Former Patient Prepares To Sue For 1950s Brainwashing Experiments

McGill University was unaware that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was funding the 1950s psychological experiments for which former patient Janine Huard is hoping to sue the federal government, say members of the school’s psychology department.

Huard, a 79-year-old Montreal woman, is waiting to hear whether she will be allowed to launch a lawsuit against the Canadian government for co-funding the research of Dr. Ewen Cameron, who used Huard as a guinea pig after she was admitted for treatment of postpartum depression.

“They did everything to me - insulin injections, lie detector tests, psychic driving, electroshock therapy - they ruined my life,” said Huard, who found herself subject to shaking and memory lapses, and also unable to care for her children, after the therapy.

According to Don Donderi, a psychology professor who investigated the matter in 1977, McGill’s administration was not aware of CIA funding at the time, and though Cameron’s research received funding from the CIA, it was not directed by the intelligence agency.

“Cameron probably thought what he was doing was within professional ethics,” Donderi said. “Whether it was bad research ( . . . ) is a different matter.”

He said that because the funding went through a CIA-funded institution at Cornell University called the Human Ecology Fund, Cameron was not aware of where the money was coming from.

“Because the funding went through the Ecology Fund, Cameron’s research had covert support from the CIA,” said Donderi.

A memorandum by the 1963 CIA Inspector General stated, “The annual grants and funds to these specialists were made under ostensible research foundation auspices, thereby concealing the CIA’s interest from the specialist’s institution.”

Cameron’s published work outlined his use of sedatives, insulin injections, sensory isolation and electroshock therapy, a treatment still used today.

His most controversial studies concerned “psychic driving,” a technique that involved sedating mentally-ill patients and playing them recordings of negative or positive statements to transform their self-images.

His report, The Effect of Long-Term Repetition of Verbal Signals, stated, “all (patient) changes could be brought about more readily if the repetition of verbal signals followed either prolonged sleep or ECT.”

Cameron’s research was brought to the attention of the CIA by the Human Ecology Fund, Donderi said. In the late 1940s, the CIA was interested in brainwashing, first as a tactic used by Communist bloc countries and then as a tactic that could be used against them, explained Donderi.

In 1994, 77 patients received $100,000 each from the Canadian federal government as compensation for being subjected to Cameron’s experiments. Patients were subject to psychic driving, funded by the CIA as an investigation into the possibilities of brainwashing.

Huard was one of more than 100 patients who were refused compensation because they were only “partially depatterned” rather than “fully depatterned.” According to her laywer Alan Stein, Huard is hoping to represent all of the rejected claimants in court, on the basis of a 2004 federal appeal court ruling that it was enough to be “substantially depatterned.”

Stein said more than 50 rejected claimants have contacted him to express their interest in compensation. [link]