Fort Detrick
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Fort Detrick—formerly Camp Detrick—is a United States Army medical installation located in Frederick, Maryland. It is home to the United States Army Medical Research and Materiel Command (MRMC), the National Cancer Institute (NCI), and the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID).
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[edit] Biological Warfare Research
Starting during the World War II, Fort Detrick became the site of intensive biological warfare research using various pathogens; there is a building on the base, building 470, about which numerous imaginative theories have been constructed, was erroneously called the Anthrax Tower. Building 470 was a pilot plant for testing optimal fermentor and bacterial purification technologies. The information gained in this pilot plant shaped the fermentor technology that was ultimately used by the pharmaceutical industry to revolutionize production of antibiotics and other drugs. Building 470 was torn down in the early years of the 21st century without any adverse effects on the demolition workers or the environment, i.e. it has been sterile since 1969. The building was torn down because water damage to its steel framework weakened its structure and it was feared it would fall down]. On Veterans Day, November 11, 1969, President Richard Nixon asked the Senate to ratify the 1925 Geneva Protocol prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons. Nixon assured Fort Detrick its research would continue. On November 25, 1969, Nixon signed an executive order outlawing offensive biological research in the United States. Since then any research done at Fort Detrick has been purely defensive in nature, such as treatments for infections.
[edit] Biological tests performed on Seventh-day Adventists
The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on September 28, 1994, which stated that between 1940 and 1974, DOD and other national security agencies studied hundreds of thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances.
The quote from the study:
Many experiments that tested various biological agents on human subjects, referred to as Operation Whitecoat, were carried out at Fort Detrick, Maryland, in the 1950's. The human subjects originally consisted of volunteer enlisted men. However, after the enlisted men staged a sitdown strike to obtain more information about the dangers of the biological tests, Seventh-Day Adventists (sic) who were conscientious objectors were recruited for the studies.[1]
[edit] Conspiracy theories
Some AIDS conspiracy theorists, notably Jakob Segal, claim that Fort Detrick was the site where the United States government invented HIV.
[edit] Footnotes
- ^ Staff Report prepared for the committee on veterans' affairs December 8, 1994 John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia, Chairman.[1]
[edit] External links
- History of Fort Detrick
- Hidden history of US germ testing, BBC, 13 February 2006
- History of Human Subjects Research at Fort Detrick. US Army Medical Research and Materiel Command. Retrieved on 2006-09-05. [Power Point]
Human Subjects Protection at Detrick: Biowarfare to Biodefense
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