From the archives: the Walter E. Fernald State School experiments

The Walter E Fernald State School was an institution in Massachusetts set up as a home for children with learning difficulties. The school faced controversy for much of its existence, in particular due to its association with the eugenics movement and reports of abuse.

The school was also the site of experiments investigating the effect of radiation on human beings. The experiments, carried out by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with sponsorship from the Quaker Oats company, involved subjecting children in the school to radiation, administered in a variety of ways including hiding it in food and injection. Many of the children – and their parents – were not fully informed on the nature of the experiments, and in some cases, not informed at all.

I’m sure there is some logic which makes “let’s irradiate retarded kids and see what happens” sound like something resembling a good idea. It is, however, a mystery to me.

An article from MIT’s paper “The Tech”, reporting on investigations and lawsuits around the experiments in the 1990s, describes the situation:

According to the lawsuit filed by former Fernald Science Club member Ronald Beaulieu, MIT violated the civil rights of at least 54 institutionalized children at the Walter E. Fernald School in Waltham, Mass. The researchers fed children doses of radiation with their breakfast cereal for the purpose of studying the way the body absorbs calcium and iron. The experiments were often performed without the informed consent of the subjects or their families.

At the Oct. 3 news conference that announced the completion of the committee’s nearly 1,000-page report, Clinton made a formal apology to the thousands of subjects of radiation experiments reviewed by the committee.

The report stated that children at the Fernald School were “unfairly burdened” by researchers from MIT and Harvard, who encouraged the children to take part in tests with promises of gifts or trips to Red Sox games.

The researchers also appeared “unwilling to respect” some children’s wishes not to participate in experiments, according to the report. The parents of the children involved in the experiments were not told that the tests involved radiation.

A 1994 article from Harvard gives further details:

In 1953, Benda, who was a Harvard faculty member until the late 1960s, wrote Fernald parents seeking permission to include their sons in the experiments. One letter says the children had “volunteered” to participate in the tests. In another, Benda says the absence of consent by parents or guardians would be taken as an assumption that permission had been granted.

Benda never mentioned that radioactivity would be used in the tests.

Then, in 1957, Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Hospital researchers studied the thyroid function of 21 students and seven parents at Fernald using doses of radioactive tracer high enough to cause “serious concern,” according to the state task force report.

And at a state school for the retarded in Wrentham, Mass., two Harvard scientists used children as young as one year old in a 1961-62 experiment to determine the human threshold for nuclear fallout.

In 1998, MIT and the Quaker Oats company paid $1.85 million compensation to people who were subjected to experiments as part of the program.

You are being lied to about pirates

You are being lied to about pirates

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labelling as “one of the great menaces of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell – and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage Bluebeard that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often saved from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t? In his book Villains Of All Nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence.

If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. If you slacked often, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively, without torture. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century”.

From Slogans to Mantras

This Christmas Santa left in my stocking a copy of From Slogans to Mantras. The book, by Stephen A Kent, gives an account of the 1960s protest and countercultural movements and the fate of some of their members as the decade grew to a close.

More specifically, Kent focuses on those radicals who joined cults and new religious movements such as Scientology, the Hare Krishnas, the Unification Church (aka the Moonies), and others. Kent’s key thesis – backed up with documents from the time and interviews with former and current members – is that these groups promoted themselves as a route for personal transformation as a means of changing the world. Having taken the route of social protest and become disillusioned or exhausted by it, some former radicals then chose a “revolution of consciousness” over a political revolution as a means of achieving essentially the same ends – Scientology’s promise of a world “free from criminality, insanity and war” provides an obvious example. This image was deliberately cultivated by many of the groups in question.

Kent also looks into existing spiritual trends of the 1960s movement, chiefly among the hippies but also among the radicals. Many of those he interviews had previous experience, to varying degrees, with psychedelic drugs such as mushrooms and LSD.

The book also investigates – in a way which I felt could have used more depth – the very real contradictions between members’ radical pasts and new homes. Former anarchists, for example, putting themselves under the absolute control of “the guru,” or radical feminists accepting a dominating, patriarchal culture. While this may simply be a function of the nature of cults – working to undermine individual self-determination in favour of following the group – it would have been interesting to see a bit more depth.

That aside, however, the book was fascinating and I would highly recommend it to anyone.

The Virginia Racial Integrity Act of 1924

From the “history” archive – more specifically the “history to be coughed over and looked uncomfortably at” archive:

The Racial Integrity Act of 1924:

1. Be it enacted by the general assembly of Virginia, That the State registrar of vital statistics may, as soon as practicable after the taking effect of this act, prepare a form whereon the racial composition of any individual, as Caucasian, Negro, Mongolian, American Indian, Asiatic Indian, Malay, or any mixture thereof, or any other non-Caucasic strains, and if there be any mixture, then, the racial composition of the parents and other ancestors, in so far as ascertainable, so as to show in what generation such mixture occurred, may be certified by such individual, which form shall be known as a registration certificate. The State registrar may supply to each local registrar a sufficient number of such forms for the purpose of this act; each local registrar may; personally or by deputy, as soon as possible after receiving such forms, have made thereon in duplicate a certificate of the racial composition, as aforesaid, of each person resident in his district, who so desires, born before June 14, 1912, which certificate shall be made over the signature of said person, or in the case of children under fourteen years of age, over the signature of a parent, guardian, or other person standing in loco parentis. One of said certificates for each person thus registering in every district shall be forwarded to the State registrar for his files; the other shall be kept on file by the local registrar.

Every local registrar may, as soon as practicable, have such registration certificate made by or for each person in his district who so desires, born before June 14, 1912, for whom he has not on file a registration certificate, or a birth certificate.

2. It shall be a felony for any person wilfully or knowingly to make a registration certificate false as to color or race. The wilful making of a false registration or birth certificate shall be punished by confinement in the penitentiary for one year.

3. For each registration certificate properly made and returned to the State registrar, the local registrar returning the same shall be entitled to a fee of twenty-five cents, to be paid by the registrant. Application for registration and for transcript may be made direct to the State registrar, who may retain the fee for expenses of his office.

4. No marriage license shall be granted until the clerk or deputy clerk has reasonable assurance that the statements as to color of both man and woman are correct.

If there is reasonable cause to disbelieve that applicants are of pure white race, when that fact is stated, the clerk or deputy clerk shall withhold the granting of the license until satisfactory proof is produced that both applicants are “white persons” as provided for in this act.

The clerk or deputy clerk shall use the same care to assure himself that both applicants are colored, when that fact is claimed.

5. It shall hereafter be unlawful for any white person in this State to marry any save a white person, or a person with no other admixture of blood than white and American Indian. For the purpose of this act, the term “white person” shall apply only to the person who has no trace whatsoever of any blood other than Caucasian; but persons who have one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and have no other non-Caucasic blood shall be deemed to be white persons. All laws heretofore passed and now in effect regarding the intermarriage of white and colored persons shall apply to marriages prohibited by this act.

6. For carrying out the purposes of this act and to provide the necessary clerical assistance, postage and other expenses of the State registrar of vital statistics, twenty per cent of the fees received by local registrars under this act shall be paid to the State bureau of vital statistics, which may be expended by the said bureau for the purposes of this act.

7. All acts or parts of acts inconsistent with this act are, to the extent of such inconsistency, hereby repealed.

The act, based on the pseudoscience of eugenics, continued to be in force for decades to come. Further information on the Act, and Virginia’s role in the eugenics movement, can be found here.

World’s oldest cannabis stash found

World’s oldest cannabis stash found

The world’s oldest stash of cannabis has been uncovered in China.

789 grams of marijuana was found buried in the tomb of a shaman and was so well-preserved that it retained its green colour.

The drug is thought to be around 2,700 years old, with researchers warning that it should not be smoked due to its lack of odour.

An article in the Journal Of Experimental Botany revealed: “[It is] the oldest documentation of cannabis as a pharmacologically active agent.”

Bridles, a harp and archery equipment were also found in the tomb.

The original article can be found here.

Jonestown: An Avoidable Tragedy

Thirty years ago today a tragedy unfolded in the jungles of Guyana. In Jonestown – a commune founded by the charismatic Jim Jones – the best part of a thousand people lay dead, some by their own hand, others killed by those around them.

This week has seen a variety of tributes and memorials. Many of the details, however, remain obscured.

Jones began his mission in Indiana, later moving to California, which remained the centre of his operations until the group moved to Guyana en mass. His message was a mix of socialism and radical Christianity, with a heavy emphasis on opposition to racism and segregation. As time went on, Jones came to attack Christianity, declaring himself to be agnostic (source). In religion he saw a means to motivate others, and in doing so, to pursue his own goals.

In spite of his radical views and authoritarian personality, Jones came to have deep connections with California’s political and media elite. He became involved with politics in San Francisco, gaining support from a variety of Democratic politicians. This 1977 article from New West magazine, entitled “Inside People’s Temple,” gives an insight:

For Rosalynn Carter, it was the last stop in an early September campaign tour that had taken her over half of California, a state where her husband Jimmy was weak. So Rosalynn gamely encouraged the crowd of 750 that had gathered for the grand opening of the San Francisco Democratic party headquarters in a seedy downtown storefront. She smiled bravely despite the heat.

Mrs. Carter finished her little pep talk to mild applause. Several other Democratic bigwigs got polite receptions, too. Only one speaker aroused the crowd; he was the Reverend Jim Jones, the founding pastor of Peoples Temple, a small community church located in the city’s Fillmore section. Jones spoke briefly and avoided endorsing Carter directly. But his words were met with what seemed like a wall-pounding outpour. A minute and a half later the cheers died down.

“It was embarrassing,” said a rally organizer. “The wife of a guy who was going to the White House was shown up by somebody named Jones.”

If Rosalynn Carter was surprised, she shouldn’t have been. The crowd belonged to Jones. Some 600 of the 750 listeners were delivered in temple buses an hour and a half before the rally. The organizer, who had called Jones for help, remembered how gratified she’d felt when she first saw the Jones followers spilling off the buses. “You should have seen it – old ladies on crutches, whole families, little kids, blacks, whites. Made to order,” said the organizer, who had correctly feared that without Jones Mrs. Carter might have faced a half-empty room.

[...]

Jim Jones counts among his friends several of California’s well-known public officials. San Francisco mayor George Moscone has made several visits to Jones’s San Francisco temple, on Geary Street, as have the city’s district attorney Joe Freitas and sheriff Richard Hongisto. And Governor Jerry Brown has visited at least once. Also, Los Angeles mayor Tom Bradley has been a guest at Jones’s Los Angeles temple. Lieutenant Governor Mervyn Dymally went so far as to visit Jones’s 27,000-acre agricultural station in Guyana, South America, and he pronounced himself impressed. What’s more, when Walter Mondale came campaigning for the vice-presidency in San Francisco last fall, Jim Jones was one of the few people invited aboard his chartered jet for a private visit. Last December Jones was appointed to head the city’s Housing Authority Commission.

The source of Jones’s political clout is not very difficult to divine. As one politically astute executive puts it: “He controls votes.” And voters. During San Francisco’s run-off election for mayor in December of 1975, some 150 temple members walked precincts to get out the vote for George Moscone, who won by a slim 4,000 votes. “They’re well-dressed, polite and they’re all registered to vote,” said one Moscone campaign official.

Can you win office in San Francisco without Jones? “In a tight race like the ones that George or Freitas or Hongisto had, forget it without Jones,” said State Assemblyman Willie Brown, who describes himself as an admirer of Jones’s.

This article, as mentioned above, was published in 1977. In February 1978 – just nine months before the tragedy in Guyana began to unfold, when allegations of problems with the group were beginning to come out – Harvey Milk, City Supervisor of San Francisco, wrote a letter to then-President Jimmy Carter, describing Jones as “a man of the highest character.” A number of other local political figures supported Jones and decried the “unfounded” attacks made against him and his group.

Jim Jones with California Governor Jerry Brown.

Allegations of mistreatment within the People’s Temple – including physical violence and intimidation – surfaced long before the tragedy in Guyana. However, local media consented to the cult’s bullying and declined to print a number of articles critical of the group.

As with most cult leaders, Jones had an intense fear of exposure. A number of investigate journalists attempted to write articles on the People’s Temple after being contacted by former members and relatives. As pointed out by the (frankly excellent) Jonestown Apologists Alert:

Imagine if, just once, the San Francisco Examiner came clean about their cowardice in not standing up to Jones and his threats to sue because of the paper’s exposes in 1972 (half of which were shelved by those editors.) Imagine, too, if the San Francisco Chronicle at last gave us an accurate retrospect of what they did and didn’t do to save the Temple cult members from their hellish captivity and ultimate destruction

Imagine.

Maybe this could be made into a song. Call it “Imagine II.” Much less sanguine than the first.

As it is, the Chronicle’s series, “Ten Days That Shook S.F.,” kicked off yesterday, bringing on an added dimension to the world of media whitewash.

Imagine (sorry, the thought keeps poppin’ up) the public’s reaction if the Chronicle revealed how their “Institution”, the late, great columnist Herb Caen, had been in virtual cahoots with Jim Jones. Caen did all kinds of shimmering plugs for the cult; just a little over a year before the November, 1978 mass murder, Caen claimed Jones was the “target of a ceaseless media barrage” and was actually “doing the work of the Lord” in Guyana.

Oh, but of course, Herb. The “work of the Lord”, …..

In spite of the cult’s intimidation attempts, New West Magazine published an article in 1977, entitled “Inside the People’s Temple” (see above.) Following its publication many called for the cult to be investigated. Local authorities refused. The article describes the cult as told by ex-members:

Based on what these people told us, life inside Peoples Temple was a mixture of Spartan regimentation, fear and self-imposed humiliation. As they told it, the Sunday services to which dignitaries were invited were orchestrated events. Actually, members were expected to attend services two, three, even four nights a week – with some sessions lasting until daybreak. Those members of the temple’s governing council, called the Planning Commission, were often compelled to stay up all night and submit regularly to “catharsis” – an encounter process in which friends, even mates, would criticize the person who was “on the floor.” In the last two years, we were told, these often humiliating sessions had begun to include physical beatings with a large wooden paddle, and boxing matches in which the person on the floor was occasionally knocked out by opponents selected by Jones himself. Also, during regularly scheduled “family meetings,” attended by up to 1,000 of the most devoted followers, as many as 100 people were lined up to be paddled for such seemingly minor infractions as not being attentive enough during Jones’s sermons. Church leaders also instructed certain members to write letters incriminating themselves in illegal and immoral acts that never happened. In addition, temple members were encouraged to turn over their money and property to the church and live communally in temple buildings; those who didn’t ran the risk of being chastised severely during the catharsis sessions.

It was shortly after the article was published that Jones and, later, the rest of his followers would move to Guyana. Later, reports came out of mistreatment within the group, both in Guyana and in the United States; these reports, combined with the testimony of the father of former member Bob Houston who was found dead in suspicious circumstances in 1976, led US Congressman Leo Ryan to form a delegation to travel to Guyana and investigate Jonestown firsthand. His assassination by People’s Temple agents as he tried to leave with a group of Jonestown refugees would be the catalyst which, hours later, left nearly a thousand people dead – the greatest single loss of American life before the 11th of September, 2001.

The aftermath

Reports on the Temple had surfaced many years before the Jonestown tragedy. Yet media silence combined with political maneuverings to ensure that nothing would be done until it was too late.

Jonestown, then, is a double tragedy. The first is the tragedy itself. The second it that it was so utterly, utterly preventable.

Further information:
- Jonestown Apologists Alert
- Alternative considerations of Jonestown and People’s Temple
- Wikipedia.
- Freedom of Mind

Jewish group wants Mormons to stop proxy baptisms

Jewish group wants Mormons to stop proxy baptisms

NEW YORK (AP) — Holocaust survivors said Monday they are through trying to negotiate with the Mormon church over posthumous baptisms of Jews killed in Nazi concentration camps, saying the church has repeatedly violated a 13-year-old agreement barring the practice.

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints say they are making changes to their massive genealogical database to make it more difficult for names of Holocaust victims to be entered for posthumous baptism by proxy, a rite that has been a common Mormon practice for more than a century.

But Ernest Michel, honorary chairman of the American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors, said that is not enough. At a news conference in New York City on Monday, he said the church also must “implement a mechanism to undo what you have done.”

“Baptism of a Jewish Holocaust victim and then merely removing that name from the database is just not acceptable,” said Michel, whose parents died at Auschwitz. He spoke on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi-incited riots against Jews.

“We ask you to respect us and our Judaism just as we respect your religion,” Michel said in a statement released ahead of the news conference. “We ask you to leave our six million Jews, all victims of the Holocaust, alone, they suffered enough.”