## A Bad Behavior Sampler from the 1970's

### Extracts from Individual Rights and the Federal Role in Behavior Modification

A Study Prepared by The Staff of the Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights of the
Committee On The Judiciary, United States Senate
Ninety-Third Congress, Second Session

Subcommittee Chair, Senator Sam Ervin, Jr.

Available in full from the U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402. Stock Number 5270-02620.

(Scanned and prefaced by M. L. A. Not Copyrighted June 20, 2002)

Here are a few of the highlights from this document, which in 1974 revealed to the Congress some oversight in the oversight process of funding research on, and treatment of, living human beings.

The document's theme is control over the possible development of vicious and uncaring treatments in the Federally funded arena.

Credit should be due: There is no evidence of misbehavior by the agencies of which the Subcommittee made inquiry. All of this is in the full report. The central offenses seem to be by persons ignorant or forgetful of the importance of the central tenet of the Hippocratic oath: Do No Harm.

Nowhere is any inquiry or response relating to any segment of the intelligence community. These workers are employed on the same condition to uphold the Constitution as are any other Federal employees, so one assumes that they would accept the same obligation of whistleblowing as anyone else. In recognition of this, possibly, this Subcommittee now is named "Subcommittee on the Constitution", to differentiate it from the 1971 - 1974 Ervin subcommittee that investigated constitutional rights only.

#### Deja Vu

There was a scandal which surfaced in the newspapers last year over experiments in 1939 by a famous speech therapist, Wendell Johnson, now dead. He apparently purposely caused some children in an orphanage to stutter during a behavioral manipulation. The pretense was to treat them for minor, often nonexistent, speech defects. Later, he and his graduate student made only a few half-hearted attempts to reverse the damage--which for some of the children lasted through adoption and into the rest of their lives. With no ethical standards in place at the time, perhaps this was less egregious a fault than any of the many ethics lapses enumerated in the Federal Role hearings.

The reporter, Jim Dyer of the San Jose Mercury News, who uncovered the Wendell Johnson study, also interviewed some of Johnson's academic colleagues. Apparently, many of them knew of the orphan experiment. They kept quiet about the experiment. And never lifted a finger to help the orphans, either. Johnson was a best-selling author, and having the goods on him apparently blinded his colleagues to their obligation to do something more than successfully have the goods on him.

One can see a similar selfishness in the Federal Role document.

Some of the researchers there pull out statistics and bang on the Government to pay them to help make their statistics better. They seem to crave funding for nothing but advancement in their fields. They seem willing to walk over the humanity and the rights of helpless mental defectives, jailed convicts, and hospitalized veterans. Is reducing a count of '50 per 100,000' of (anything) to '25 per 100,000' worth scooping out a mental patient's brains, leaving someone to die of syphilis just to see how it works, or castrating a rapist?

Read on. See how supposedly educated professionals planned to enlist the police, to teach police to 'predict' violence by taking special notice of a suspicious person's race, sex, or place of residence. To strike first, before the guilty party had a chance to do anything wrong . . ..

Nope. This isn't 1833: It is 1973, and all the people involved knew how to read and write.

## The Federal Role in the Early 1970's

### Subcommittee Report

Front matter and complete Table of Contents
pp. 1 -2: Introduction
p. 8: 'Experiments' on Prisoners: Apomorphine
p. 14: Behavior Modification on Patients: Anectine and apomorphine
pp. 36 - 37: Law Enforcement to Behavior Enforcement Inexpertise of planners
p. 45: Conclusion: A need for oversight

### Appendixes

Appendix pp. 56 - 58: HEW Defines Informed Consent.
Appendix p. 324: Statistikophobia The data made me do it, at the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence.
Appendix pp. 327 - 328: They're All Defective but Me How the Center plans to study.
Appendix p. 336 - 337: Profiles and Stereotypes The Center will adopt ethics that suit it.
Appendix p. 342: Predictors of violence: Sex, age, ethnicity: The Center knows it all already.
Appendix pp. 351 - 353: Remote Brain Monitoring. Brainsdroppers who equate probability with fact.
Appendix pp. 357 - 358: More Statistikophobia. And oversightitis.
Appendix pp. 420 - 421: Center Plans Awry. LEAA renounces medical research as unrelated to its crime control goals.
Appendix pp. 509 - 510: Nuremburg Code on use of human subjects.
Appendix pp. 571 - 575: Doctor's Shocker Radio controlled punishment for sale.
Appendix pp. 604 - 614: Electronics for Control and Observation
Appendix pp. 645 - 647: Brain-Damage Therapy. Case study: Look the other way to see the effect of brain damage as behavioral therapy.

So, one hopes that the Federal Government will continue in its role of enforcing the law and carrying out the mandates of the Constitution. However firm and tempting the rocks of despotism, may that great ship always steer the straight course.