Class action suit by families of those brainwashed in Montreal medical experiments gets go-ahead
Treatments included chemically induced sleep for weeks, rounds of electroshocks
CBC News Mar 03, 2022
CBC News Mar 03, 2022
A lawsuit against the Canadian government, the Royal Victoria Hospital and the McGill University Health Centre is moving ahead.
About 55 families of victims who underwent medical experimentation in the 1950s and 1960s are suing for millions of dollars.
Alison Steel says her mother was never the same after undergoing brainwashing experiments at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute.
Treatments included chemically induced sleep for weeks, rounds of electroshocks and experimental drugs....
Steel is one of the main plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Canadian government, the Royal Victoria Hospital and the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC).
How the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind-control experiments laid the groundwork for torture methods used today
The plaintiffs allege the Government of Canada funded psychiatric treatments by Dr. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute between 1950 to 1964. They claim the government played a role in the supervision and control of these experiments, which were part of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program of covert mind-control.
The plaintiffs allege the Government of Canada funded psychiatric treatments by Dr. Ewen Cameron at the Allan Memorial Institute between 1950 to 1964. They claim the government played a role in the supervision and control of these experiments, which were part of the CIA's MK-ULTRA program of covert mind-control.
The defendants had moved to partially dismiss the case, but Quebec Superior Court dismissed the defence's request on Feb. 23.
Lawyer Alan Stein says the lawsuit, seeking about $1 million per family on top of legal costs "to compensate them for their [physical and emotional] loss," can now move ahead....
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/class-action-lawsuit-families-montreal-brainwashing-mk-ultra-1.6371416
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/class-action-lawsuit-families-montreal-brainwashing-mk-ultra-1.6371416
Brainwashed: The echoes of MK-ULTRA
During the Cold War, the CIA secretly funded mind-control experiments on unwitting Canadians in a program codenamed MK-ULTRA. The experiments laid the groundwork for modern-day torture techniques. And victims and their families are still seeking recognition and justice.
During the Cold War, the CIA secretly funded mind-control experiments on unwitting Canadians in a program codenamed MK-ULTRA. The experiments laid the groundwork for modern-day torture techniques. And victims and their families are still seeking recognition and justice.
By Michelle Shephard, Lisa Ellenwood and Chris Oke
October 21, 2020
The following story is based on material from the CBC podcast Brainwashed, a six-part series co-produced with The Fifth Estate that investigates the CIA's covert mind-control experiments — from the Cold War and MK-ULTRA to the so-called U.S. war on terror.
But many of the details are laid out in a thick file of documents, correspondences and reports. He has news articles and pictures spanning decades, all describing what his family went through. And he has his mother's heartwrenching medical report that is still hard for him to comprehend.
"She had her 30th and last day of sleep on March 24th," Schrier said as he read from the 1960 hospital record.
"They gave her all the drugs … about four or five barbiturates and amphetamines at a time."
Esther Schrier received electroshock therapy, massive amounts of drugs and so-called psychiatric treatments that sound as if they were lifted from the pages of George Orwell's dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four.
She was a patient at Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute in the 1960s. She had gone to "the Allan," as the hospital is known, to seek treatment for what today would be considered anxiety or postpartum depression.
But once she walked through those hospital doors and into the care of a psychiatrist named Dr. Ewen Cameron, she became an unwitting experiment subject for a massive CIA brainwashing operation codenamed MK-ULTRA.
And Schrier was part of this clandestine program, too, because his mother was pregnant with him at the time.
"It's crazy," said Schrier. "I don't think it was fair to do that to a developing fetus."...
Hundreds of relatives whose loved ones were experimented upon by Cameron are now demanding compensation for family members and an apology from the Canadian government.
Canada has never provided a list of the victims of the experiments that took place during Cameron's tenure from 1943 to 1964. In the decades since, no government has ever admitted liability, let alone apologized — despite the fact that part of the experiments in Montreal were funded not only by the CIA, but also by the Canadian government....
But the story of MK-ULTRA isn't just relegated to Cold War history.
The idea of mind control — the theory that breaking a person down will make them do something against their will — has been constantly revisited by governments during other periods of fear and uncertainty, when the military and medicine collide.
What happened at Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute laid the groundwork for torture spanning decades to follow....
