5. MKULTRA Testing
Stranger Things is a popular Netflix TV show and a new backbone to American pop culture that was recently released. It features a young girl in 1980 who was put through a wide range of mentally straining tests to study a form of mind control and other seemingly supernatural features. This may seem like science fiction, but it’s actually based on real studies performed by the CIA that were approved back in 1953. They ran tests to study the abilities of the mind when exposed to various drugs, like LSD. Some of the subjects were not aware of the tests being done on them, so the studies were deemed unethical and abusive. A Senate hearing in 1976 revealed that two people died as a result of the experimental testing.[6]
Project MKULTRA was done supposedly to keep up to speed with competing nations, including the Soviet Union, which claimed to have new advances in mind control and brainwashing technology. The people tested were unwilling participants like terminally ill patients and prisoners. There were 80 institutions working on the research, most of which were unaware of the ties to the CIA. Most of the documentation of the studies were destroyed to avoid conflict, but financial documents were forgotten about, leaving significant evidence of the illegal studies.