Los Angeles - Between 1954 and 1973 the US Army exposed volunteer soldiers from the Seventh Day Adventist church to diseases as part of biological warfare testing.
As participants in Operation Whitecoat, scientists exposed hundreds of healthy male volunteers to diseases so they could study their reaction, information that could be used in biological warfare.
"If those experiments had not shown our vulnerability to biological warfare, there would be no biological defence programme today," army immunologist Colonel Arthur Anderson said. "The services during this outbreak of anthrax would be in the Dark Age."
No life-threatening diseases were transmitted but some debilitating ones were, such as the mosquito-borne sand fly fever. Researchers also tested a vaccine for Eastern encephalitis.
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Army scientists believed the Adventists, who by church rules are not supposed to smoke or drink alcohol or coffee - would be ideal for the job.
No testers died during Operation Whitecoat, and the army is now conducting a study of long-term effects on nearly 1 000 of the volunteers they have been able to locate.
Due to ethical considerations it is unlikely such experiments could be repeated today, officials said. - Sapa-AFP
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