By Frederick N. Rasmussen, Baltimore
Gerald D. Klee, a retired psychiatrist and LSD expert who participated in experiments with the
hallucinogenic drug on volunteer servicemen at U.S. military installations in the 1950s, has
died. He was 86.
Klee died Sunday of complications after surgery at the University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center inTowson, Md., his family said.
In 1975, Klee made headlines when he confirmed reports that
the University of Maryland School of Medicine's Psychiatric Institute had been
involved in secret research between 1956 and 1959, when hundreds of soldiers
were given LSD, or lysergic acid
diethylamide.
He said that in addition to LSD, the Army was experimenting with other hallucinogens
as part of its chemical weapons research program.
Klee said the Army had negotiated a contract in 1956 with
the University of Maryland
"A large proportion of the people who have gotten
involved in research in this area have been harebrained and irresponsible
— Timothy
Leary being the most notorious example — and a lot of the stuff that
has been published reflects that," Klee told the Baltimore Evening Sun in
1975.
"We didn't have any axes to grind, and the university's role
was to conduct scientific experimentation," he said. "The interests
of the University of Maryland
Klee said soldiers from military posts around the country
were brought to the Edgewood Arsenal and Aberdeen Proving Ground installations
in Maryland to participate in experiments involving various drugs and chemical
warfare agents, of which the hallucinogens were a small part.
"They were mostly enlisted men — there were a few
commissioned officers — but they were mostly unlettered and rather naive,"
Klee said. "Now the people knew they were volunteering, the bonus was leave time —
seeing their girlfriends and mothers and that kind of thing. They had a lot of
free time, and most of them enjoyed it."
Klee said he and his colleagues from the university tried to
explain to the volunteers what to expect.
"They were told it was very important to national
security," he said in the Evening Sun interview.
Before the experiments commenced, Klee experimented with
LSD.
"I figured that if I was going to study this stuff,
then I've got to experience it myself," he told the newspaper. "I
felt obliged to take it for experimental reasons and also because I didn't
think it would be fair to administer a drug to someone else that I hadn't taken
myself."
The LSD was slipped into cocktails at a party in the
soldiers' honor. While this approach garnered criticism, Klee said the Army and
civilian researchers acted responsibly.
"I was there and I didn't like it, but thought I might
be of help to the victims," Klee told the Washington Post in the 1975 interview.
The civilian team quickly learned about those who had
experienced "bad trips." He said he did not know of any lasting ill
effects on the soldiers but added that university researchers followed the
cases only during their month stay at Edgewood .
"What the Army did after that, I don't know. I've given
many hours thought to that. I wish I did know," he said in the interview.
"I think he felt unease about this," said a son,
Kenneth A. Klee, an editor and writer.
In an email, the younger Klee wrote that his father and his
colleagues accepted the military money because they thought
it was "important science." He added that because they were World War II veterans and the nation was
mired in the Cold War, it "didn't seem unreasonable."
"I do know my dad did his best to do right (and conduct
real science — the two were closely linked for him) and that he disapproved of
the unethical acts he witnessed. Hence his willingness to be vocal on the
subject a few years later," his son wrote.
In 1975, the Army admitted that it had administered LSD to
nearly 1,500 people between 1956 and 1967.
Klee later led an unsuccessful effort to persuade President Nixon to renounce the use of LSD as a
chemical weapon.
Gerald D'Arcy Klee was born Jan. 29, 1927 , and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. He
graduated from high school in 1944, then enlisted in the Army and served in Paris
After earning a bachelor's degree in 1948 from McGill
University Harvard Medical
School
He interned from 1952 to 1953 at the U.S. Public Health
Hospital on Staten Island, N.Y., and from 1954 to
1956 completed a residency in psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and the
Veterans Hospital at Perry Point, Md.
From 1959 to 1967, he was director of the Division of Adult
Outpatient Psychiatry at the University
of Maryland Temple University
Klee also was a medical educator who taught at the University
of Maryland Temple
Klee's four marriages ended in divorce. He is survived by
two sons, three daughters, a brother and 11 grandchildren.
No comments:
Post a Comment