Editorial: "Beyond the call of duty"
FOR decades, in secret military experiments, tens of thousands of US soldiers were deliberately exposed to agents such as mustard gas, sarin and weaponised LSD. It was a voluntary programme, but few soldiers had any idea what they were letting themselves in for. Now the US Department of Defense (DoD) has been ordered to reveal the consequences of what the soldiers were subjected to.
They include then-20-year-old Franklin Rochelle, who in 1968 was stationed at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. After inhaling an odourless gas, he hallucinated for three days straight. He saw insects under his skin that he tried to kill with a razor.
Last week, a Californian district judge ruled that Rochelle, along with tens of thousands of other veterans who had taken part in experiments since 1920 must, from now on, be informed by the DoD of any new information that ...
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