From tburghardt@igc.apc.org Thu May 28 23:46:29 1998 Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1998 18:01:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Tom Burghardt Reply-To: a-infos-d@tao.ca To: a-infos@tao.ca Cc: amanecer@aa.net, ara@web.net, ats@locust.etext.org, bblum6@aol.com, caq@igc.org, mnovickttt@igc.org, nattyreb@ix.netcom.com, pinknoiz@ccnet.com, sflr@slip.net Subject: (en) US and Norway `Used Insane for Nazi-Style Tests' ________________________________________________ A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E http://www.ainfos.ca/ ________________________________________________ _________________________________________________________________ US AND NORWAY `USED INSANE FOR NAZI-STYLE TESTS' _________________________________________________________________ THE TIMES: FOREIGN NEWS WEDNESDAY, 29 APRIL 1998 http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/ FROM ANDREW GLASSE IN OSLO AMERICAN and Norwegian hospitals were involved in sterilisation experiments on the mentally retarded using radiation over a 20-year period up to 1994. Although most of the work was done during the Cold War, some experiments continued until as late as four years ago, according to the Oslo daily Dagbladet. With chilling echoes of the Nazi era, the Americans and Norwegians were intent upon assessing the effects of radiation on different parts of the body and apparently had no qualms about the use of subjects who were "easy to deal with", according to Fredrik Mellbye, 81, who revealed the shocking details of the project. He is a former colleague of the then director of Norway's health services. Last night the State Department in Washington was seeking clarification of the report from its embassy in Oslo. "An unknown number of experiments were undertaken in all secrecy at many Norwegian hospitals after the war when the nuclear threat and arms race were at their worst," the Norwegian daily said. "The retarded and insane were used, among other things, in trials for X-ray castration, a method used by German Nazi doctors during the Second World War in the Auschwitz and Ravensbruck concentration camps." Mr Mellbye said hospital records would prove the tests had taken place. "I cannot remember that anyone at any time put their foot down to stop what was happening," he said. "Both authorities in the health services, psychiatrists and other doctors knew what was going on." The revelations follow admissions by the Swedish authorities last year that 4,500 mental patients were made to undergo lobotomies in an officially sanctioned programme that lasted almost 20 years. Sweden has also admitted that 60,000 women were forcibly sterilised between 1936 and 1976. Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Estonia and one Swiss canton as well as the Nazis all put the theory of selective breeding into practice in the 1920s and 1930s. But the Swedish revelations were particularly stunning. Grounds for sterilisation included "unmistakable Gypsy features, psychopathy and vagabond life". Other grounds were specified as "displaying undesirable racial characteristics or signs of 'inferiority', poor eyesight or sexual and social deviancy". Last year the French launched an inquiry into reports that 15,000 Frenchwomen had been illegally sterilised without their consent after being declared unfit for motherhood. All were sterilised by state-run institutions. Mr Mellbye said the Norwegian experiments were carried out with the co-operation of Americans "at the highest level" and that Norwegian doctors were encouraged to seek US financial support. Dagbladet said public investigations in America have revealed that authorities there financed about 4,000 such experiments on humans between 1944 and 1994. After Norway was liberated from Nazi occupation in 1945, it was eager for US military and economic assistance. When the Soviet Union, which shared a border with Norway, began producing nuclear weapons in 1949 the West wanted to know more about the impact nuclear fallout had on people. Mr Mellbye said the programme was an attempt to gain basic knowledge about radiation and was neither secret nor controversial. "It was part of the natural order of the time." Tore Brandsborg, leader of the National Society for Scientific Patients and their families, expressed shock and called for an inquiry. 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