Danish radio: CIA conducted secret experiments on children with schizophrenia
Photo: Dado Ruvic / Reuters
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) allegedly conducted and sponsored secret experiments on children with schizophrenia, many of whom were adopted orphans or lived in orphanages. This became known to Danish Radio.
The experiments in question were carried out in the early 1960s. They were performed on at least 311 Danish children. First of all, the CIA is accused of supporting such operations, allegedly carried out in the Copenhagen city hospital. The studies reportedly looked at the link between schizophrenia and inheritance or environment.
At the same time, the children themselves were not told what kind of research they were participating in – even after their completion. They learned about what happened only in 1977, when the Danish psychiatrist Find Schulsinger published a dissertation detailing the results of the experiments. A spokesman for the Danish Welfare Museum, Jakob Knage Rasmussen, said this was the first documented case of foster children “being used for research purposes.” He stressed that this is contrary to the 1947 Nuremberg Code.
CIA officials and Danish authorities have not yet commented on this information.
