The patients of this experiment expected positive changes from Cameron's treatment. However, these patients suffered severely under conditions that were not in accordance with human rights.[3] Not only the patients but also their families show long lasting effects on their mental health. Some of these symptoms include retrograde amnesia as well as impairments in everyday life abilities such as self-care.
To this day, the topic of the experiments of Montreal has been kept in the dark by the CIA, who actively prevent information about these experiments from being leaked to the public, whether that be through destruction of files or signing non-disclosure agreements.[4]
Whether or not Cameron was aware that funding for his experiments was coming from the CIA is unclear; it has been argued that he would have carried out the exact same experiments if funding had come from a source without ulterior motives.[5]
Donald Ewen Cameron was the key figure in the Montreal experiments. Cameron was born on December 24, 1901, in Scotland and graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1924. In 1929 he moved to Canada where he worked in the Brandon Mental Hospital in Manitoba as the physician in charge. In 1938 he received his diploma in psychiatry and became professor of neurology, psychiatry at University at Albany and began his research on sensory deprivation and memory.[2][6]
In 1953 he developed his theory of "psychic driving" to cure schizophrenia which he later used on his patients under the Project MKUltra, with the codename "Subproject 68"[1] for which he was recruited by the CIA in 1957. He was paid $69,000 through the front company "Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology"[7] from 1957 to 1964 to carry out these experiments, as well as receiving "more than $500,000 between 1950 and 1965"[8] from the federal government. He suddenly left the project four years before the end of his contract.[2][1]
With the goal of inducing lifelong changes in humans, Cameron used different methods of depatterning and repatterning the brain. The procedures included psychic driving, drug-induced sleep, intensive electroconvulsive therapy, sensory deprivation and the administration of neuroleptic Thorazine.
Drug-Induced Sleep
Cameron used doses of thorazine to put patients into an artificial coma.
The drug-induced sleep, which took place in the "sleep room",[14] usually lasted from a few days up to 86 days; longer than expected by the patients. Cameron often combined the sleep periods with injections of hallucinogenic drugs (e.g. LSD), as well as administration of electroshocks and the playing of pre-recorded messages into patients' ears.[15]
Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT)
Electroconvulsive Therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy (also called electroshock therapy) is a procedure used to treat psychological disorders like treatment-resistant depression.[16]
Another way of depatterning the brain was intensive electroconvulsive therapy (electroshock therapy). Usually, 2 to 3 daily sessions were ordered, consisting of six 150-Volt shocks that lasted one second. After 30-40 daily sessions, Cameron progressively reduced the sessions and finished the treatment after a two-year follow up program with one session per month.[1]
Sensory Deprivation
Inspired by Donald Hebb's experiment on sensory deprivation and human cognition, Cameron included these techniques in his treatment program. Patients were deprived of their senses by covering ears, eyes and/or skin. Furthermore, patients were given little food, water and oxygen, and instead injected with drugs (LSD, curare) to keep them in a paralyzed state.[1][17]
Psychic Driving
In order to repattern the brain, patients had to listen to specific recordings of Cameron repeatedly. This process took place for up to 16 hours a day, and over the whole period messages could be repeated up to half a million times altogether. For the first ten days, recordings contained personal, negative messages, which were followed by ten days of positive messages.
Anxiety that would emerge in patients was countered with heavy doses of sedating drugs such as Sodium Amytal and Largactil.[18]
Patients
It is unknown how many people participated in the Montreal Experiments exactly, but over 300 people applied for compensation in 1992 with the Canadian Government.[8] The participants of the experiment mainly had mental health issues like depression and schizophrenia, and were hoping to get treated for these illnesses by Donald Ewen Cameron. None of them had given informed consent to the procedures, or were aware of the experiments being conducted. This was a gross violation of the Nuremberg Code, a code of ethics set up after World War II.[19] Children and adults from many social backgrounds were treated, most of them for up to three years.[20]
Participants often suffered from retrograde amnesia for the rest of their lives and had to relearn most skills they had. Many were in a childlike state and even had to be potty-trained.[21] Family described them as even more emotionally unstable as before and some of them were unable to live a normal life afterwards. One such patient was Jean Steel, whose daughter said that she never returned to be the same woman ever again. Jean would sit alone in the dark, write codes on the walls, and according to her daughter, "her emotions were stripped. It took away her soul."[20][22][4]
It was not until 1975 that the general public were informed about the extent of CIA meddling, largely due to the involvement of the Church Committee, which was tasked with the investigation of "the extent, if any, to which illegal, improper, or unethical activities were engaged in by any agency of the Federal Government,"[23]
During the 1977 Senate Hearing on MKUltra, Senator Edward "Ted" Kennedy called for the release of all documents pertaining to MKUltra, saying "the best way to put this period behind us, obviously, is to have the full information…"[24] The Senate Hearing also allowed the CIA Director of the time, Stansfield Turner, to give his prepared statement and to elaborate on the discovery of seven boxes of information related to Project MKUltra, most of which turned out to consist of "approvals for advance of funds, vouchers, accountings, and the like - most of which are not very informative as to the nature of the activities that were undertaken."[24] This made it very difficult to judge the extent of CIA involvement with the Montreal Experiments.
More information was revealed in the Canadian CBC documentary series "The Fifth Estate". In 1980, they released a first episode about Project MKUltra, which not only held the testimony of two Canadian patients who'd undergone the treatment speaking out for the first time, but also the revelation that Ottawa had aided to suppress information that CIA officials had apologised to the Canadian government following the initial revelation of the experimentation.[25] The second episode, released in 2017, focuses on the present-day struggle of the victims to receive compensation, the hindrances made to prevent them from speaking out about their experiences, and the efforts of the CIA and Canadian government to keep their involvement hidden.[26] Mentioned in particular are a 1988 class action settlement made by the victims against world s most committed CIA, which they won, receiving 67,000 US dollars each,[26] and a 1992 compensation from the Canadian government, in which 77 individuals received 100,000 US dollars each, but signed away their right to sue the government or the hospital.[25] This compensation did not extend to 250 other victims, denied for not being "tortured enough, applied too late or because they couldn't produce medical records."[8]
To this day, neither the Canadian government nor the CIA have issued formal apologies for their involvement and funding of Project MKUltra or the Montreal experiments.[8] In 2017, the Canadian government reached an out-of-court settlement with the daughter of one of the patients, paying 100,000 US dollars in exchange for dropping the legal case, and signing a non-disclosure agreement which would prevent her from talking about the settlement.[4]
Criticism
There is no clear evidence of what really happened in the Montreal Experiments. None of Cameron's personal files concerning his experiments survived. Other documents which would verify the Montreal Experiments either no longer exist or are still classified.[27] Most of the information on the experiments is rooted in reports of patients, especially their journals or court reports.[28]
Related Research Articles
Project MKUltra was an illegal human experiments program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken individuals 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. Additionally, other methods beyond chemical compounds were used, including electroshocks, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse, and other forms of torture.
Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or electroshock therapy (EST) is a psychiatric treatment where a generalized seizure is electrically induced to manage refractory mental disorders. Typically, 70 to 120 volts are applied externally to the patient's head, resulting in approximately 800 milliamperes of direct current passing between the electrodes, for a duration of 100 milliseconds to 6 seconds, either from temple to temple or from front to back of one side of the head. However, only about 1% of the electrical current crosses the bony skull into the brain because skull impedance is about 100 times higher than skin impedance.
Sensory deprivation or perceptual isolation is the deliberate reduction or removal of stimuli from one or more of the senses. Simple devices such as blindfolds or hoods and earmuffs can cut off sight and hearing, while more complex devices can also cut off the sense of smell, touch, taste, thermoception (heat-sense), and the ability to know which way is down. Sensory deprivation has been used in various alternative medicines and in psychological experiments. When deprived of sensation, the brain attempts to restore sensation in the form of hallucinations.
Project Artichoke was a project developed and enacted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for the purpose of researching methods of interrogation.
MKNAOMI is the code name for a joint Department of Defense/CIA research program from the 1950s through to the 1970s. Unclassified information about the MKNAOMI program and the related Special Operations Division is scarce. It is generally reported to be a successor to the MKULTRA project focusing on biological projects including biological warfare agents—specifically, to store materials that could either incapacitate or kill a test subject and to develop devices for the diffusion of such materials.
Donald Ewen Cameron was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the Central Intelligence Agency. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association (1952–1953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (1958–1959), American Psychopathological Association (1963), Society of Biological Psychiatry (1965) and the World Psychiatric Association (1961–1966).
Ugo Cerletti was an Italian neurologist who discovered the method of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) used in psychiatry. Electroconvulsive therapy is a therapy in which electric current is used to provoke a seizure for a short duration. This therapy is used in an attempt to treat certain mental disorders, and may be useful when other possible treatments have not, or cannot, cure the person of their mental disorder.
William Walters Sargant was a British psychiatrist who is remembered for the evangelical zeal with which he promoted treatments such as psychosurgery, deep sleep treatment, electroconvulsive therapy and insulin shock therapy.
Psychic driving was a psychiatric procedure of the 1950s and 1960s in which patients were subjected to a continuously repeated audio message on a looped tape to alter their behaviour. In psychic driving, patients were often exposed to hundreds of thousands of repetitions of a single statement over the course of their treatment. They were also concurrently administered muscular paralytic drugs such as curare to subdue them for the purposes of exposure to the looped messages. The procedure was pioneered by Donald Ewen Cameron, and used and funded by the CIA's Project MKUltra program in Canada.
The Allan Memorial Institute, also known colloquially as "the Allan", is a former psychiatric hospital and research institute located at 1025 Pine Avenue West in Montreal, Canada.
Deep sleep therapy (DST), also called prolonged sleep treatment or continuous narcosis, is a discredited form of ostensibly psychiatric treatment in which drugs are used to keep patients unconscious for a period of days or weeks. The controversial practice led to the death of 25 patients in Chelmsford Private Hospital in New South Wales, Australia, from the early 1960s to late 1970s.
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.
Electroconvulsive therapy is a controversial psychiatric treatment in which seizures are induced with electricity. ECT was first used in the United Kingdom in 1939 and, although its use has been declining for several decades, it was still given to about 11,000 people a year in the early 2000s.
Maximilian Fink is an American neurologist and psychiatrist best known for his work on ECT. His early work also included studies on the effect of psychoactive drugs on brain electrical activity; his later work has included books about the syndromes of catatonia and melancholia, published in the 2010s.
It has been traditionally believed that any U.S. Central Intelligence Agency activity in Canada would be undertaken with the "general consent" of the Canadian government, and through the 1950s information was freely given to the CIA in return for information from the United States. However, traditionally Canada has refused to voice any anger even when it was clear that the CIA was operating without authorisation.
George Thomas Hendery Cooper was a Progressive Conservative party member of the House of Commons of Canada. He was a lawyer.
Numerous experiments which were performed on human test subjects in the United States in the past are now considered to have been unethical, because they were performed without the knowledge or informed consent of the test subjects. Such tests have been performed throughout American history, but have become significantly less frequent with the advent and adoption of various safeguarding efforts. Despite these safeguards, unethical experimentation involving human subjects is still occasionally uncovered.
Anne Collins is a Canadian writer, editor and publishing executive who won the Governor General's Award for English-language non-fiction in 1988.
David John Impastato was an American neuropsychiatrist who pioneered the use of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in the United States. A treatment for mental illness initially called "electroshock," ECT was developed in 1937 by Dr. Ugo Cerletti and Lucio Bini, working in Rome. Impastato has been credited with the earliest documented use of the revolutionary method in North America, administered in early 1940 to a schizophrenic female patient in New York City. Soon after, he and colleague Dr. Renato Almansi completed the first case study of ECT to appear in a U.S. publication. Impastato spent the next four decades refining the technique, gaining recognition as one of its most authoritative spokesmen. He taught, lectured widely and published over fifty articles on his work. He called on ECT practitioners to observe the strictest protocols of patient safety, countered resistance to ECT from both the medical and cultural establishments, and met later challenges to electroconvulsive therapy from developments in psychopharmacology. Impastato would live to see ECT recommended by the American Psychiatric Association for a distinct core of intractable mental disorders. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration took longer to respond to the treatment's potential. But in 2016 the FDA drafted guidelines for ECT similar to those of the APA, as well as proposing regulations for treatment with Class II and Class III devices. Though still not free of controversy, electroconvulsive therapy is the treatment of choice for an estimated 100,000 patients a year in the United States.
The Sleep Room is a 1998 Canadian television movie about experiments on Canadian mental patients that were carried out in the 1950s and 1960s by Donald Ewen Cameron and funded by the CIA's MKUltra program. It originally aired as a miniseries and is based on the book In The Sleep Room: The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada by Anne Collins.
↑ Electroshock: the case against /Robert F. Morgan, editor. Morgan, Robert F. Fair Oaks, CA: Morgan Foundation Publishers. 1999. ISBN1885679025. OCLC44462221.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
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