The anatomy of madness: 5 of the most cruel and cynical experiments in history | NEWS.am TECH - Innovations and science

The anatomy of madness: 5 of the most cruel and cynical experiments in history focuses on how state-backed research crossed ethical “red lines” by using humans and animals as expendable subjects under government oversight. It details the CIA’s MK-Ultra program in the early 1950s, a Cold War effort described as a collection of dozens of subprojects across universities, prisons, and psychiatric clinics. The aim was to learn to control the mind, weaken willpower during interrogations, and erase memory, using methods including LSD and other hallucinogens alongside sensory deprivation, electroshock, and sleep deprivation. The CIA reportedly ordered key MK-Ultra archives destroyed in 1973, after exposure loomed, with remaining information suggesting irreversible psychoses for hundreds of subjects. It also recounts the U.S. Public Health Service’s 1932 Tuskegee syphilis study, where participants were told they would receive treatment, but penicillin became available in the 1940s without their informed access.