Under the deceptive promise of scientific progress, some organizations may even carry out illegal experiments that clearly threaten the health and integrity of the human being.

Sometimes it is good to remember that science is not beyond economic and political interests and that human rights are not always a factor to be respected by certain authorities.

When experiments become cruel

Experiments on suffering animals are not the only way research can take on macabre overtones. When the scientific progress that can be made through them is coupled with the pressure to stay afloat as one of the world’s leading powers, the result can be human experimentation that is as brutal as it is morally reprehensible.

These are some of the worst experiments done in the name of science in the USA .

1. Project MK Ultra

People who follow the Stranger Things series will be familiar with the term MK Ultra , but the truth is that it was a project that came to exist beyond fiction. It is a set of experiments initiated during the 1950s and coordinated and promoted by the CIA. Its function was to explore the possibilities of creating forms of mental control that could be applied during torture sessions.

To investigate ways in which people could be forced to confess information, they were injured, given drugs or kept in isolation. Many of these people participated in these experiments without being aware of it , believing that they were simply following a medical treatment to mitigate the effects of the mental disorders or illnesses they suffered.

The aim of this secret research, led by an American doctor named John Cutler , was to study the effects of penicillin on the possible prevention of venereal disease. To this end , dozens of people from the lowest socioeconomic strata were infected with syphilis , and at least 83 of them died. These investigations began to come to light in 2005, when a university professor found documents on the subject.

2. Holmesburg program and experimentation with Agent Orange

Agent Orange, a chemical warfare element widely used by the US during its invasion of Vietnam, was also used in illegal experiments.

During the 50s, 60s and 70s, a doctor named Albert M. Kligman carried out, on behalf of the American army and several private companies, an experiment in which he used 70 prisoners from a Philadelphia jail. The research was to study how the skin reacts when someone is inoculated with dioxin, one of the components of Agent Orange. These people developed serious skin lesions that were not treated for months .

  • You can see a spectacular photo report of the Holmesbur Programme in this article in the Daily Mail.

3. Truth Serum Testing

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the US army promoted a series of psychological experiments based on the use of drugs known as truth serums . As their name indicates, these substances were perceived as a potential tool to make people confess confidential information without being able to avoid it.

The use of these drugs not only used to have devastating effects on the mental health of the people with whom it was experienced, but in many cases it created an addiction to them.

4. Experiments with radiation

During the 1960s, the Pentagon developed experiments based on subjecting cancer patients with limited economic resources to intense radiation . During these sessions, the radiation levels were so high that patients suffered intense pain and experienced nausea and other symptoms.

5. Syphilis experiments in Guatemala

By the mid-twentieth century, much of Latin America remained a region under the direct rule of the United States and its intelligence services, which controlled local governments and suppressed popular uprisings by financing paramilitaries.

This domain was also expressed through experimentation in one of the most notorious cases of illegal experimentation: the infection of people living in Guatemala with venereal diseases during the 1940s .

  • If you want to know more about this terrible case, we recommend this report from the BBC.

6. Mustard gas resistance tests

In the 1940s, thousands of American soldiers were exposed to mustard gas to test chemical warfare protective equipment . The soldiers were not informed of the risks of these tests, and many of them ended up with serious skin burns and lung injuries after being locked in gas chamber-like rooms.