\n\n\nHundreds of Danish orphans were unknowingly used in experiments backed by the CIA, according to Danish Radio, reporting on a new documentary called \u201cThe Search for Myself.\u201d
According to the report, the\n experiments began in the early 1960s and spanned the course of two \ndecades. They were conducted to investigate the link between heredity \nand environment in the development of schizophrenia. However, the \nchildren were not told what research they were involved in. Not even \nafter the experiments ended. It was also funded in part by a CIA front \nassociated with the MK-Ultra program.
Eerily, the examinations took place in a basement at the Municipal \nHospital in Copenhagen. The director and producer of the documentary, \nPer Wennick, was actually a victim of the CIA and subjected to these \nexperiments as a child. In the documentary, he recalled being placed in a\n chair, getting electrodes put on his arms, legs, and chest around the \nheart and having to listen to loud, shrill noises, which attempted to \nincite a psychological response.
\u201cIt was very uncomfortable\u201d, Wennick told Danish Radio. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not\n just my story, it\u2019s the story of many children.\u201d By his own admission, \nhe was promised \u201csomething funny\u201d before being taken to the hospital. \u201cI\n think this is a violation of my rights as a citizen in this society. I \nfind it so strange that some people should know more about me than I \nmyself have been aware of.\u201d
According to historian, PhD, and museum inspector at the Danish \nWelfare Museum, Jacob Knage Rasmussen, this was the only known \nexperiment in Danish history that used children under state care for \nresearch \u2014 and it was funded by the CIA in violation of the Nuremberg \nCode.
\u201cI do not know of similar attempts, neither in Denmark nor in \nScandinavia. It is appalling information that contradicts the Nuremberg \nCode of 1947, which after World War II was to set some ethical \nrestrictions for experiments on humans. Among other things, informed \nconsent was introduced, which today is central to the world of \nresearch\u201d, Knage Rasmussen told Danish Radio. He emphasized the vulnerability of the group in the custody of the state, who had nobody to complain to.
According to Danish Radio, the idea to experiment on the vulnerable \nchildren came from American psychologist Zarnoff A. Mednick, who was \nthen a professor at the University of Michigan.
According to Wennick and the National Archives, the research project \nwas co-financed by the US health service. In the first year alone, the \nproject was supported with what today corresponds to DKK 4.6 million \n($700,000). It also received funding from the Human Ecology Fund.
The Human Ecology Fund was a CIA funded operation through the Cornell\n University College of Human Ecology Society for the Investigation of \nHuman Ecology to support covert research on brainwashing. It was also connected to research under the MK-Ultra program\n in which social scientists, including anthropologists, were led (mostly\n unwittingly) to provide input into interrogation techniques still in \nuse today.
Danish psychiatrist Fini Schulsinger dedicated his doctoral \ndissertation to the experiments in 1977, titling it, \u201cStudies to shed \nlight on the connection between heredity and environment in psychiatry.\u201d
While researching for the documentary, Per Wennick managed to locate \n36 boxes at the Psychiatric Centre Glostrup in Hvidovre that detailed \nthe CIA\u2019s unscrupulous child experiments. However, when the center got \nword of the documentary, they began shredding the documents.
Danish Radio reports that Kent Kristensen, associate professor of \nHealth Law at the University of Southern Denmark, pointed out that the \nshredding of the documents was illegal.
pretty much no english language outlets are reporting on this documentary. i could only find articles by iranian state outlet presstv and AKP newspaper daily sabah. press from europe, the middle east, and latin america are reporting on it though. it\u2019s produced by the danish state broadcaster, danish broadcasting corporation, which none of the articles seem to have identified correctly.
Wait Human Ecology? The old home ec school? We weaponized the childraising programs in the Cold War? That’s amazing
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