CPS Unit Number 140-03

CPS Unit Number 140-03

Camp: 140

Unit ID: 3

Title: Yale University

Operating agency: AFSC

Opened: 2 1945

Closed: 10 1946

Summary:

CPS Unit No. 140, subunit 3, located at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, subjected CPS men to experiments on neurotropic virus.

 

Dr. John R. Paul from the New Haven Hospital directed this OSG experiment on neurotropic virus/jaundice.  Sponsored by the Commission on Neurotropic Virus Diseases in New Haven, Connecticut, the experiments actually took place in several places. The project was designed to work with up to twenty-five men at a time, and operated from January 1945 through March 1946. Yale University served as one site; Connecticut State Hospital in Middletown, Connecticut where CPS Unit No. 81 operated, accepted fourteen volunteers for the experiment; and Fairfield State Hospital in Newtown, Connecticut where CPS Unit No. 82 existed, accepted eleven volunteers. 

 

Men volunteered from a number of camps and units including CPS Camp No. 23 at Coshocton, Ohio; CPS Camp No. 59 at Elkton, Oregon; CPS Unit No. 68 at Norwich State Hospital in Norwich, Connecticut; CPS Camp No. 76 at Glendora, California; CPS Camp No. 94 at Trenton, North Dakota; and CPS Camp No. 108 at Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

 

Infectious hepatitis accounted for the most widespread epidemic disease during World War II.  The cause, conditions for transmitting the disease, treatment and control were unknown.  While the disease was not fatal, it proved extremely debilitating.

 

The first experiments on COs occurred in mental hospitals, and later the full-time human guinea pig units of thirty to sixty CO volunteers were established at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale University.  Under controlled conditions, the men were inoculated with suspected blood plasma or yellow fever vaccine, or swallowed nose and throat washings and body wastes of infected patients, or drank varieties of contaminated or presumably purified water. 

The experiments found an especially elusive virus, transmitted not only by human filth but in plasma or serum, and in drinking water.   (Keim pp. 75-76)

Location:
New Haven, Connecticut, United States