As one of the world's largest militaries in terms of personnel, the US armed forces are already some of the most fearsome on the planet. But the country's soldiers could soon be even stronger after it was revealed that the American government previously subjected soldiers to experimental new drug treatments.
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Credit: Science Channel/What On Earth?
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Even more frighteningly, the government is continuing to develop drugs to transform soldiers into 'superhuman fighting machines', an expert has claimed.
The revelation has been featured on the Science Channel's What On Earth show which is due to air in the UK tomorrow night (5 December).
"We do know that today the US government is developing drugs that they hope will make US soldiers, sort of superhuman fighting machines - that will make them, for example, not need so much sleep, not need to eat, not feel as much fear," said historian Hope Harrison.
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Credit: Science Channel/What On Earth?
Declassified documents have shown that the American military previously carried out experiments on its own soldiers, leading experts to ask whether they may still be going on today. Cripes.
Between 1948 and 1975 - the height of the Cold War - the US army conducted numerous experiments with various drugs, including the hallucinogenic LSD, in the hope of using them as weapons of war.
The tests,supported by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, formed part of a research program called Operation Delirium which hoped to find "effective psychochemical incapacitants to be delivered in aerosol form on enemies."
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A test was reportedly carried out at Maryland's Edgewood Arsenal Facility in 1958, with the show featuring footage of volunteer soldiers taking LSD before being asked to complete simple tasks.
The video, entitled Effects of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD) on Troops Marching, shows the army volunteers being put through drills before being given the drug.
According to the film's narrator, the soldiers "responded like well-trained soldiers to the request, immediately and without question."
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Credit: Science Channel/What On Earth?
However, once the soldiers were given LSD and tested again two hours later, their response was not the same, with the narrator noting that the effect of the drug was 'chaotic'.
The group of soldiers were found to be laughing uncontrollably, unable and unwilling to follow their drill sergeant's orders.
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"Operation Delirium was a US department of defence program to test chemical agents on our own troops and see what happened," Harrison says on the show. "It was kept under cover, because these were human experiments."
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