• Disturbing and Fascinating Documentary on 1940s Experiments

    An illustration used during the film
    An illustration used during the film

    On Archive.org, one can find an enormous number of intriguing and wonderous things. Every once in a while, though, you will stumble upon something that is a bit beyond the pale. What I have linked below is a short documentary that is part of the Perlinger Archives. It documents the, frankly, disturbing experiments conducted in the Soviet Union during the early 1940s. These experiments focused on the revival of dogs that had been clinically dead for a period of time, including just the revival of a severed head.

    Experiments in the Revival of Organisms (archive.org)

    The reason I’m linking this is to show the difference in the conducting of experiments in the first half of the twentieth century and those conducted with the advent of modern ethical review boards (or Institutional Review Boards). I think it is highly unlikely that these experiments (and others, including some of the most famous psychological experiments in history) would be approved in today’s environment.

    Category: MedicineScience

    Tags:

    Article by: Caleb Lack

    Caleb Lack is the author of "Great Plains Skeptic" on SIN, as well as a clinical psychologist, professor, and researcher. His website contains many more exciting details, visit it at www.caleblack.com