Wingnuts. Democracy. Congress Matters. FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right. Programmes | File on 4 | Hidden history of US germ testing. Fifty years ago, American scientists were in a frantic race to counter what they saw as the Soviet threat from germ warfare. Biological pathogens they developed were tested on volunteers from a pacifist church and were also released in public places. The remarkable story is told in a BBC Radio 4 documentary, Hotel Anthrax. In the 1950s, the Seventh-day Adventist Church struck an extraordinary deal with the US Army. It would provide test subjects for experiments on biological weapons at the Fort Detrick research centre near Washington DC.
The volunteers were conscientious objectors who agreed to be infected with debilitating pathogens. In return, they were exempted from frontline warfare. Fort Detrick was working on weapons it could use in an offensive capacity as well as ways of defending its troops and citizens. Hotel Anthrax uses declassified documents, evidence from Senate investigations and personal testimony to trace the American bio-weapon programme during this period. Rabbit fever. Electoral Compass USA. Media Matters.