- Humans are naturally inquisitive creatures by nature.
We seek answers to the things that we do not know,
but what happens when that curiosity
goes a bit too far?
What happens when someone's desire to learn more
crosses both the moral and legal line
that exists between normal curiosity,
and something less human?
Well today, you're about to find out.
Here are 10 horrifying human experiments
that actually happened.
Number one are The Digestion Experiments.
In 1822, a man in Michigan,
named Alexis St. Martin, received a gunshot wound
to his abdomen.
Amazingly, the man survived.
However, the bullet hole in his stomach
never healed properly.
A doctor named William Beaumont
realized the strange value behind the man's wound,
and decided to conduct a gruesome experiment
to better understand the human digestion process.
He tied a piece of string to some food,
and inserted it into the man's stomach
through the hole,
causing tremendous pain to St. Martin.
Beaumont would even occasionally pull the food out,
every few hours to inspect it,
as it was digested.
However, as disturbing as this sounds,
the experiment actually provided a window of knowledge
to doctors who previously knew very little
about the human digestion process.
It makes you think about the amount of trust
that we give to doctors, doesn't it.
Remember that the next time you're under anesthesia.
Number two is The Mustard Gas Experiments.
Mustard gas developed during World War I
is a chemical weapon that creates large and painful blisters
to the skin and lungs.
The effects are often far worse that that,
and often lead to death when inhaled.
In 1943, the US military decided to experiment using the gas
on a group of 18 year old boys
fresh out of boot camp, by testing the gas
on their equipment.
Nearly all of the test subjects
received severe injuries from the experiments,
including severe permanent scarring of the lungs,
and painful blisters and burns to their entire body.
Number three are The Agent Orange Experiments.
During 1965 and 1966,
dermatologist, Dr. Albert Kligman,
began a series of disturbing experiments
on the inmates of Holmsburg prison in Philadelphia.
One of these experiments
included secretly testing the effects of agent orange,
a chemical weapon used to destroy crops and vegetation
on a group of inmates.
Kligman injected a toxin from agent orange
at a dosage of 468 times that of the normal exposure
into prisoners, causing them to convulse,
and develop horrible and painful acne,
in sensitive areas of their bodies,
like their armpits, groin, and face,
but what may be most disturbing
is that upon entering the prison for the first time,
and seeing what would be his future subjects,
Kligman was quoted as saying,
"All I saw before me were acres of skin."
Goes to show you that monsters
aren't always just in bad dreams.
Number four are The Tuskegee Experiments.
What happened in Tuskegee, Alabama,
in 1932, is a conspiracy theorist's dream.
Over the course of 40 years,
government funded doctors conducted
a barbaric experiment on African American male patients.
Some patients, like those that were infected with syphilis,
a painful sexually transmitted disease,
were flat out denied treatment,
even after penicillin was invented,
to study the effects of the virus,
but in an even more twisted experiment,
some subjects were given fake placebo treatments,
causing all but 74 of them to die painfully
from a disease that was treatable.
In the end, 28 patients died directly from syphilis,
100 died from complications related to it,
and 40 of the patients wives were actually infected
with syphilis, along with 19 children,
who were born with congenital syphilis.
Number five is The Chamber Experiment.
Around 1965, during the Cold War,
the soviets conducted numerous, horrendous experiments,
on their prisoners.
They developed a deadly, poisonous gas,
that was tasteless and odorless.
In order to test its effectiveness,
they created a laboratory know as "The Chamber".
it was there that they would test the gas
on living, and unwilling prisoners.
However, the experiment did not end there.
The prisoners were also fed a mixture of mustard gas,
ricin, digitoxin, among others.
The experiments led to the soviets
developing a poison called C2, which reportedly,
was so potent,
that it would actually physically change the victim,
disfiguring them and causing death within only 15 minutes.
Number six is The Aversion Project.
In 1971, Dr. Aubrey Levin led a scientific project
in South Africa during their racial segregation.
The focus of the project was to try and cure homosexuality
in members of the South African military.
The subjects of these experiments,
who were usually drafted into the service
against their will,
would be sent off to a military hospital known as Ward 22.
Men, between the ages of 16 and 24,
were forced into electric shock treatments,
chemical castrations,
and even gender reassignment surgeries.
In total, around 900 people were subjected
to Levin's twisted sexual reorientation experiments,
but what in what may be the most disturbing twist of all,
is that up until 2010, he was still teaching medicine
at a university here in Canada.
Number seven is Project 4.1.
Project 4.1 was the name given
to an experimental medical study
conducted by the United States of America
on the residents of the Marshall Islands
exposed to the radioactive fallout
from the March 1, 1954, Castle Bravo nuclear test
in Bikini Atoll.
They wanted to determine the extent of the effects
of significant beta, and gamma radiation
in living humans.
They discovered that almost all of the women
exposed to the devastating radiation,
had stillbirths, and malformaties in their babies.
Unfortunately, some may argue that those who did die,
were in fact, the lucky ones.
As the children and subjects, who did survive,
all got aggressive cancer, and painful malformities,
that they had to suffer with until their untimely deaths.
Number eight is The Electrified Corpse Experiment.
Back in 1708 Luigi Galvani, a professor of anatomy in Italy,
was experimenting on a dead frog,
when he found that electricity
caused involuntary muscle movements
within the animal's body.
News of the discovery spread, and by the 1800s,
Luigi's nephew, Giovani,
had taken the experiment on the road
as a gruesome skeptical.
Only, instead of using a dead frog,
his curiosity moved him into testing it
on deceased humans.
Giovani would connect the wires
of a 120 volt battery to different body parts
of a corpse, and then observe its violent, spastic reactions
to the electrical currents.
Of course, all of this was in front of an audience
of horrified people, who believed that the body
was actually coming back to life.
Number nine is The Stanford Prison Experiments.
In August of 1971, Stanford University Professor,
Philip Zimbardo, conducted an experiment
involving students in a simulated prison.
Zimbardo wanted to study of effects
of putting good natured people
into an evil environment by creating two equal groups,
one of guards, and one of prisoners.
The power structure between the guards and inmates,
was a powerful, negative force,
that ended up corrupting the guards,
causing many of them to develop genuine sadistic tendencies.
This led to extremely dangerous,
and mentally damaging events,
while the inmates became increasingly rageful and degraded.
Zimbardo had to shut down the experiment prematurely,
after only six days, when he realized
that it was having an astoundingly toxic effect
on their behaviors, as well as his own.
Number 10 is The Monster Study.
In perhaps what is the most sadistic experiment
occurred in 1939.
Speech pathologist Wendell Johnson,
from the University of Iowa,
and his grad student, Mary Tudor,
experimented on 22 normal speaking orphaned children.
The children were split into two groups
and given speech therapy for stuttering.
The first group of children were treated well,
and were even encouraged and rewarded
for their speech skills.
However, the second group of orphans
were criticized and ridiculed
for even the smallest errors in their speech.
The children from the first group
received no negative effects from their therapy,
however, the kids from the second group
developed psychological problems
and speech issues that followed them
into adulthood that they were forced to live with
for the rest of their miserable lives.
They literally created monsters.
10 horrifying human experiments that actually happened.
I want to know from you in the comments,
which on this list, was the absolute most disturbing,
or is there another experiment out there that occurred,
that I was not aware of that I may have missed.
Also leave that in the comments.
Let's get a discussion going,
and I will see you in the next video.
Sweet dreams.