Final dissertation May 19

572 Pages·2014·37.88 MB·English

Compelled to Volunteer:
American Conscientious Objectors to World War II as Subjects of Medical Research

Alison S. Bateman-House

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
under the Executive Committee
of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

2014
© 2014
Alison Bateman-House
All rights reserved
ABSTRACT
Compelled to Volunteer: American Conscientious Objectors to World War II
as Subjects of Medical Research
Alison S. Bateman-House

This dissertation is a history of the use of World War II-era American conscientious objectors as
the subjects of medical research. Under the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940,
conscientious objectors had two choices: provide noncombatant service within the military or
provide “work of national importance under civilian direction” under the auspices of a program
called Civilian Public Service (CPS). Conscientious objectors who chose assignment to CPS
were placed in “camps” in which the men labored on a work project authorized by the U.S.
Selective Service System, the government entity that administered the draft. At the outset of the
CPS program, the camps were modeled after the work camps of the Civilian Conservation Corps,
a New Deal jobs program. Over time, and largely due to protests that such Civilian Conservation
Corps-type forestry and soil conservation work assignments were not the promised “work of
national importance,” other types of CPS camps were developed, with work projects dealing
with public health, custodial care for the mentally disabled, or scientific research. In the later,
which became commonly known as the guinea pig units, over five hundred conscientious
objectors voluntarily participated as research subjects for a diverse assortment of scientific
studies, including projects that dealt with infectious diseases, diet, frostbite, psycho-acoustics,
and the impacts of temperature extremes and of altitude.
In addition to describing the creation and operation of the guinea pig units, this dissertation
examines the use of American World War II conscientious objectors as research subjects in light
of two specific questions: first, why did these men volunteer to be guinea pigs? And second, was
the use of World War II-era conscientious objectors as research subjects in keeping with the
ethical standards of the time? This dissertation draws upon a diverse array of sources to answer
the question of motivation from the volunteers’ perspectives. Likewise, this dissertation relies
upon a wide array of sources to piece together what researchers of the day, both military and
civilian, would have considered acceptable and unacceptable uses of people in the name of
research.
Table of Contents
Abbreviations Used iv
Acknowledgements v
Preface: Another Story of the “Bad Old Days?” xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1: “We are opposed to the military system and all forms of service under 6
such a system”: American Conscientious Objection in World War I
and the Desire for Alternative Service

Chapter 2: The Decision to Lobby for Alternative Service 27

Chapter 3: American Conscientious Objection in World War II: Civilian Public Service 74
and “Work of National Importance”

Chapter 4: Between Deviance and Acceptance 119

Chapter 5: Men of Peace and the Search for the Perfect Pesticide: COs, the Rockefeller 173
Foundation, and Typhus Control Research

Chapter 6: CO Guinea Pigs 219
Chapter 7: One CO’s Path to a Guinea Pig Unit 271

Chapter 8: The University of Rochester “Guinea Pigs for Peace” 290

Chapter 9: Risk and Information 352

Chapter 10: The Ethics of Nontherapeutic Research in America 377

Conclusion 444

Appendixes

A. i sing of Olaf glad and big 470

B. The Bloody Theater or Martyrs Mirror 472

C. A Statement of Our Position on Peace, War and Military Service 473

D. Public Opinion Polls about Compulsory Military Service 478

E. Almanac Singers lyrics 480
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F. Appeal of the Historic Peace Churches to President Roosevelt regarding 482
provisions for c.o.’s in the event of conscription

G. Form 47- Special Form for Conscientious Objectors 484

H. Department of Justice Classifications of COs 490

I. Administration for Conscientious Objectors in the United States, 1940-1947 492

J. List of Civilian Public Service Units 493

K. Denominational Affiliations of CPS Participants, From Most to Least Common 497

L. Administrative Directive No. 18 502

M. Distribution of CPS Assignees 504

N. Map of CPS Units 505

O. “The Four Freedoms” posters (1943) 506

P. “A Careless Word-- A Needless Sinking” 507

Q. National Distillers Products Corporation, “Our town is in the war zone… 508
and fights that way!”

R. “WE-ALL” 509

S. “Peace Jumpers” 510

T. “Letter to the President, received by General Hershey” 512

U. “He won’t let them hurt us…” 513

V. “Jap Murder and Rape” 514

W. “Typhus Is Spread By Lice…” 515

X. “Lice on clothing from a hobo” 516

Y. “Feeding lice on the legs; note rash” 517

Z. “Camp in the White Mountains” 518

AA. “Counting lice on the underwear of the volunteers” 519
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AB. Table 1 520

AC. Identified Participants in the Anti-louse Trials; Biographies and Demographics 521

AD. No Skunks Allowed! 529

AE. Anti-louse Trial Participants’ Later Placements in Social Service-oriented CPS Units 530

AF. Anti-louse Trial Participants’ Post-CPS Activities 531

AG. Carl Somdal, editorial cartoon 535

AH. “Prison Malaria” 536
AI. “Man-days Spent in Work of National Importance, by Registrants in 537
Civilian Public Service, May 15,1941 – Mar. 31, 1947”

AJ. “Nutrition Experiment” announcement 538

AK. Letter to Dr. Moore 539

AL. Causes of Death of CPS Assignees 540

AM. Rules for a Good Experiment 541

AN. Unconsciousness and Recovery under the Influence of G-Forces 543

AO: Rochester CPS Assignees and Their Research Participation 544

AP. Certificate of Service 545

AQ. Photographs of Skin Lesions on Leg 546

AR. Andresen Release 547

AS. Resolution of the American Humane Association 548

AT. Justifiable Experimentation Upon Man and Unjustifiable Experimentation 549
Upon Human Beings

AU. A Bill for the Regulation of Scientific Experiments upon Human Beings in 551
the District of Columbia

AV. Yellow Fever Board Subject Contract 553

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Abbreviations Used

4E Selective Service classification for a conscientious objector willing to work in
alternative service (variant form of the official designation, IV-E)
ACCO Association of Catholic COs
ACHRE Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments
AFSC American Friends Service Committee
AMA American Medical Association
BSC Brethren Service Committee
BEPQ Bureau of Entomology and Plant Quarantine, U.S. Department of Agriculture
CCC Civilian Conservation Corps
CO Conscientious objector
CPI Committee on Public Information
CPS Civilian Public Service
CMR Committee on Medical Research
FS Forest Service
FOR Fellowship of Reconciliation
HPCs Historic Peace Churches
IHD International Health Division, Rockefeller Foundation
IOM Institute of Medicine
I-A-O Selective Service classification for a conscientious objector willing to work in
noncombatant assignments
IV-E Selective Service classification for a conscientious objector willing to work in
alternative service
MCC Mennonite Central Committee
NAS National Academy of Sciences
NACA National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics
NDRC National Defense Research Committee
NRC National Research Council
NSBRO National Service Board for Religious Objectors
OSG Office of the Surgeon General
OSRD Office of Scientific Research and Development
SCS Soil Conservation Service
WRL War Resisters League

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Acknowledgements
This project began in the late 1990s, when I was enrolled in a Masters of bioethics
program at the University of Virginia. Michael Schrock, my future brother-in-law and an all-
around exemplary person, was, to my knowledge, the first Mennonite with whom I had
conversed, and I was intrigued to learn about his church’s position on some of the issues I was
studying. Accordingly, I went to the library, where I knocked over a book while browsing the
stacks. Sharon Hartin Iorio’s, Faith’s Harvest: Mennonite Identity in Northwest Oklahoma, fell
open to the following account: “we were escorted to an isolated place in the woods where
several white tents were set up. We went into a tent one at time with an attendant who took us to
a doctor or nurse who exposed us to the ‘germs’… We were exposed by a mixture of the germs
and gaseous nitrogen that was blown into our throats…this was done probably eight or ten
times.”1
In this account, a Mennonite man recalled his experience as a research subject in a study
of atypical pneumonia, describing how healthy World War II-era conscientious objectors (COs)
were used as the subjects of the experiment. As both an undergraduate and graduate student at
the University of Virginia (UVA), I had studied bioethics under Drs. John Fletcher, Paul
Lombardo, Jim Childress, and John Arras and thus was familiar with notorious instances of
research conducted on prisoners, institutionalized children, patients, soldiers, and the
geographically and socially marginalized (e.g. Tuskegee). I had never heard of research being
conducted on conscientious objectors, and – with the narrator of this account offering no hint that
he had been coerced to participate or that he was uninformed about the intent of the research or

1 Sharon Hartin Iorio, Faith’s Harvest: Mennonite Identity in Northwest Oklahoma (Norman, OK: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1999) 218.
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its risks - I was intrigued about why he risked his life to participate in this study. I wanted to
know more.
I turned to two of my professors at UVA, Dr. Jonathan Moreno and Dr. Paul Lombardo,
both of whom were excited about the idea of my investigating the use of World War II COs as
research subjects. Unbeknownst to me, Paul Lombardo had been a CO, and he loaned me a book
called The Turning Point: How Persons of Conscience Brought about Major Change in the Care
of America's Mentally Ill about World War II COs’ alternative service in mental institutions
through the United States. This book, which mentioned the human subjects research conducted
on COs, provided my first few bibliographic leads. In addition to this valuable assistance at the
outset of this project, Paul Lombardo gave me pointers when I soon returned to him in
frustration, announcing that I had exhausted all the secondary literature and that, having never
studied history, I did not know how to conduct research involving primary sources. He has
remained a valuable teacher, a supporter and ally, and a friend over many years and, more than
anyone, is interested in seeing this story finally come to light.
It was only once I presented this project to him that I learned that Jonathan Moreno been
a senior staff member of the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE)
commission created by President Clinton to investigate allegations of government-sponsored
radiation research on unknowing American citizens during the Cold War. (This commission was
created in 1994, when I was an undergraduate student, and I had known nothing of it.)
Furthermore, Jonathan Moreno was in the process of publishing Undue Risk: Secret State
Experiments on Humans, his valuable history of the use of human subjects in atomic, biological,
and chemical warfare experiments from World War II to the twenty-first century. Serendipity
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