Lead
"If a person doesn't eat, how long can he live?"
I am afraid that everyone will think of this question, but the answer is not as simple as imagined, which will not only involve a person's physiology, but also involve multiple factors such as a person's psychology and willpower.
However, it is precisely because there is no exact data and research that we have infinite reverie about this problem, and a "hunger experiment" at the University of Minnesota in the United States has also made people have a clearer understanding of this problem.
So, what does this hunger experiment do?
For young people who are drafted into the U.S. but refuse to serve, they have a "duty to serve" under the U.S. National Defense Act, and "refusal to serve" is also a serious problem in the United States.
In order to understand the reasons behind the "refusal to serve" of these young people, the U.S. government proposed a plan to conduct a series of tests on young people who "refused to serve", in addition to selecting some of them to conduct an extremely cruel "starvation experiment".
At that time, a defector American soldier once said in an interview that if his unit had accepted the starvation experiment, he would probably never forget the cruelty and brutality of the experiment.
"It was horrific that a young soldier died on the third day of the starvation experiment, and the floor of the laboratory was covered with the bodies of the deceased, and I don't even know whose blood it was," he said......
1. Before the experiment.
With the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. government also went all out to deal with the threat from Japan and Germany.
At this time, the United States had a large population and the U.S. government was well prepared for war, but in 1942, the U.S. government still introduced a "U.S. National Defense Act" that required male citizens to serve in the military.
This was the time of the war, so the U.S. government, in order to expand its armaments, made it mandatory for young people who were drafted into the military to serve.
However, this "American Defense Act" has not been welcomed by the majority of the American people, because serving is a dangerous and serious impact on the ability of soldiers to act, so many young people who have been drafted into the military choose to refuse to serve.
However, the government did not spare these young people who refused to serve, but instead conducted a series of investigations against them, and because they were considered "unpatriotic" elements during the war, they were severely censored and even punished.
At that time, there was a young man named Stiegler who refused to serve, but he didn't care about it, because he was a psychologist himself, and all he wanted was an independent and free life.
However, when he was notified to go to the government office, he was told that his documents had been returned, and that he would need to come to the government office again in a month's time, and that if his documents had not been processed when he came again, then he would be required to serve in the military.
At that time, in order to solve the problem of these young people who "refused to serve", the US government also set up a special committee to investigate, and the members were some high-ranking figures in the military.
Stiegler was also asked to participate in the investigation, but when he arrived at the investigation site, he found out that it was a psychological investigation, and he happened to have a lot of knowledge about psychology, so he also used his knowledge to answer questions in the investigation.
After a heated debate, Stiegler was recognized by the investigators and invited to participate in the "Serving the Nation" project.
However, when Stiegler learned that the project was actually a starvation experiment for young people who had been drafted into the army but refused to serve, he was devastated, and he immediately rejected the offer.
This was because Stiegler was extremely disgusted by participating in this starvation experiment, because he had seen countless Jews dying of starvation in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, and in the concentration camps, each of them had little food every day, so he was adamantly reluctant to carry out such an experiment in the United States.
When Stiegler expressed his refusal to the Investigative Committee, the Investigative Committee was unwilling to let him go, so he was notified of the starvation experiment, and Stiegler had to make a difficult choice in the face of the experiment.
Second, the experiment begins.
When Stiegler learned that there were 36 people in the experiment, and that the experiment would take six months to go, Stiegler said that it was an extremely cruel experiment, because after all, starvation can have a serious effect on people's bodies, and it will take six months to carry out, and the experiment can kill people.
So Stiegler decided to gather the 36 experimenters to discuss whether they would like to conduct the experiment, and they went to the University of Minnesota at Stiegler's insistence to learn about the experiment.
When they learned that the experiment would take six months, many said it was too long, but some thought it was a punishment for them, so they were willing to participate.
Stiegler also conducted a psychological test on them to determine whether they could withstand the stress of the experiment, and when the experiment began, they were faced with a very strict rule, and their daily food was only 1,560 calories.
By the second week, the experimenters began to experience physical discomfort, and everyone reacted differently, some felt dizzy, others felt nauseous, but almost all of them adapted to this state of hunger.
By the seventh week of the experiment, the subjects began to have severe mental problems, some of them became irritable, others became apathetic, and some of them became weak and even had suicidal thoughts.
When the experiment reached the 11th week, the experimenters also had physiological problems, some people were weak due to physical malnutrition, and even unable to walk, while some people would have hair loss due to malnutrition, but in order to complete the experiment, they could only grit their teeth and persevere.
As time passed, the experimenters became thinner and thinner, some even lost weight from the usual 170 pounds to 100 pounds, and some people did not recover even after the experiment, and even died because of it.
3. After the experiment.
After the experiment, Stiegler also went to the U.S. government to report on the results of the experiment, and when he handed over a report to the government officials, they also sighed after reading the report: "This is a disaster......
Stiegler also told them: "I think this experiment is completely meaningless, and it is different from what we see in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, because it is not a hunger race," "but it depends on how long they can adapt, and it is a meaningless experiment."
The results of the experiment also showed that after 6 months of starvation experiments, the experimenters were in a very bad state, and none of them were able to fully recover, and they all needed long-term rehabilitation, which made the government pay a huge price for this.
What's more serious is that due to long-term hunger, the experimenters have exhausted all parts of the body, and they are malnourished, the immune system is weakened, and even psychological problems are caused by the increase in psychological pressure.
Experimental results also show that long-term hunger can have a very serious impact on people's physical and mental health, so a normal diet is very important for people's bodies, and dieting to lose weight is also a very dangerous thing.
epilogue
The starvation experiment conducted by the United States is indeed a serious harm to human beings, but this experiment has also revealed the ability of human beings to adapt to extreme environments, which is also an important reference for human health and survival.