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Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, the story of a scientist who created a monster and repulsed by the results, abandoned the creature. Victor Frankenstein couldn’t escape responsibility for his experiment, haunted by the creature for the rest of his life. The book is a warning of science and technology gone unchecked, of man playing God without moral compass and the inevitable consequences of such actions.

What would Ms Shelley make of these evil experiments? What can you make of them?

10. Stanford Prison Experiment

The Stanford prison experiment, led by Philip Zimbardo, placed students who were assigned roles, either guard or prisoner, into a mock prison. Zimbardo believed that the behavior in prisons was due to social roles rather than the personality traits of guards and prisoners. The prisoners were dehumanized and helpless and many of the guards demonstrated sadistic tendencies. Five prisoners had to be released early due to extreme emotional depression, crying, rage and acute anxiety. Of the remaining prisoners, only two said they were not willing to forfeit the money they had earned in return for being ‘paroled’. The study was intended to last 14 days but was shut down after 6 days due to the inhuman treatment and abuse of the “prisoners.”

9. The Monster Study

Wendell Johnson, a University of Iowa speech expert, believed stuttering was learned behavior attributable to external forces, such as parents’ criticism of their children for even the slightest speech imperfections. To prove his theories, he conducted an experiment on 22 orphan children in 1939. Half of the children were given positive speech therapy, in which the fluency of their speech was praised. The other half were belittled for every speech imperfection and told they were stutterers. All of the children were normal speaking children; however, the children who were belittled showed a loss of self-esteem and other detrimental effects seen in adult stutterers.

8. Project 4.1

A total of 67 nuclear tests were conducted between 1946 and 1958 on Bikini Atoll and elsewhere in the Marshall Islands, the equivalent of 1.6 Hiroshima-sized bombs every single day. The United States detonated its largest weapon ever tested, the Bravo shot of March 1, 1954, the equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs. Following Bravo, U.S. government researchers evacuated some of the islanders and enrolled them in a secret medical experiment, called Project 4.1, to study the effects of radiation on human beings. Later, the U.S. government resettled the unwitting participants in this program on an island highly contaminated with radiation to learn first-hand how human beings ingest and absorb radiation from their environment.

7. Project MKULTRA

Project MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a CIA mind-control research program. The ultimate goal was outlined in a memorandum dated January 1952 that asked: “Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature such as self preservation?” MK-ULTRA was an ‘umbrella project’ with 149 ’sub-projects’. Experiments included administering LSD and other drugs, usually without the subject’s knowledge or consent, implanting electronic probes and exposing individuals to electromagnetic waves.

6. The Aversion Project

South Africa’s apartheid army forced white soldiers to undergo treatment for homosexuality. The attempts to “cure” homosexuals began after the creation of the infamous ward 22 at the Voortrekkerhoogte military hospital near Pretoria in 1969. Those who ended up in ward 22 were subjected to drug therapy, electric shock, chemical castration and as many as 900 forced ’sexual reassignment’ operations.

5. North Korean Experimentation

Reports of military prisoners used for experimentation have been leaked in recent years. Kwon Hyok, a former prison head of security at Camp 22, described laboratories equipped for poison gas, suffocation gas and blood experiments. Families of three or four people would be placed in gas chambers and observed as they died.

4. Poison Laboratory of the Soviets

The Soviets tested a number of deadly poisons on military prisoners, including mustard gas, ricin, and digitoxin, often administered with food or drink. The intent of the experiments was to find a tasteless, odorless chemical that could not be detected post mortem. The human experiments were approved by NKVD chef Lavrenty Beria who testified in 1953 that “I gave orders to Mairanovsky to conduct experiments on people sentenced to the highest measure of punishment, but it was not my idea”

3. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study

Experiments conducted between 1932 and 1972 in Tuskegee, Alabama, in which 399 poor and mostly illiterate African American males were studied to observe the natural progression of syphilis if left untreated. They were not told their diagnosis nor did they give informed consent to forego treatment. When the study began, the treatments for syphilis were toxic and questionable. By 1947 penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis but researchers opted to continue the study and denied subjects treatment or opportunity to seek treatment elsewhere.

2. Unit 731

Human atrocities, torture and mutations occurred under the guise of research in Unit 731, a covert biological and chemical warfare research unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Scholars estimate at least 3000 people and by some accounts several times that number of American, Chinese and Russian prisoners was subjected to experiments including infection of disease, vivisection, limbs amputated and reattached and effects of grenades and flame throwers.

1. Nazi Experiments

No human experimentations are as heinous as those conducted by the Nazi’s during WWII. Experiments were done on sets twin children in concentration camps to study the genetics and eugenics of twins, as well as to see if the human body can be unnaturally manipulated. Other experiments were conducted to study hypothermia, freezing and thawing parts of the body, infection of disease to study treatments, poisoning and methods of sterilization.