“No Democracy Can Exist Unless Each Of Its Citizens Is As Capable Of Outrage At Injustice To Another As He Is Of Outrage At Unjustice To Himself." ~ Aristotle
IntroductionThe programs I address would not be occurring if more people were familiar with this Aristotle quote. "American Guinea Pig" is a "brief" introduction to my ideas and experiences. Although much of this letter is about "me", it is also about all of "us". In fact, I am very uncomfortable writing about my personal experiences. I am much more comfortable addressing the reasons these programs are occurring unimpeded in the United States and the implications of this phenomena. These programs affect all Americans, their health and their freedom. I do believe there would not have been a torture issue if I had been successful exposing the human experimentation programs that were the basis of the Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib programs.
I would not be writing this letter if I had been able to attain closure after regaining my health for the first time in twenty-five years in 1998-2000. I am embarrassed to admit if I had been able to address my father's estate, been free to live and work where I wanted to and had been free to love and screw up like every other American, I would have walked away and would have forgotten about the past 30+ years. Life is short; I have paid my dues. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on how these issues are resolved, I am needing to write letters like this literally begging not only for my health and freedom but for all Americans to be involved with the issues of health and freedom. As Fats Waller said, "One never knows, do one."
Sincerely,
Richard Perlman
AMERICAN GUINEA PIG: MY STRUGGLE FOR HEALTH AND FREEDOMI have addressed post World War II United States guinea pig programs from the perspective of a guinea pig as well as a researcher. As a result, I have had an interest in the programs the United States undertook immediately after World War II (what was learned from the Nazi's and Japanese). These medical-military programs were involved from the start with understanding the effects of toxins for the 1) understanding and prevention of disease, 2) the development of weapons, and 3) the prevention of terrorism. The full story has not been told.
The United States medical military programs because of their longevity and scope are difficult to describe in an introductory letter especially from the combined roles of guinea pig and researcher. Up until ten years ago, I eagerly awaited the morning New York Times expecting an article leading to the exposure of these programs. I viewed them as aberrations of a few "rogue" employees, not as an entrenched policy. My views changed when I began to read the MKULTRA documents at the National Security Archives and when I read the medical journals at NIH's libraries and university libraries. I began to understand the motivations behind these programs, from the perspective of 2005 as well as the perspective immediately after World War II.
In 1946, investigating the cerebral cortex was the equivalent of investigating outer space today. Huge projects were undertaken to benefit medicine and the military. Research from Japanese and German experiments were highly valued and many Japanese and Germans were pardoned no matter how heinous their crimes from trials in exchange for their information. The "Pardoning of Ischii", <
http://healthycitizens.com/war%20crimes%20office.pdf>, which I have posted on my website demonstrates the high priority placed on this information. In retrospect, too many bites were taken from these "forbidden fruits". Decades later there has still been little confession or contrition. There is an eerie, unpleasantly obvious reluctance to discuss the full dimensions of these programs. These dimensions are many of the health problems we face today: diabetes, mental illness, Alzheimer's, obesity.etc.
At
http://www.healthycitizens.com/, I document in my research and writings that the post World War II United States program, MKULTRA, never ended and that what was once involuntary human and social experimentation has now become policy. As a guinea pig, the question of why has always bothered me. It is important to realize these programs are more than about ethical lapses and they are more than about medicine. In order for these "cradle to grave" programs to last decades required the compromising of many of our values. For the guinea pig, these are programs affecting not just health but life and liberty. There is no pursuit of happiness. My problems became worse when in 1975 I asked questions about a disease I had just recovered from. I asked too many questions and became a victim of a program it was impossible to escape from. Those who survived the concentration camps were able to raise families and pursue careers. I am 60 and for decades have sought my health and freedom. The United States programs do not take place behind barbed wires but in the bustle of our open society.
Decades of TortureAlmost 3 years ago, I left the United States to get a life. I recognized I was approaching 60 and feared if I didn't act quickly, I would soon find myself in an old age home. I have lost most of my creative years to the United States' chemical and biological programs and although intellectually I was committed to their exposure, there were few others who had my commitment. In my last 5 years in Washington DC, I became more and more convinced that a great many knew about these programs and accepted them. Without any support, t here would soon be little future. Only a past. At 57, I could still be successful in a life pursuit. I could also still have a family. At 60, I would have to soon realize these common human desires will be unattainable. This, I have decided not to tolerate. I came to Washington with two inseparable goals: my health and freedom. Health which I achieved for the first time in 30 years became a cruel joke without the freedom to enjoy it. In fact, as I feared, my regaining my health was another experiment.
Until recently, I would reinforce my resolve to defend myself and expose the programs by telling myself a "mistake" was made when I was selected as a "guinea pig". I would teach them. I was different from other victims! In some ways I was. I am the son and grandson of physicians and two of my uncles were also physicians. Add to this background a strong idealism exemplified by a desire to serve my country and my fellow man(Georgetown University, School of Foreign Service) and a desire to communicate a vision(University of Iowa Writers Workshop), it truly bothers me that I have failed to defend myself and protect my health and freedom. I must confront the possibility I was chosen as a guinea pig because I was all of the above. This thought truly frightens and disturbs me, just as it should disturb you. I still hope I have been underestimated.
I was a highly political student at the School of Foreign Service. As early as the fall of 1963 I demonstrated for civil rights and marched against the appearance of Madame Nhu under the banner of "No Nhus is good Nhus. I was anti-Vietnam war, pro civil rights and so gung ho government that I believed that Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty was going to succeed. As a sophomore, I had established my own anti-poverty group. Citizens for Oppressed Peoples(COP) named with the Birmingham Police and their chief, Bull Connor) in mind. Lyndon Johnson had me convinced there was no need for any Utopian remedies. So much for my point of light. I didn't realize the other 999 might have served me well in my journey into darkness. There was MKULTRA activity on the Georgetown campus and during my 21/2 years there I was introduced to psychedelics, hypnosis and EEG experiments. In fact, the CIA built a wing there to facilitate Dr. Charles Geschickter's experiments. In a little over 2 years I would withdraw from the university. I no longer cared. Though I was very concerned about these personality changes, I found it difficult to verbalize what I was experiencing and just accepted them.
Later, I was to attend the University of Iowa Writers Workshop. I was, I believe, the first to attend the program without an undergraduate degree. I developed two years later what I thought was "writer's block" and filed for a leave of absence. I returned to New York where I began to develop symptoms from head to toe: inability to urinate, difficulty speaking and hearing, backaches, trigeminal neuralgia etc. A physician told me that my condition was more than writer's block which, at the time, because of my innocence and immaturity relieved me. I wanted a real illness, one I could show to my physician father! I didn't know I would become critically ill from this illness and nobody would tell me what it was. I didn't know that Western medicine at the time could not treat every illness and I would be introduced to Chinese Medicine where the diagnosis can be kidney but the illness can be in the brain. Because I could not receive a western diagnosis for the illness, when I knew there was an explanation, I would travel throughout the United States, Europe and Japan investigating Asian medicine. During this time I learned from prominent acupuncturists about the vagus nerve acupuncture connection. I also learned that Chinese medicine could affect the endocrine system. Still I had no idea what had happened to me. I wanted the disease to have a name. Anything that caused me so much suffering should have a name!
In retrospect, I was lied to and injured intentionally by physicians. I was also denied treatment by many, some who admitted they knew about my situation. As long as I wasn't going to die, it bothered no one what happened to me. One time a physician in San Francisco placed a powder in the back of my throat and it was as if my brain imploded, Soon my waist would expand 12+ inches and the Japanese woman who had divorced her husband to be with me returned to Japan. I was no longer the same man Kayoko once loved. Another physician would tell me that he knew what happened to me and it was my "facial nerve". He told me I would be dead in 6 years and refused me treatment. It was not until 1998-2000 that I was allowed to heal.
My Inability to Defend Myself
These programs affect every aspect of a victim's life: ability to retain a lawyer, visit the physician of his choice, and freedom to live where he wants (safehouses). In fact, for the victim the United States becomes one large laboratory maze. One of my Hill advertisements discussed my inability to retain an attorney, even when hit by a car crossing the street or addressing irregularities in my father's will, which was issued the day before he died with his name signed by a third party. Suspected terrorists are not the only ones who can't retain attorneys. At least journalists have made the public conscious of their plight. In fact, I and other "guinea pigs" have less of a chance of retaining counsel to protect our health and freedom than alleged terrorists and detainees. We do not exist despite presidential commissions, congressional hearings and extensive documentation.
Many sympathize with the guinea pig's plight but are in conflict about what their response should be, very likely because these programs research diseases that they or their family members may someday require treatment: Diabetes, cancer, schizophrenia, dementia. How can research be harmful to the society? Why is the response "thank God it is not happening to me" not the natural if not correct response of citizens? This is a valid question, one that the victorious allies confronted upon discovering the concentration camp research. Does the end not justify the means? Was the medical research conducted at the concentration camps not justifiable on the basis of German national security? It is so easy to rationalize and disregard the importance of the means. The means may be so evil that the goal is corrupted and becomes captive to it. After 50 years, this is the result of the United States ' post World War II Medical and anti-terrorism research programs.
The political intentions of these programs represent an assault on democracy. These programs are more than human experimentation but represent an attempt by the government to transform citizen's relationship with each other. Not only was the research conducted in "various types of institutions" but as the U.S Senate Select Committee in Intelligence reported in 1977: "The research and development of materials to be used in normal life settings"(pg 390). In other words a place of work, a restaurant, a movie theater, a home or automobile etc would all qualify as normal life settings. Thus requiring a chemical militia as well as citizens' silence. Early in the program a restaurant would serve an suspecting customer a drink laced with LSD. My experience is the substances were much more powerful than lsd and I have documented at
http://www.healthycitizens.com/many of the program's chemicals. ht
tp://www.healthycitizens.com/CohnInterview.pdf . In the1980's the program's activities seemed to take place more and more outside physician's offices and institutions. Physicians refused to treat victims and would quickly exit the consultation rooms saying almost nothing. It is not one act that produces an authoritarian society but it is cumulative insults to the values of the society.
When a government can deny an individual access to legal assistance, that individual's freedom is in jeopardy. When a government can deny an individual access to physicians, that individual's health is in jeopardy. When a government has the ability to create illnesses that physicians cannot or choose not to diagnose, no individual can defend himself and that society is not free. Viktor Yuschenko, the President of Ukraine had to go to Holland to receive a diagnosis of dioxin poisoning. Would you or I have this ability?
1Hypothalamus And Vagus NerveWhen you visit my website, you will notice there is much emphasis on the vagus nerve and hypothalamus.
http://www.healthycitizens.com/east_west.htm#ad20010314and
http://www.healthycitizens.com/east_west.htm#a20021026.
2 As the Gulf War Veterans' experiences demonstrates, illnesses to either one are extremely difficult if not impossible to diagnose. Diabetes, depression, obesity, impotence, abdominal distention, high blood pressure are some of the other conditions connected with a dysfunctional vagus nerve and hypothalamus. Hypothalamus and vagus nerve is what much of the past 35+ years of my life as a guinea pig have been about. In the nineteen seventies at least three of my physicians unbeknownst to me were involved in research involving hypothalamus vagus nerve research. In my "East Meets West" Hill advertisement, I argue these conditions are treatable and treatments have been known for decades. I placed this Hill advertisement in response to a New England Medical Journal article where the authors wrote that a dysfunctional vagus nerve can result in four times the deaths from heart attacks and stated there is no treatment. This North Shore-Long Island Jewish Research Institute news release, "DOD Awards North Shore-LIJ $1.6M Research Contract To Combat Bioterrorist Agents",
http://www.healthycitizens.com/bioterroristAgents.pdf , will give you a better understanding of the vagus nerve's significance. I have taken stands not just for my self aggrandizement. There are many important questions that have to be asked not just because of the immorality of the experiments but because the truth may improve the health and freedom of millions of Americans as well as millions throughout the world.
Over 20 years before an NIH committee concluded that acupuncture can affect the hypothalamus and pituitary, Mary Austin, a United Kingdom acupuncturist was writing that the triple warmer meridian treated the hypothalamus. The triple warmer meridian governs sleep, sex and appetite. Drugs to the hypothalamus have the potential to generate Viagra like sales figures. A lesion of the hypothalamus can result in diabetes. In fact, researchers at Brown University have recently published a study showing that the brain as well as the pancreas produces insulin. There are many who believe the Alzheimer's insulin connection should be pursued and that Alzheimer's may very well be a metabolic disease. Did nerve gas experiments at the concentration camps and later reproduced in the United States and United Kingdom produce Alzheimer's conditions ? Early Johns Hopkins University studies by David Grob showed nerve gases to affect metabolism.
Conclusion
Americans as well as all other peoples must recognize the importance of protecting each other when confronting natural disaster, terrorism, or crimes against humanity. Governments cover-up for their survival. Citizens for their survival must never blindly aid and abet cover-ups. Yet, this has been the guinea pig's experience. Little has changed in the past thirty years except governments have become emboldened by their citizens' increasing passivity. "Turn on, Tune in, Drop out" is one of the vilest phrases that ever became a mantra for a generation. As long as we think our government will not wire tap and invade privacy in an age of terrorism, when they have invaded privacy for decades constructing these programs, to paraphrase Thomas Wolfe, we cannot go home again.
Yet, human nature, as demonstrated by Stanley Milgram's and Phillp Zimbardo's obedience research at Yale and Stanford Universities, is all too eager to follow orders with a large percentage enjoying being told to torture. How much government programs have consciously taken advantage of our flaws needs also to be researched to determine how intentionally deleterious are government programs to the fabric of the society. The medical researchers who benefit from the Pentagon and C.I.A monitoring should not be naive to think that someday these programs will not be used against them or their relatives and friends. The buck stopped with them. They also can't go home again. They should have spoken out decades ago. When asked to participate in an unethical medical program why wasn't their response, "get out of my office." These programs would not exist in the United States if there were not intimidation and fear.
My happiness will come with the exposure of these programs. My sadness is the effect they have had on American society and as a consequence, much of the world. My sadness is also that I may never enjoy the pleasures that most individuals throughout the world take for granted. There is no way an individual can protect himself from the weapons and technologies governments have at their disposal. In the early years of MKULTRA, there was an interest in utilizing magician tricks to drug their victims. Today the "knockout" technologies have achieved what was only a dream in 1950.
http://www.healthycitizens.com/unwitting.pdf,
http://www.healthycitizens.com/east_west.htm#aYourBrain. It doesn't matter if you are in a taxi on Rockville Pike or Sukhumvit Road in Bangkok , Thailand ; your apartment in Washington D C or your hotel in London , England ; an internet cafe in Hong Kong or a library in Washington D.C. As an old time taxi cab driver in 1970 said to me, describing the violence to cabbies in Boston , Massachusetts , "if they're going to get you, they're going to get you." Neither Gandhi nor Dr. King would have succeeded if the climate had been as repressive. The threat of an unchanging sterile society is very real.
I am in a very serious situation. In fact, I am reconciled to possibly being significantly injured. My vagus nerve and hypothalamus are once again being re-injured. These toxic exposures result in reversible lobotomy and reversible impotency. I used to like to say I have been rendered impotent more times than I have been busted in card games. My first ad in the Hill newspaper was "Human Experimentation and the Loss of Face"
http://www.healthycitizens.com/east_west.htm#ad20001101. In the last month my face is beginning to change significantly. Writing is becoming more and more difficult. Today, I can't afford to advertise in The Hill because my advertising rates were increased 5 times the rate of two years ago. An ability to place advertisements in a newspaper read by Congress was an important part of my strategy to protect myself and achieve credibility. My emails often do not arrive and when they do, I am told they are garbled. A writer feels his work is like his child when he sends it off to the world. Babysitting an email to be sure it "safely" reaches its destination is a burden I didn't expect when I opened my email accounts.
As you read my writings and get to know me, you will realize I have not had an easy life, but I want to emphasize I also believe this life is a wonderful opportunity. In 1960, if I had been told that I would be addressing issues of this magnitude, I would have felt "blessed". Today I still feel blessed but frustrated. I wonder is it hopeless?
3 I grew up believing certain acts by government cannot be tolerated and one of these acts is the purposeful destruction of a citizen's life. As a child, my first consciousness of pain and suffering was the awareness of polio and Nazism. I pledged to myself as a five year old that I would never succumb to either without a fight. The child is the father of the man. I look forward to dialoguing with you and hope you can be of assistance.
Please note: The roles of victim and activist are difficult to describe in an introductory letter. I will provide you with more biographical and historical details in future letters and conversations.
1 In "Explanation of
Healthycitizens.com 's Documents", which I am forwarding separately, I present other examples of Government biological programs affecting the democratic process and violating human rights.
2 Both of these "Positions Advocated" were originally advertisements in The Hill newspaper, a weekly newspaper published for those involved with Congress and the legislative process .
3 When I was 13, before I knew who George Orwell was, I memorized this quote from 1984 : "Being a minority, even a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad." Little did I realize it would be my life's mantra. Once again the child is the father of the man.
