After three years of waiting, a large group of Vietnam veterans has gotten the okay from a federal judge to sue the government for using them as human guinea pigs during the Cold War.

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken granted the plaintiffs class action status, which allows the case, filed in 2009, to proceed.

The plaintiffs claim the military and the Central Intelligence Agency tested as many as 400 types of drugs and chemicals, including mescaline, LSD, amphetamines, barbiturates, mustard gas and nerve agents, on soldiers. The purpose of the experiments, conducted at Army compounds at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Maryland, was to develop new weapons of warfare.

It is thought that several thousand soldiers were exposed to the testing between 1955 and 1975. Although the soldiers usually signed consent forms, they contend that they did so because they were misled as to the dangers of the experiments.

Some of their individual stories are alarming. For example, in 1958 Eric Muth, who was then 17 years old, volunteered for an experiment at Edgewood in which he was told that he would be testing masks to protect against chemical gas. In fact, the masks were designed to fail because what was really being tested was the gas. Along with other soldiers, he was put in a chamber that filled with gas. Later he was injected with a substance that turned out to be an arsenic compound. He was also given a pill that made him hallucinate and then lose consciousness for three days. Like most of the other human guinea pigs, he was told that he could not tell anyone about the experiments because they were top secret. Muth, who later became an optician, did not seek medical help until 1997.  Although he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder, the Veterans Administration ruled that his exposures to experimental substance in the 1950s did not produce his long-term health problems.

The veterans are not seeking monetary damages, but want the Department of Veterans of Affairs to provide medical coverage for those suffering from the effects of the testing.

-David Wallechinsky, Noel Brinkerhoff

To Learn More:

Veteran Class Certified in Drug 'Guinea Pig' Case (by Adam Klasfeld, Courthouse News Service)

Vietnam Veterans of America v. CIA, 2012 (U.S. District Court, Northern California) (pdf)

Vietnam Veterans of America v. CIA, 2009 (U.S. District Court, Northern California) (pdf)

Eric Muth, a 1958 Edgewood Veteran (by Manny Strumpf, Milford Mirror)