit, she bluntly summed up her exposure to LSD decades earlier. "I was reduced to a lab rat," she said, "a monkey in a cage." _____ (Southam News and Ottawa Citizen) <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html <A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of [EMAIL PROTECTED]</A> http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
