A Documentary Reveals Danish Orphans Used In CIA-Backed Experiment

Illustration of CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, USA. (Wikimedia Commons/Library of Congress/Carol M. Highsmith)

JAKARTA - Several hundred Danish orphans have been unknowingly used in a secret experiment supported by the US intelligence agency, the CIA, Danish Radio reports in a new documentary titled 'The Search for Myself'.

Overall, the study, which began in the early 1960s and intended to investigate the relationship between heredity and environment in the development of schizophrenia, involved 311 Danish children.

The examination took place in the basement of the City Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark. Many were adopted or living in nearby orphanages, Radio Denmark reported.

Filmmaker Per Wennick, who participated in this experiment as a child, recalls being placed in a chair, placing electrodes on his arms, legs, and chest around his heart, and having to listen to loud, high-pitched sounds. The test is meant to reveal whether a child has psychopathic traits.

"It was very uncomfortable. And it's not just my story, it's the story of many children", Wennick told Radio Denmark, as quoted by Sputnik News, December 30.

According to his confession, he was promised 'something cute' before being taken to the hospital.

"I think this is a violation of my rights as a citizen in this society. I find it very strange that some people should know more about me than I myself realize," he said.

Remarkably, the children were not told what their study was involved in, even after the experiment ended.

Meanwhile, historian, Ph.D., and museum inspector at the Danish Welfare Museum, Jacob Knage Rasmussen said, this is the first documented case of children under special care who have been used for regular research experiments in Denmark.

"I don't know of any similar attempts, neither in Denmark nor in Scandinavia. This is appalling information that contradicts the 1947 Nuremberg Code, which after World War II set several ethical limits for human experimentation. Among other things, informed consent," explains Knage. Rasmussen told Radio Denmark, stressing the group's vulnerability in state custody, which has no one to complain to.

Danish radio credited US psychologist Zarnoff A. Mednick, then a professor at the University of Michigan, with the idea behind the research project. Mednick is interested in what really distinguishes schizophrenic patients from patients with other disorders and healthy people.

Unable to find a suitable study group in the US, he sought out Fini Schulsinger, a Danish professor at City Hospital. Together, they formed a decades-long Danish-US research collaboration on Danish soil.

According to Wennick and the National Archives, the research project was co-financed by the US health service. In the first year alone, the project was supported for what is currently the equivalent of 4.6 million Danish krone or USD 700.000. Subsequently, it received funding from the Human Ecology Fund, which operated on behalf of the CIA.

In 1977, those experiments resulted in a doctoral dissertation by Danish psychiatrist Fini Schulsinger called "Studies to shed light on the connection between heredity and environment in psychiatry."

According to Wennick, he managed to find research material in 36 boxes at the Glostrup Psychiatry Center in Hvidovre, but the center has already begun to shred the data, sparking criticism.

Kent Kristensen, professor of Health Law at the University of Southern Denmark, ventured that tearing up, in this case, was a violation of the law. The historian Jacob Knage Rasmussen emphasized that it made the victims lose their past.