Rauh: So any documents that would show the treatment of the plaintiffs in this case were destroyed? Ben: But Duncan is still, in some ways, trying to defend his dads honor. Amory: What was your father like as a dad? While more is known about the experiments of Dr. Ewen Cameron than about some of the other MKUltra projects, there's still a lot of information missing. He commuted from Lake Placid, New York to Montreal every week to work at McGill's Allan Memorial Institute and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to carry out MKUltra experiments there, known as the Montreal experiments. In 1933, he married Jean C. Rankine, whom he had met while they were students at the University of Glasgow. Amory: Author Stephen Kinzer, who wrote the book about the CIA and Mind Control, says, after Vietnam, this same literature got used elsewhere. Duncan: I mean, it's very different than the caricature that you sometimes read in the press. And it was a great shock to everybody because he was 65 and in many ways, you know, going full throttle and at the top of his career. Charles Tanny was a former patient of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal in 1957. music, sound effects, tone) are harder to translate to text. Duncan: Well, that's a big subject. Lloyd Schrier, son of Cameron patient Esther Schrier, told the CBC, "Oh, 'He was God-like,' they would say." Duncan: Oh yes, he enjoyed a good joke even if they were off color. Ben: But, as human experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute, and MK-ULTRAs mind control efforts, fade into history, reduced to references in tv shows and video game plot points, there are troubling examples of these techniques still in use today. Other similar psychiatric diagnoses of Germany were published during this time. Thus, this group would have to be studied and controlled as a contagious social disease. Click here for the donation page. Duncan: We all very much wished, as we always had, that my father was alive because he would have had to deal with that issue and would have dealt with it quite effectively. AIan Cameron followed in the footsteps of his father and became a director at Panmure Gordon in 1957. Death: June 18, 1958 (52) Immediate Family: Son of Sir Ewen Allan Cameron and Rachel Margaret Cameron. Ben: Which brings us back to a question that no one can answer why did Dr. Cameron do what he did? Skip . And the funeral was yet another opportunity for Marian and her siblings to learn more about the mother who had been absent for so much of their childhoods. Genealogy profile for Major Donald of 4th Chief Clunes "Old '45" Cameron Major Cameron . [28] His work was inspired and paralleled by the psychiatrist William Sargant, who was also involved with the intelligence services and experimented extensively on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage. Duncan: I think the furthest I got was to his office. Part of Camerons plan for his patients was to wipe their minds clean, to make them forget their past, so they could move forward. Heres journalist John Marks. Memorials. If I put you through this program, within 24 hours to 48 hours you'll be in a diagnosable psychotic state. Birthdate: June 04, 1906. Or answer questions about his motivations, whether or not he knew he was part of the CIAs mind control efforts. When it came time to evaluate Nazi leaders ahead of the Nuremberg Trials, he was one of a group of internationally renowned mental health professionals who were sent to decide just what was going on in the heads of some of the worst war criminals the world had ever seen. Duncan: They got close to the top and James looked around and my father had passed away. Amory: Theres a reason that all the photos of Ewen Cameron are from more than 50 years ago. Her family sued, first based on the treatment alone, then again, after discovering she was a part of the MKUltra program. He has an open, amused look on his face. That's absolutely the stuff of a terrifying Netflix horror series, but it was very real and it destroyed an unknown number of lives. The manual got updated in 1980, but the techniques that have come about including things like waterboarding and restraint in a "coffin-like wooden box" still harken back to that original research. We hope you enjoyed reading this excerpt from this mini book on the Scottish history of the Cameron family. Though he does seem to imply that it was done by him or someone in the family. And it's still hugely controversial: In 2019, The New York Times published drawings done by prisoners who had been subjected to these torture methods at Guantanamo Bay, and it's not for the faint of heart. His brutal techniques involved a three-stage method for brainwashing in order to eliminate the will and establish control: first, mental depatterning achieved through drug-induced coma; massive neuroleptic drug cocktails induced extended sleep lasting up to eighty-six days. Jean spent three months under Cameron's care, and spent two periods in a drug-induced coma. "Madness: The Secret Mission for Mind Control and the People Who Paid the Price" an investigative series in 5 parts unravels the shocking history of CIA-funded mind-control experiments. Cleghorn immediately went and took a long, hard look at what Cameron had actually been doing in his little corner of the university, and he was pretty shocked. Ben: When Amory and I spoke to Duncan Cameron about his dad, he also told us about his own work, as a lawyer. Amory: In spite of Camerons ambition and prestige, he never helped find a cure for mental illness, he never won a Nobel Prize for psychiatry. Duncan Cameron: This is a picture of the whole family. Hij is getrouwd met (Niet openbaar), ze kregen 1 kind. Most of the patient files are gone, and according to WBUR, they weren't just misplaced, they were destroyed. In some cases, applicants couldn't prove the conditions they currently lived with were a direct result of what they went through at Allan, and in others, they were treated outside of the time frame. Cameron was born on December 24, 1901, in Scotland and graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1924. Just as Sigrid Schultz stated in Germany will try it again, Cameron fostered a fear for Germans and their genetic determination. [citation needed]. The extent of Goldberg's treatment - or mistreatment - while in the care of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute, would remain an encumbering family secret for years. And in that he took some risks, obviously. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association , Canadian Psychiatric Association ,[2] American Psychopathological Association . Did it work? He saw no reason why psychiatry should be any different. father. His successor at Allan, Robert Cleghorn, would later write (via "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron,""Cameron's controversial practices [are] now thoroughly discredited." You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. The idea that people needed to sit down and talk about their problems was the old way of doing things, and Cameron was living in an era where things were getting more and more automated. He died of a heart attack while climbing a mountain in the Adirondacks in 1967. He was always interested in the future. So we don't have. [25], Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by "erasing" existing memories and "reprogramming" the psyche. The behaviour of a mental patient could resemble the behaviour of a patient with, for example, syphilis, and then a somatic cause could be deduced for a psychological illness. The National Post reports that in 1992, 77 of Cameron's patients were awarded an ex gratia settlement of $100,000, and that's all well and good, but claims made by more than 250 other people were rejected for various reasons. Camerons techniques have no therapeutic validity whatsoever; they were comparable to Nazi medical atrocities. Marian Read: So for me, the importance of all of this is to get it out of the shadows of pulp fiction, you know Amory: This is Marian Read. It was the start of a series of experiments backed by the British, the Americans, and the Canadians, and they wanted to know what prolonged sensory deprivation actually did to a person. If you want that too, we would deeply appreciate your contribution to our work in any amount. Amory: Were bringing you the last installment of our special series: Madness The secret mission for mind control and the people who paid the price. For instance, he was careful to say he didnt know anything about his dads treatment regimen at the Allan, which may very well be true. He moved to Upstate New York where he studied aging and memory at two hospitals in Albany. As for the ongoing lawsuits, some of the plaintiffs have actually contacted Duncan wondering if hed be willing to support their efforts. And Mary Morrow? Tell us about your reaction to this episode or send us a story idea. Family 9 - Donald CAMERON 34, wife Agnes 30, children John 18, Margaret 13, Ann 12, Donald 10, Christian 8, Alexander 6, Dugald 2, Duncan 1/2 (see Donald Cameron) Family 10 - Duncan CAMERON 30 unmarried, sister Mrs McLENNAN 28 and Catherine McLENNAN 5 [citation needed] Characteristics were thus diagnosed as syndromes emerging from the brain. "[H]e was born in. People Projects Discussions Surnames . And people talk about the transmission of trauma through generations. [citation needed] He furthermore wanted to understand the problems of memory caused by aging, believing that the aged brain experienced psychosis. His death occurred while climbing a mountain. Duncan: This is at the Lake Placid Club in Lake Placid, New York. Amory: The study, which was published a few months before Cameron died, found that Camerons methods exposed his patients to unnecessary risk, and that there was no clinical proof his methods were any more effective than standard forms of treatment. And you can get a real sense of your own, where you are in the world. Ben: Camerons research could never happen today at least not lawfully. [30][bettersourceneeded], In 1980, the Canadian investigative news program The Fifth Estate interviewed two former patients of Cameron's who were among several of his ex patients who were at that time suing the CIA for the long term effects of Cameron's treatment. In his 1946 paper entitled "Frontiers of Social Psychiatry", he used the case of World War II Germany as an example where society poisoned the minds of citizens by creating a general anxiety or neurosis.[19]. Amory: Dr. Ewen Cameron will never be able to respond to the intergenerational trauma created by his work. In this, he hoped to establish a suitable method to reinstate a form of justice in Germany that could prevent its society from recreating the attitudes that led it from the Great War to World War II. Amory: Hey, Dad, let's get out of here!, Duncan: I can remember doing that several times. Region. Cameron's work stopped when she gave birth, and Lloyd remembered a broken mother. Heres John Marks again. Operating under the umbrella of MKUltra were as many as 162 sub-projects, with as many as 80 different organizations involved in research. (McCoy, 2007) Indeed, Hebb and Camerons contribution as pioneers who designed the psychological paradigm for torture used by the CIA was acknowledged by The McGill Daily, in 2012. They also asked him for clarification about what happened to his father's personal papers and patient records, and he replied, "Well, I didn't destroy the documents. And we would take off. He published a book called Remembering[18] and extended psychiatric links to human biology. Amory: Sarahs grandmother, Val, sued the CIA forty years ago for supporting Dr. Camerons work at the Allan. Ben: But there is reason to believe that these documents arent just missing. In addition to LSD, he experimented with various paralytic drugs such as curare and electroconvulsive therapy at thirty to forty times the normal power. That was in December of 1959, and according to the lawsuit (via the Consumer Law Group), Cameron diagnosed Morrow as having "nervousness and tension." Particularly because we put that question to him today. Finally, while the person is in isolated confinement, in LSD altered states of consciousness, and deprived of sensory stimulation, adequate food, water, and oxygen, the subject would be bombarded by psychic driving by use of a football helmet clamped to the head with taped messages played for hours non-stop up to a half-million times, messages such as my mother hates me. (McCoy, 2007). . Therefore, society should function to select out the weak and unwanted, those apt towards fearsome aggression that threatened society. [10] There he met A. T. Mathers, Manitoba's principal psychiatrist, who convinced Cameron in 1929 to move to Brandon, the second largest city of Manitoba, Canada. A notoriously tough climb, he did it with his son James, and when he got to the top, he had a heart attack and died almost instantly. Many spent this period of time in what he called the "sleep room," where they were drugged into a medically-induced coma that they were brought out of only to be given three meals a day and the occasional trip to the bathroom. And he was a fast driver. Marian believes all of this was a result of her mother going into the Allan. In theory, he was supposed to help her anxiety, depression, and postpartum depression. Cregg: What do you know about mind-control experiments? Shes a member of SAAGA, or Survivors Allied Against Government Abuse. Amory: We definitely will. What started as short-term depression before the Allan, morphed into chronic depression, as well as diagnosed schizophrenia and bipolar disorder afterwards. And Camerons part of that. Ben: But the Canadian and US governments could take accountability for their support of Cameron. Stephen Bennett: If I put one of you, either Ben or Amory, into prison for two, three years, you should be okay because you can have time and space. His response? Skip Ancestry . The work of Dr. Ewen Cameron may have been discredited by mainstream psychiatry, but that doesn't mean it went away completely. Ben: Duncan Cameron was 10 years old when his dad became the Director of the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. Cameron also hoped to generate families capable of using authority and techniques to take measures against mental illness, which would later be apparent in Cameron's MKULTRA and MKDELTA experiments. Cameron reported to John Gittinger, an agent in charge of overseeing parts of MKUltra. Ontario. Here in the hospital Cameron could observe how the psychiatric patient resembled patients with other diseases that were not psychiatric in nature. Even as he wrote about Cameron's "warmth [which was] never allowed to appear as intimacy," he wrote about a pretty big blind spot: Cameron had apparently hired a few assistants with "psychopathic personalities.". 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