Holy crap army sprayed st. Louis pruit igoe housing project

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro...37250.html

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

This piece analyzes a covert Manhattan Project spin-off organization referred to here as the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition, and an obscure aerosol study in St. Louis, Missouri, conducted under contract by the U.S. military from 19531954, and 19631965. The military-sponsored studies targeted a segregated, high-density urban area, where low-income persons of color predominantly resided. Examination of the Manhattan-Rochester Coalition and the St. Louis aerosol studies, reveal their connections to each other, and to a much larger military project that secretly tested humans, both alive and deceased, in an effort to understand the effects of weaponized radiation. Through this case study, the author explores how a large number of participants inside an organization will willingly participate in organizational acts that are harmful to others, and how large numbers of outsiders, who may or may not be victims of organizational activities, are unable to determine illegal or harmful activity by an organization. The author explains how ethical and observational lapses are engineered by the organization through several specific mechanisms, in an effort to disable critical analysis, and prevent both internal and external dissent of harmful organizational actions. Through studying the process of complex organizational deviance, we can develop public policies that protect the public's right to know, and construct checks and methods to minimize the chance of covert projects that http://gradworks.umi.com/35/15/3515886.html

[Magda Hassan]

I wonder if Olsen was involved with this at some stage with the military angle and aerial delivery of this substance.

[Jan Klimkowski]

My emphasis in bold:

Martino-Taylor, a sociology professor at St. Louis Community College, is writing a book on the covert operation and on Tuesday afternoon will present her findings locally for the first time at a colloquium at St. Louis Community College at Meramec.

St. Louis was among several cities where the aerosol testing took place in the 1950s and 1960s with zinc cadmium sulfide, a chemical powder mixed with fluorescent particles so that dispersal patterns could be traced.

After the project became known in Congress in 1994, the Post-Dispatch was among newspapers that combed through newly released documents for details. The documents showed that in 1953 alone, the military conducted 16 tests involving 35 separate releases of zinc cadmium sulfide in St. Louis, many in an area described at the time as "a densely populated slum district."

St. Louisans were told that the government was testing a 'smoke screen" that might protect the city from aerial observation during enemy attack.

If that sounds far-fetched, it was: The Army conceded later that the tests were part of a biological weapons program and that St. Louis was chosen because it roughly matched the population and terrain of Russian cities that the United States might attack.
In 1997, the National Research Council an arm of the National Academy of Sciences minimized the health impacts of the chemical tests but concluded that more analysis was needed. The team of scientists did not consider ethical questions but observed that people were "outraged" at being subjected to chemical testing without their consent.

Martino-Taylor was a skilled researcher before working toward her doctorate, investigating cases of contamination for a St. Louis law firm. The facts she assembled on the military project and conclusions she reached go well beyond anything published earlier.

Relying heavily on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Martino-Taylor identifies connections between participants in the St. Louis testing and scientists who took part in wartime efforts to build the atomic bomb.

Noting postwar efforts to test radioactive materials on Americans, she raises suspicions that the St. Louis testing involved not just materials called harmless by the Army but possibly radioactive isotopes.

Exceptional original research from Lisa Martino-Taylor.

Dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of people must have been involved in these programmes and yet noone blew the whistle.
Clearly this is a "conspiracy of silence", and is an example to put alongside the Stealth programme, which proves that a significant number of individuals can be involved in a project and keep it secret for decades.

Once again, the assertions of those who claim "conspiracy theories" (their corrupt term) automatically fail once a certain number of people (eg hundreds) must have been involved are proven wrong.

[Keith Millea]

Yep,they got me too!

I pulled these quotes from Wiki:

Testing on unwitting civilians;Medical experiments were conducted on a large scale on civilians who had not consented to participate. Often, these experiments took place in urban areas in order to test dispersion methods. Questions were raised about detrimental health effects after experiments in San Francisco, California, were followed by a spike in hospital visits; however, in 1977 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention determined that there was no association between the testing and the occurrence of pneumonia or influenza.[SUP][56][/SUP] The San Francisco test involved a U.S. Navy ship that sprayed Serratia marcescens from the bay; it traveled more than 30 miles.

Until the 1950s, S. marcescens was erroneously believed to be a nonpathogenic "saprophyte",[SUP][3][/SUP] and its reddish coloration was used in school experiments to track infections. It has also been used as a simulant in biological warfare tests by the United States Military.[SUP][10][/SUP][SUP][11][/SUP] On September 26 and 27, 1950, the United States Navy conducted a secret experiment named "Operation Sea-Spray" in which some S. marcescens was released by bursting balloons of it over urban areas of the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Although the Navy later claimed the bacteria were harmless[SUP][citation needed][/SUP], beginning on September 29, 11 patients at a local hospital developed very rare, serious urinary tract infections, and one of these individuals, Edward J. Nevin, died. Cases of pneumonia in San Francisco also increased after S. marcescens was released.

[Jan Klimkowski]

Keith - thanks.

I'd never heard that Animals' track before.

Medical experiments were conducted on a large scale on civilians who had not consented to participate.

Of course with military human guinea pigs, consent was assumed