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EXCLUSIVE REPORT: A’S FOR ARMY’S ‘WHITE COAT’ VOLUNTEERS
Posted: 15 Jun 2011 08:06 PM PDT
BY NORMAN M. COVERT
FREDERICK, Md. — There is
good news regarding the nearly 2,300 Seventh-day Adventist (SDA)
soldiers, who volunteered to serve as medical research subjects for
the U. S. Army at Fort Detrick, Md., and Walter Reed Army Hospital
in Washington, D.C. from 1954-1973.
The second health survey in 20 years of these “White Coat”
participants reveals they have suffered no adverse health effects
some 57 years later and there appears “no significant difference” in
health profiles of men of similar age and demographic status.
The U. S. Army and the SDA church honored the men in 1998 for
heroically putting themselves at risk to serve mankind. White Coat
volunteers took part in more than 16 research protocols, including
related studies in biological protective and safety devices and
equipment.
White Coat
volunteers testing integrity of M-4 Protective masks in the
one-million liter test sphere at Fort Detrick, Md. (U.S.
Army photo)
Findings in the new report were
outlined at a medical briefing March 5, 2011 by Dr. Lawrence Beeson,
associate professor of Epidemiology at Loma Linda (California)
University School of Public Health. Dr. Beeson is heading the effort to
complete a medical journal peer review in the fall.
A remarkable result showed 83
percent of the 535 respondents said they are in excellent to good
health. The survey of 55-to-84-year-olds had a statistically significant
47.3 percent return rate.
Dr. Frank Damazo,
M.D., SDA church liaison and advocate for White Coat soldiers. He
pushed for health surveys as a record of the program's success.
(Courtesy photo)
Respondents took part in one or
more of the sixteen human-use protocols under direction of the U. S.
Army Biological Warfare Laboratories at Camp and Fort Detrick, Md. These
included: Q fever (first protocol); Anthrax, Yellow Fever, Plague,
Tularemia and Chickungunya. There were no participant fatalities.
Their medical records are
archived at Fort Detrick’s U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) and the National Archives and Records
Administration Center in St. Louis, Missouri. Other information
regarding the program is being gathered for retention in church
archives.
Frederick, Md., surgeon Dr.
Frank Damazo, M.D., took part in the oral presentation at Loma Linda
University and provided historical perspective on the program,
participants and its “military necessity.” He has been a liaison and
church medical advisor for the White Coat program since moving to
Frederick in 1956.
Dr. Damazo spearheaded efforts
to recognize the service of these White Coat volunteers and to solicit
empirical data about their two-year active duty service.
Technicians prepare
for aerosol challenge test at base of one-million liter test sphere,
the so-called Eight-Ball, at Fort Detrick. (U.S. Army photo)
Until the Selective Service
System (SSS) suspended “drafting” young men into military service in
1973, SDA members were classified as “1-AO,” or conscientious objectors.
They were required to report for induction, but given the option of
serving in non-combat jobs including medics.
“Thirty-eight years following
the completion of the projects– and after two health surveys and the
review of 133 deaths,” Dr. Damazo asserted, “we can say with
considerable confidence that this American and Adventist cooperative
effort was carefully conceived, competently performed and carefully
monitored with no deaths or long term adverse effects on the health of
2,300 participants.
“(The program) provided the
first and largest study of the human body’s response to vaccines and
infectious diseases. Plus it confirmed the safety of 15 vaccines…still
in use that have saved many thousands of lives.
“The favorable health survey
reports make it more important than ever that we continue to monitor the
(future) causes of death (among the veterans). That would become the
ultimate evaluation of the project exposures.”
First group of
White Coat volunteers who took part in the Q fever research
protocol. (Courtesy photo)
Dr. Beeson explained in a March
15, 2011 memo, “Both the first and second health surveys asked for a
self-reported current health status. The different responses…were
compared between those who had a specific exposure to those who did not
have that exposure.”
The first health survey was
conducted from 1991-92 by the U. S. Army Medical Research Institute of
Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick. U. S. Army Col. Phillip R.
Pittman, M.D. , headed the project with contributors Sarah L. Norris,
MPH; Kevin M. Coonan, M.D.; and Kelly T. McKee, Jr., M.D. MPH. It was
published in Military Medicine (170, 3:183 2005).
“It is the goal of the current
research team to publish in a similar manner the statistical analysis
from the second survey,” Dr. Beeson continued, “It is difficult to
predict when these results will be published…(it) is a very
time-intensive process.”
Dr. Damazo agrees that this is
verification of the extraordinary efforts taken to achieve valid human
medical data in an environment of safety for all participants, including
the local community.
Brig. Gen. William
D. Tigertt assumed leadership of human use program in medical
research. He was first commander of tte Army Medical Unit at Fort
Detrick. (U.S. Army photo)
Genesis of the White Coat
program included heated discussions about human “guinea pigs” predating
World War II, but guidelines were set in stone with the Feb. 26, 1953
decision allowing human volunteers in chemical and medical/biological
research. Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson’s signature allowed
such research considering each volunteer subject is fully informed and
is given the choice of participating.
The first approved human testing
involved Pasteurella Tularensis (Tularemia) and took place among inmates
at the Ohio State Penitentiary. Each passed a rigid physical and was
fully informed of the protocol and expected outcomes. Dr. Arnold G.
Wedum of Camp Detrick was the first project coordinator. Col. (later
Brigadier General) William D. Tiggert (M.D.) assumed control in 1955.
Results were published beginning in 1961.
President Harry Truman strongly
supported the Nuremberg Code, a 10-point manifesto adopted after the
medical portion of the Nazi war crimes trials revealed the need for
strict controls on human subjects in research. He recommended adoption
of the policy to President Dwight Eisenhower.
U. S. Army Chemical Corps
archives confirm that a large number of unsuspecting soldiers was
subjected to testing with the hallucinogenic drug known as LSD at the
Army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground before the human use directive was
signed. That also predated medical research work at the U. S. Army
Medical Unit (USAMU), forerunner of today’s USAMRIID.
The clandestine LSD research was
captured on 16mm film showing soldiers in both field and indoor
environments after being given the drug without their knowledge or
consent. It has been the subject of numerous television reports and is a
recurring black eye for the Chemical Corps and its pioneering efforts at
the Aberdeen facility.
The Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) also carried out clandestine research with such drugs as a part of
a program secretly named Project MK-ULTRA. It was exposed after
extensive news reports on the death of former Fort Detrick biochemist
Dr. Frank Olson. He died after falling from the window of a New York
City hotel in 1952.
Despite several investigations,
some skeptics, including his sons Eric and Nils, continue to believe Dr.
Olson’s death was part of a CIA conspiracy. His work with the CIA was a
clandestine research effort, separate from his Fort Detrick duties, with
the goal of developing LSD as a covert weapon.
The Biological Warfare
Laboratories mission included learning about infectious disease, its
origin, life cycle, and means of transmission. It also sought means of
diagnosing, treating and preventing infectious diseases. Aside from the
Ohio State trials, biomedical information until 1955 was limited
to animal data.
Col. Dan Crozier,
who with BG Tigertt, recruited the first class of Seventh-day
Adventist soldiers to be medical research subjects in the White Coat
Program. (U. S. Army photo)
The late BG Tigertt, first USAMU
commander in 1954, and the late Col. Dan Crozier (M.D.) of Fort Detrick
were exacting in setting up the Nov. 3, 1955 agreement with The
Seventh-day Adventist Church. It followed the strictest guideline of
“informed consent” for every soldier prior to the start of any research
protocol.
BG Tigertt and Colonel Crozier
personally recruited the first classes of White Coat volunteers at the
U. S. Army Medical Training Center, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. The
enlisted soldiers were undergoing advanced individual training to be
combat medics. Each was assigned to regular military duties at Fort
Detrick and Walter Reed Hospital when not taking part in a research
protocol.
SDA volunteers brought healthy
life styles to the White Coat Program. Most did not consume alcohol or
use tobacco and adhered to the church’s dietary guidelines. These
factors enhanced the dependability of data captured in the protocols.
USAMU, which grew from the
former Walter Reed satellite health clinic at Camp Detrick, provided
medical care for all military and civilian personnel and monitored
“defensive research” protocols.
USAMRIID continues to be the
world’s leading research campus on diseases of “military significance.”
According to the Department of Defense (DoD) guidelines, the definition
includes diseases which may be: 1. a threat to American military
personnel as either a naturally occuring disease in a theater of war,
or; 2. one which could be artificially introduced on the battlefield as
a debilitating or killing agent.–©Norman M. Covert 2011
Background:
(Nuremberg Code – Source Trials of
War Criminals before the Nuremberg Military Tribunals under Control
Council Law No. 10, Vol. 2, pp. 181–182. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Government Printing Office, 1949.)
(Copies of the first health
assessment of White Coats may be obtained by writing U. S. Army Medical
Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, 1425 Porter Street, Fort
Detrick, MD 21702-5011.)
# # #
Mr. Covert was chief of public
affairs and command historian for Headquarters U. S. Army Medical
Research and Materiel Command and Fort Detrick, MD, from 1977 to 1999.
He is author of “Cutting Edge, a history of Fort Detrick, Maryland”
and has assisted in the production of numerous television and radio
reports on the history of biological warfare.
You may contact Mr. Covert
at
nmcovert@thecovertletter.com
OH, WOW!
Thanks so much, Norm!
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