According to the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, a Recently Aired Danish Documentary called "Finding Yourself" revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) allegedly funded a secret human experiment on 311 Danish children in the 1960s. Most of these children were adopted or from orphanages and were never told the specific purpose of the experiment.
The experiment, conducted in secret in the basement of Copenhagen City Hospital, was designed to study the link between schizophrenia and heredity or the environment. The project was funded by medical institutions in the United States and in its first year alone was supported by the equivalent of DKK 4.6 million this year. A foundation operating behind the CIA has also provided significant funding for the project.
The idea for the project came from an American psychologist, but because it was difficult to find a suitable "sample" in the United States, the American institution set its sights on Denmark and collaborated with a Danish psychiatrist named Fini Shulsinger to conduct decades-long research in Denmark.
Screenshot of the Danish Broadcasting Company report
Pelle Winnick, a documentary filmmaker and one of the experimenters, tells the story of his childhood in the lab. Winnick said that when he was 11 years old, he was asked if he wanted to go to Copenhagen City Hospital to do something "interesting.". In order to get rid of the boredom of life in the orphanage, Winnick agreed to this request, and he was also given DKK 16.
But the experiments under the hospital exceeded his expectations. Winnick recalls that he needed to undergo a series of "tests" on a regular basis, the most memorable of which was one that tested children for "psychopathy." In this experiment, Winnick was asked to sit in a chair with electrodes strapped to his body and forced to listen to loud, harsh noises.
Pictured from the second episode of the documentary
"It's very uncomfortable. This is not only what I have experienced, but also what many children have experienced. "I think it violates my civil rights." I find it strange that some people know more about me than I do. ”
The shocking children's experiment was revealed thanks to Winnick's courage to find the truth. It wasn't until more than three years ago that Winnick stumbled upon an experiment in an American documentary studying the link between psychiatric problems and heredity or the environment, which reminded him of his own experiences, and he was determined to figure out what he had been through as a child.
Pere Winnick video screenshot
After searching for a large number of old public documents and materials, Winnick finally found some of the materials at the time in the Danish National Archives, indicating that the underground research of the Copenhagen City Hospital was funded by American medical institutions.
In the first year alone, the project received financial support from around 300,000 to DKK 400,000, which is equivalent to DKK 4.6 million today. Winnick noted that an agency called the Human Ecology Foundation was also the main funder of the project, which was run behind the scenes by the CIA.
However, Winnick's investigation into his "childhood shadows" eventually hit a wall. The Danish Broadcasting Corporation mentioned that Winnick was aware of the collection of some of the research materials at the Glostrup Psychiatric Centre in Vidovol, Denmark, but that the centre began to destroy the relevant materials when he applied for access to the materials.
The head of the center, Mett Batelsen Fred Scarder, explained to the Danish broadcaster that they realized that the relevant documents had been kept "beyond the deadline" and therefore needed to shred the documents as soon as possible to avoid violating the relevant regulations.
Kent Christensen, an associate professor of health law at the University of Southern Denmark, criticized: "It is unreasonable for the agency to insist on destroying documents after Vinnick applied for access to the information, which deprives victims of the opportunity to explore their past experiences." ”
Jacob Knach Rasmussen, a historical researcher at the Social Welfare Museum in Svendborg, Denmark, said he had been exposed to many orphanage records, but this was the first time that children in Danish orphanages had been used for "research."
"Whether in Denmark or in scandinavia as a whole, I've never heard of anything like this before. This shocking news clearly violates the Nuremberg Code of 1947, which imposes clear ethical restrictions on human experimentation. The Code requires subjects to have informed and voluntary consent to experiments, which is a core principle of research in today's world. Rasmussen said.
Source: An Jian, Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission