Judge Certifies Vietnam Veteran Human Testing Class Action Lawsuit

Judge Certifies Vietnam Veteran Human Testing Class Action Lawsuit

By Mike Holter

A class action lawsuit filed on behalf of thousands of Vietnam veterans who were used as “human guinea pigs” during Cold War-era drug and chemical experiments has been certified by a federal judge. Plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit are asking the court to force the government to provide proper medical treatment for diseases Class Members contracted during the human experiments.

The Vietnam Veterans of America and several individual soldiers filed the class action lawsuit in 2009 accusing the Army and CIA, with the help of Nazi scientists, of experimenting on thousands of soldiers by testing the effects of up to 400 types of drugs and chemicals, including nerve agents, mustard gas, mescaline, LSD, amphetamines and barbiturates. The experiments had a variety of purposes, including developing and testing substances that could paralyze, confuse, hypnotize and secretly kill enemies, the class action lawsuit says. Soldiers were allegedly promised they would get medals for participating, and were sworn to secrecy. The Army then covered up the experiments, which occurred between 1955 and 1975 at U.S. Army Laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Plaintiffs in the Army human testing class action lawsuit say many of these soldiers were unaware of the true nature of the experiments they were volunteering for, and were left with debilitating diseases and medical conditions that persisted for decades — which the government refuses to provide proper medical care for. Between 97% and 99% of all disability or death claims arising out of the experiment exposures have been denied by the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to the lawyers for the Plaintiffs.

According to the class action lawsuit, the soldiers who volunteered for the experiments “participated without giving informed consent because the full risks of the experiments were not fully disclosed.”

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken certified the class action lawsuit on Friday, allowing up to 100,000 veterans to seek medical care for conditions caused during the deceptive Army human testing programs. The Plaintiffs are not seeking monetary relief.

The Army human testing class action lawsuit will include:

“All current or former members of the armed forces, or in the case of deceased members, the personal representatives of their estates, who, while serving in the armed forces, were test subjects in any human Testing Program that was sponsored, overseen, directed, funded, and/or conducted by the Department of Defense or any branch thereof, including but not limited to the Department of the Army and the Department of the Navy, and/or the Central Intelligence Agency, between the inception of the Testing Programs in approximately 1922 and the present. For the purposes of this definition, ‘Testing Program’ refers to a program in which any person was exposed to a chemical or biological substance for the purpose of studying or observing the effects of such exposure.”

The case is Vietnam Veterans of America, et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, et al., Case No. C-09-0037 CW, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California.

UPDATE: A federal judge on Nov. 19, 2013, ordered the U.S. Army to release recent information on human testing programs that occurred prior to 1988 with the goal of helping veterans understand their current health conditions or problems that may occur in the future.

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