Mustard Gas and American Race-Based Human Experimentation in World War II

The testing programs used sulfur mustard (mustard gas), nitrogen mustard, and lewisite. Pechura C. Rall D. P. , eds., Veterans at Risk: The Health Effects of Mustard Gas and Lewisite (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1993): At v.

Office of Scientific Research and Development and the National Defense Research Council, Chemical Warfare Agents, and Related Chemical Problems, Parts III-VI, Washington, D.C., 1946, at 507–508, courtesy of Dr. Florian Schmaltz, University of Frankfurt on Main, Germany [hereinafter cited as OSRD and NDRC].

Omi M. Winant H. , Racial Formation in the United States from the 1960s to the 1990s, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge, 1994); Kolchin P. , “Whiteness Studies,” Journal of American History 89, no. 1 (June 2002): 154–173; Guglielmo T. A. , White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004): at 9.

Avery D. , The Science of War: Canadian Scientists and Allied Military Technology during the Second World War (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998); Moreno J. , Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans (New York: Routledge, 2001).

Lederer S. , Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America before the Second World War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995): At 140; Rothman D. J. , Strangers at the Bedside: A History of How Law and Bioethics Transformed Medical Decision Making (New York: Basic Books, 1991): At 30. In 1953 the U.S. Army adopted a modified version of the Nuremberg Code of 1947 in relation to the use of volunteers in chemical agent research, and in 1975 it suspended research with human subjects. Taylor J. R. Johnson W. , “Summary of the Department of the Army Report,” (1975) in Pechura Rall , eds., supra note 1, at 379–380.

Bryden J. , Deadly Allies: Canada's Secret War, 1937–1947 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1989); Freeman K. , “The Unfought Chemical War,” The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 47, no. 10 (December 1991): 30–39.

In 1943 the U.S. began mustard gas testing on human subjects. At least 2,500 men were tested in gas chambers, 1,000 men in field tests, and the rest of the 60,000 with patch tests and drop tests. Id. (Freeman); see also Pechura Rall , eds., supra note 1, at 10.

Id. (Pechura and Rall).

Id., at 4–5, 64–66, 388.

Jones J. H. , Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment (New York: Free Press, 1981).

See Bryden , supra note 6; Freeman , supra note 6; Goodwin B. , Keen as Mustard: Britain's Horrific Chemic Warfare Experiments in Australia (Queensland, Australia: University of Queensland Press, 1998); Evans R. , Gassed: A History of British Chemical Warfare Experiments on Humans (London: House of Stratus, 2000); Pechura Rall , eds., supra note 1; and the films Secret War: Oddessy of Suffield Volunteers (Insight Film and Video Productions, Canada, 2001) and Keen as Mustard: The Story of Top Secret Chemical Warfare Experiments (Yarra Bank Films, Australia, 1989).

See OSRD and NDRC , supra note 2, at 738–746.

Pugliese D. , “Panama: Bombs on the Beach,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 58, no. 4 (July 2002): 55–60.

Sulzberger M. B. Baer R. L. Kanof A. Lowenberg C. , “Skin Sensitization to Vesicant Agents of Chemical Warfare,” Journal of Investigative Dermatology 8, no. 6 (1947): 365–393.

See OSRC and NDRC, supra note 2, at quotes on 507–508; emphasis in original.

Id., at 372, quotes at 375.

Id., at 507; Pugliese, supra note 13, at 55–60.

See Sulzberger , supra note 16, at quote on 370, 390–391.

See OSRC and NDRC, supra note 2, at 508.