Dorothy Proctor is a Canadian author and activist noted for drawing attention to scientific experimentation on Canadian prisoners.
Dorothy Proctor is a Canadian author and activist noted for drawing attention to scientific experimentation on Canadian prisoners.
Proctor was born in Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. [1] In 1961, she was sentenced to three years at the Prison for Women (Kingston in Kingston, Ontario after being convicted of robbery as a teenager. She escaped from the facility on two occasions. After the second escape, Proctor alleges she became a subject in a prison psychology experiment involving the administration of electroshock therapy, sensory deprivation, and LSD. [1] She described the experience as akin to Dante's Inferno. [2]
In 1994, Proctor published her autobiography, Chameleon: The Lives of Dorothy Proctor, in collaboration with Fred Rosen, a professor of journalism at Hofstra University. In it she described being involved in prostitution and the drug trade from a young age. She wrote of working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and "claims to have played a major role in breaking up Chinese, Jamaican and Europe-to-Canada drug-smuggling rings and exposing corrupt Mounties", as well as infiltrating the Mafia and a Sikh terrorist cell. [3] [4]
Proctor sued Correctional Service Canada in 1995 for Can$5 million in damages. She testified that "she was targeted by researchers because she was viewed as a 'throwaway'", and that her treatment in prison had resulted in a drug addiction and brain damage. [5] Although Proctor's suit was ultimately settled out of court in 2002, it led to significant media attention on the issue, and a number of former inmates at both the women's prison and the Kingston Penitentiary came forward with similar claims, along with allegations that they had been the subject of clinical pharmaceutical trials. [5] [6] Ultimately, hundreds of prisoners were found to have been subjected to scientific experimentation in Canadian prisons through the 1960s and 1970s. [7]
Timothy Francis Leary was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. According to poet Allen Ginsberg, he was "a hero of American consciousness", and writer Tom Robbins called him a "brave neuronaut". During the 1960s and 1970s, Leary was arrested 36 times. President Richard Nixon allegedly described him as "the most dangerous man in America".
Project MKUltra was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken people and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. It began in 1953 and was halted in 1973. MKUltra used numerous methods to manipulate its subjects' mental states and brain functions, such as the covert administration of high doses of psychoactive drugs and other chemicals without the subjects' consent, electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.
Human experimentation is an issue raised by some North Korean defectors and former prisoners. They have described suffocation of prisoners in gas chambers, testing deadly chemical weapons and surgery without anesthesia.
The psychedelic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) was first synthesized on November 16, 1938, by the Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann in the Sandoz laboratories in Basel, Switzerland. It was not until five years later on April 19, 1943, that the psychedelic properties were found.
The women in prison film is a subgenre of exploitation film that began in the early 20th century and continues to the present day.
Millhaven Institution is a maximum security prison located in Bath, Ontario. Approximately 500 inmates are incarcerated at Millhaven.
Pharmacological torture is the use of psychotropic or other drugs to punish or extract information from a person. The aim is to force compliance by causing distress, which could be in the form of pain, anxiety, psychological disturbance, immobilization, or disorientation.
The Prison For Women, located in Kingston, Ontario, was a Correctional Service of Canada prison for women that functioned at a maximum security level from 1934 to 2000.
The 1990 Strangeways Prison riot was a 25-day prison riot and rooftop protest at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, England. The riot began on 1 April 1990 when prisoners took control of the prison chapel, and quickly spread throughout most of the prison. The incident ended on 25 April when the final five prisoners were removed from the rooftop. One prisoner was killed during the riot, and 147 prison officers and 47 prisoners were injured. Much of the prison was damaged or destroyed, with the cost of repairs coming to £55 million. It was the longest prison riot in British penal history.
Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on prisoners by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps mainly between 1942 and 1945. There were 15,754 documented victims, of various nationalities and age groups, although the true number is believed to be more extensive. Many survived, with only a quarter of documented victims killed. Survivors generally experienced severe permanent injuries.
Throughout history, prisoners have been frequent participants in scientific, medical and social human subject research. Some of the research involving prisoners has been exploitative and cruel. Many of the modern protections for human subjects evolved in response to the abuses in prisoner research. Research involving prisoners is still conducted today, but prisoners are now one of the most highly protected groups of human subjects
Kurt Heissmeyer was a Nazi SS physician involved in medical experimentation on concentration camp inmates including children, notably seven-year old Sergio de Simone.
Numerous experiments which are performed on human test subjects in the United States are considered unethical, because they are performed without the knowledge or informed consent of the test subjects. Such tests have been performed throughout American history, but some of them are ongoing. The experiments include the exposure of humans to many chemical and biological weapons, human radiation experiments, injections of toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation and torture experiments, tests which involve mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of other experiments. Many of these tests are performed on children, the sick, and mentally disabled individuals, often under the guise of "medical treatment". In many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor, racial minorities, or prisoners.
Albert Montgomery Kligman was an American dermatologist who co-invented Retin-A, the acne medication, with James Fulton in 1969. Kligman performed human experiments on inmates at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. Scandal followed years later. The experiments intentionally exposed humans to pathogens and dioxin, and later became a textbook example of unethical experimenting on humans. He and others involved were sued for alleged injuries, but the lawsuit was dismissed due to the statute of limitations expiring.
Friedrich Karl Hermann Entress was a German camp doctor in various concentration and extermination camps during the Second World War. He conducted human medical experimentation at Auschwitz and introduced the procedure there of injecting lethal doses of phenol directly into the hearts of prisoners. He was captured by the Allies in 1945, sentenced to death at the Mauthausen-Gusen camp trials, and executed in 1947.
Unethical human experimentation is human experimentation that violates the principles of medical ethics. Such practices have included denying patients the right to informed consent, using pseudoscientific frameworks such as race science, and torturing people under the guise of research. Around World War II, Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany carried out brutal experiments on prisoners and civilians through groups like Unit 731 or individuals like Josef Mengele; the Nuremberg Code was developed after the war in response to the Nazi experiments. Countries have carried out brutal experiments on marginalized populations. Examples include American abuses during Project MKUltra and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, and the mistreatment of indigenous populations in Canada and Australia. The Declaration of Helsinki, developed by the World Medical Association (WMA), is widely regarded as the cornerstone document on human research ethics.
Joan Ferguson is a fictional character in the Australian television series Wentworth, who serves as the main antagonist from season two to season five. Joan is portrayed by actress Pamela Rabe. Her storylines centre on rivalries with Will Jackson, Bea Smith and most staff and inmates. She is introduced in Season 2 as the new Governor of Wentworth Prison following Erica Davidson being fired but becomes a prisoner in Season 4 and remained until the end of the fifth season. The character was presumed dead between the sixth and seventh season, when she was revealed to be alive in the latter. She returned in the eight and final season.
Spiderhead is a 2022 American science fiction psychological thriller film directed by Joseph Kosinski, with a screenplay by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick, based on the dystopian short story "Escape from Spiderhead" by George Saunders and first published in The New Yorker. The film stars Chris Hemsworth, Miles Teller, and Jurnee Smollett. The story follows inmates in a luxurious prison who participate in experiments involving mind-altering drugs. Principal photography took place in Australia in 2020.
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