Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten: A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers - Hardcover

James S. Ketchum; M.D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1424300800 ISBN 13: 9781424300808

Publisher: ChemBook,Inc., 2006

Synopsis

Chemical warfare watchers, from scientists to policy advocates, often wonder what went on at the Army Chemical Center during the 1960's. It was a decade in which thousands of Army enlisted men served as volunteers for the secrets testing of chemical agents. The actual historical record, however, has until now remained disturbingly incomplete. What Chemicals was the Arm studying? Why was the program never fully documented in books available to the public? Who planned and carried out the tests, and what was their purpose? How and by whom, were the volunteers recruited? How adequately were they instructed before giving their informed consent? What long range effects, if any, have been found in follow-up studies? Written by the physician who played a pivotal role in psychoactive drug testing of hundreds of volunteers, the story breaks an official silence that has lasted almost fifty years. Dr. James Ketchum may be the only scientist still equal to the task. His book goes a long way toward revealing the contents of once classified documents that still reside in restricted archives. The author spent most of the decade testing over a dozen potential incapacitating agents including LSD, BZ and marijuana derivatives. His 380-page narrative, loaded with both old and recent photographs, derives from the technical reports, memoranda, films, notes and memories. Written primarily for the general reader but supplemented by a voluminous appendix of graphs and tables for the technically inclined, Dr. Ketchum's book combines a subjective diary with an objective report of the external events that shaped and eventually terminated the program. Informal and autobiographical in style, it includes numerous amusing anecdotes and personality portraits that make it simultaneously intriguing and informative.

About this title

About the Author:

James S. Ketchum, M.D. is a Board Certified psychiatrist and Assistant Clinical Professor at UCLA, who received his education at Dartmouth and Columbia colleges, Cornell Medical School, Letterman and Walter Reed Hospitals and Stanford University. In addition to his research at Edgewood Arsenal, he has broad experience in the area of alcohol and drug abuse and has published numerous scientific articles and book chapters. His teaching activities include many invited lectures, seminars and direct supervision of medical students. As a clinician he spent 30 years in hospital and office settings as well as a variety of community clinics and residential treatment centers. Currently he resides and writes at home in Santa Rosa, California.

Review:

Dr. Enoch Callaway, Professor of Psychiatry (emeritus) at University of California San Francisco. This is a fascinating book, perhaps best reviewed as a combination of books:(1) an autobiography of a scientist-physician studying chemical warfare agents from 1961 to 1971 (2) a collection of vignettes of fellow scientists he encountered (3) a polemic against the aversion of politicians and the public to all chemical weapons and (4) a reference book on more than a dozen low lethality belladonnoids (atropine-like drugs such as BZ) and their antidotes (such as physostigmine) as well as valuable data on other mind-altering substances such as LSD-25, cannabinoids (marijuana-like drugs), butyrophenones (antipsychotic drugs) and even the most common disabling agent: alcohol. I've finished reading your book, having enjoyed it very much. I found your discussion on BZ very insightful, shedding light on a topic that was previously obscure. The transcripts of the experiments, the quotes from the subjects and descriptions of their bizarre activities, paint a real picture of a very unusual set of circumstances that will probably never be repeated. I took some notes as I was going through it, with additional questions and points of clarification I'd be interested in seeing. >more I have received my copy of your book. Thank you for the personal inscription. I read the book over the weekend. It is very informative and also entertaining. I could not put it down. It brought back many pleasant (and no unpleasant) memories. Much of the content was new to me. You describe people and discuss events of which I had no knowledge. I was at Edgewood from October 1964 until early August 1966. Most of the contents cover events outside that time period. > more I finished reading your book recently. I have recommended it highly to friends, including several who worked at Edgewood in the 1970-1990 periods. All these Edgewood folks would have begun work after you departed for San Antonio but worked with or otherwise knew major characters from your superbly told story: Van Sim and Fred Sidell, in particular. I suspect they will enjoy the book as much as I did. I recommend it without reservation to anyone who wants to gain a feel for the work done by dedicated scientists and support personnel engaged in the then-novel field of incapacitating agent research. --Colleague

Review by Sharon Weinberger Friday, April 06, 2007 Army's Hallucinogenic Weapons Unveiled So much conspiracy and disinformation surrounds the military's past work on LSD and other chemical agents that it's been difficult to separate fact from fiction. That's starting to change, however. Advocates of using chemical agents in nonlethal warfare are increasing, making now a good time to start reviewing the historical record. A recently published book on the Army's infamous Edgewood Experiments involving hallucinogenic agents like LSD may help shed more light on the debate. The infamous CIA work, MK ULTRA , is often considered synonymous with all government LSD experimentation. But the historical record is far more complex. This may be the first and last time in my life that I call a self-published book a must read, but psychiatrist James Ketchum's Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten is an unusual case. As Steve Aftergood of Secrecy News has already pointed out , this book is a candid, not entirely flattering, sometimes morbidly amusing account of a little-documented aspect of Army research. Ketchum's book is also discussed in an article published today in USA Today, which provides a brief description of the work Ketchum was involved in: Army doctors gave soldier volunteers synthetic marijuana, LSD and two dozen other psychoactive drugs during experiments aimed at developing chemical weapons that could incapacitate enemy soldiers, a psychiatrist who performed the research says in a new memoir. The program, which ran at the Army's Edgewood, Md., arsenal from 1955 until about 1972, concluded that counterculture staples such as acid and pot were either too unpredictable or too mellow to be useful as weapons, psychiatrist James Ketchum said in an interview. The program did yield one hallucinogenic weapon: softball-size artillery rounds that were filled with powdered quinuclidinyl benzilate or BZ, a deliriant of the belladonnoid family that had placed some research subjects in a sleeplike state and left them impaired for days. Ketchum says the BZ bombs were stockpiled at an Army arsenal in Arkansas but never deployed. They were later destroyed. The Army acknowledged the program's existence in 1975. Follow-up studies by the Army in 1978 and the National Academy of Sciences in 1981 found that volunteers suffered no long-term effects. When Ketchum first sent me his book two months ago, I didn't know quite what to make of the self-published tome. I had recently published an article on mind control another subject that too easily conflates fact and fantasy. But after reading some of the literature, I've come to understand this book's importance a bit better and am all the more grateful Ketchum sent it. This is not a book that deeply explores the ethical dimensions of chemical warfare and experimentation. For that, you may want to read read Jonathan Moreno's excellent Mind Wars. But those who just want the gritty details of past research, it's worth checking out Ketchum's memoir, which also contains a wealth of references and data specific to the military's work. Regardless of personal views, I'm thrilled that Ketchum took the time to put it all down on paper, providing a valuable resource to inform the chemical warfare debate and a resource for future writers on the subject. I know of no book quite like his. Too much work on human experimentation has been shrouded in secrecy -- or lost and destroyed -- rendering a meaningful debate all but impossible. Ketchum has helped build the historical record. --Wired Magazine

It is said that those who don't know history are destined to live it. Jim Ketchum has provided a critical history lesson in Chemical Warfare, Secrets Almost Forgotten. The book points to future weapons development, whether you like it or not. Incidents such as the rescue of over six hundred hostages at the Moscow theater and the tragedy of decided to halt research into the vital area of mind altering drugs. Others did not. The rise of terrorism will drive us back into that area of study. Before anyone starts that trip, they must read this book. John Alexander, PhD Author of 'Future War' --John Alexander, PhD

About this edition

• Publisher: ChemBook,Inc.
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1424300800
• ISBN 13: 9781424300808
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 360
• Illustrator: Jim O'Neil