PRISONERS USED FOR 'FRIGHTENING' TESTS, NEW PAPERS SHOW

Ottawa approved using inmates to test everything from steroid enemas to
links between height and crime while Canada's prison system operated as a
research lab, federal documents show.

The documents are contained in long-buried government files uncovered in
the wake of a $5 million lawsuit filed by Dorothy Proctor, one of 23
inmates involved in LSD experiments at Kingston's Prison for Women from
1960-63.

Questions have already been raised in Parliament about the use of inmates
in a variety of scientific experiments, revealed after Proctor filed her
lawsuit last year.

But the latest documents suggest the experiments may have been more
widespread and started earlier than first suspected. For example, one
document shows a shipment of LSD arriving at the British Columbia
Penitentiary as early as 1958.

The documents also suggest that inmates were forcibly subjected to
controversial electroshock therapy.

"It is necessary to show force to get her to accept treatment," one
Kingston prison psychiatrist wrote of an electroshock episode with a Prison
for Women inmate for August, 1954. At the time, a report on treatment in
the psychiatric ward was submitted to the warden each month.

"He is very frightened of treatments and very resistive to taking them,"
the doctor wrote in a similar report the next month about a male inmate at
Kingston Penitentiary.

Although Canada's justice minister decided in 1949 that consent from
inmates was unnecessary for electroshock treatment, the correctional
service had a policy by the early 1960s that made it a prerequisite for
scientific experiments.

Researchers, keen to take advantage of the controlled environment prisons
offered, were allowed to use only volunteers. But some critics question
whether prisoners can truly offer free and informed consent to experiments
in inherently coercive settings.

The shock therapy also appeared to go beyond its traditional use in
treating the severely depressed and was given to inmates who were bed
wetters, and suffering from a variety of vaguely defined neuroses and
mental illnesses, the monthly psychiatric reports suggest.

In one case, an "ardent Communist" who became disruptive when asked about
his beliefs may also have received treatment.

Treatments and tests approved by the government spanned 25 years and included:

* In a letter to the Upjohn Company of Canada in 1964, Ottawa gave
permission for Collins Bay inmates to be given steroid enemas every night
for up to three weeks to see whether a colitis drug caused rectal irritation.

* In a 1972 letter, the federal government allowed the Merck Frosst
pharmaceutical company to test a variety of penicillins on inmates in Quebec.

* The federal health department studied aspirin absorption in Canada's
centennial year by giving inmates from Collins Bay rectal suppositories.
Also in 1967, the federal government used inmates to test the effect of
ingesting the amount of pesticides and additives often found in food.
Reports of the studies' progress are contained in the files.

* Researchers at the University of Manitoba, looking for ways to stop blood
disease in newborns, received permission from the federal government to
inject Stony Mountain inmates with red blood cells from umbilical cords in
1964.

Dalhousie University medical school, meanwhile, was interested in finding
out whether height and criminal behaviour were linked. It received
permission to draw blood from tall inmates from Dorchester Penitentiary in
New Brunswick, examining it for chromosomes suspected of causing
impulsiveness. A fingerprint analysis would follow.

* In 1973, a doctor at Collins Bay and one of his students studied the
effect of mind-altering drugs used to control anxiety, but noted for
causing aggressive tendencies. The researchers selected the most aggressive
inmates and measured the effect of the drugs by looking at whether
prisoners engaged in threats and assaults or destroyed prison property.
Results were later published in a Canadian medical journal.

* The staff psychiatrist at Kingston Penitentiary in the 1960s offered
inmates what he called a "cocktail" of orange juice, a chemical stimulant
and a depressant, as part of an effort to get them to "open up" and help
him diagnose underlying causes of depression, according to an undated
transcript of testimony to a parliamentary committee, believed to be from
the 1960s.

* On March 24, 1949, an electroshock machine arrived at Kingston
Penitentiary, ushering in a new era in the treatment of "nervous and mental
disorders." During an initial session, a monthly report says, "a good
seizure was obtained" when 225 volts of electricity surged through one inmate.

At the time, the federal justice department allowed its use without an
inmate's consent as long as prison psychiatrists thought it would be helpful.

Over the next several years, as many as 117 shock treatments a month would
take place at the jail and were credited with ending everything from facial
rashes, suicide attempts, hallucinations, incontinence and depression.

Occasionally, there were complications. In September, 1951, one inmate
turned blue and his heart rate slowed during treatment, requiring
artificial respiration by another electrical jolt to speed it up. His
treatment was "temporarily suspended," a report notes.

A year earlier, the prison psychiatrist noted "a difficulty" with the
machine because it was producing only a mild seizure.

Monthly reports from the Kingston Penitentiary psychiatric ward also,
however, include several references to inmates for whom shock therapy was
discontinued if they were too afraid.

In 1957, the machine's inventor visited the prison and reset it to give
"softer convulsions."

* While federal investigators have acknowledged that LSD was used in a
pilot project at the Kingston Prison for Women from 1960-63, documents
reviewed by The Star suggest the drug might have been used earlier in
British Columbia.

In May, 1958, a psychiatrist and psychologist at the British Columbia
Penitentiary were eager to begin using LSD after learning at an American
Psychological Association conference in San Francisco that it showed
promise in treating alcoholics. They put their request in a May 28 letter
to the medical director of the penitentiary system in Ottawa.

On July 2, 1958, the warden at the B.C. Pen wrote to medical director and
deputy commissioner Dr. Paul Gendreau, notifying him that a shipment of LSD
25 in both pills and small bottles arrived from Montreal's Sandoz
Pharmaceutical Co. "sooner than expected." The drug wasn't illegal in
Canada until 1969.

Medical staff would be able to use the drug on emotionally disturbed
inmates "from both a therapeutic and a research perspective" once a new
psychiatric ward was completed, he said.

It's not clear from the documents whether that actually took place.

Gendreau suggested in other correspondence that he was reluctant to approve
the B.C. project until he checked into a New Brunswick inmate's complaints
that he suffered health problems as a result of LSD therapy in a prison in
the United States.

The use of LSD and shock therapy in the Canadian prison system coincided
with CIA-funded "brainwashing" experiments performed in Montreal at McGill
University's Allan Memorial Institute between 1957 and 1961. However, there
is no evidence the programs were linked.

In the McGill experiments, which were conducted by Dr. Ewen Cameron and
also funded in part by the Canadian government, up to 130 people were given
electroshock, high doses of LSD and subjected to taped messages. At the
time, the Cold War was escalating and researchers were interested in
unlocking possible Soviet strategies for mind control.

In 1988, the U.S. government settled out of court with a group of test
subjects for a total of $750,000. The Canadian government later agreed to a
settlement that paid up to an additional $100,000 per person.

Proctor, 56, blames the Kingston prison program for drug addictions that
ruled her life for 30 years after her release in 1963, after she served a
three-year sentence for stealing a car. She also alleges the drug caused
brain damage.

She is suing retired penitentiary psychiatrist Dr. George Scott, former
prison psychologist Mark Eveson and the now-defunct Institute for
Psychotherapy, a private Kingston clinic operated by Scott where she
alleges some of the experiments took place.

In a statement of claim seeking damages for assault and battery, which
contains allegations not yet proven in court, Proctor says she was used in
LSD experiments and given electroshock therapy against her will as prison
officials searched for a cheap and effective means of behaviour control.

"I was just a biological unit," she said in an interview.

Only 17 when she arrived at the prison, she quickly earned a reputation for
causing trouble, escaping twice by scaling a nine-metre concrete and
barbed-wire wall.

In her statement of claim, Proctor alleges Scott and Eveson administered
LSD experiments in the prison. "So, I went on a trip without my luggage,"
she said in an interview. "I thought I had lost my mind."

Lawyers for Scott and Eveson won't let their clients discuss the case. But
in statements of defence, the two men are adamant that no experiments took
place.

In his statement, Eveson says he knows nothing about Proctor receiving
electroshock therapy. He says his LSD research at the Prison for Women was
intended to be therapeutic, to help inmates with personality disorders. It
was carried out with the inmates' informed consent and according to
accepted medical standards of the time, he adds.

In his statement, Scott, now 84, denies participating in the LSD study, but
says he knew about and endorsed it. Both doctors dispute Proctor's claim
that they should have known about any risks at the time.

Proctor's medical problems, they add, were caused by the result of her
later drug abuse.

As for shock therapy, Scott says he never coerced inmates into it and
denies Proctor ever received it.

Proctor began her fight in 1997, when she wrote to then-solicitor-general
Herb Gray. In an interview, Proctor says she was starting to clean up her
life after decades of living on the streets, hooked on heroin and cocaine
and working as an RCMP informant.

She began to remember what had happened in prison, recalling hallucinations
in which her cell bars turned into snakes. "I was helpless, totally
helpless," she said in an interview. "I couldn't bring my brain back."

Following her 1997 letter, a two-member board was formed and ordered to
investigate. Later that year, board members Marg Benson and Ross Hastings
concluded that up to 23 women, including Proctor, were given LSD in the
study. Only four have been identified because records are missing or
destroyed.

In their report, Benson and Hastings said they weren't convinced the women
were adequately supervised during the study, which they called a "risky
undertaking."

They also concluded that Proctor was justified in claiming she couldn't
give informed consent and that it was wrong that she had once received LSD
while she was in segregation.

Perception disorders stemming from LSD use were first reported in 1958,
they noted, and Proctor's symptoms were "an undeniable example of
substantial, debilitating long-term effects."

But they said it was impossible to confirm or deny the experiment led her
to become hooked on drugs. They were also skeptical about shock therapy
being forced on her.

Still, they recommended the correctional service "make every effort" to
discover who the women were and develop a settlement package.

The service commissioned another study in 1998 by the McGill Centre for
Medicine, Ethics and the Law that concluded further research was needed to
determine whether inmates consented to take LSD.

No consent forms have been found, investigators Norbert Gilmore and
Margaret Somerville noted.

Further study was also needed into whether inmates suffered long-term
effects, they added, recommending a toll-free number be set up to encourage
contact from study participants.

The correctional service has since placed newspapers ads, but moved little
on compensation. Tracking down the women raises privacy issues, because
many may have received pardons or have relatives who are unaware of their
criminal pasts, Commissioner Ole Ingstrup has said.

An internal briefing note in the government files also mentions the
"financial implications" of acting on the recommendations.

Proctor says the government's inaction prompted her to file her suit. "They
could have looked good, paid us off, and we would have went whistling off
into the sunset. But, no. They decided they were going to fight me, but
they picked the wrong one to fight."

Another lawsuit may be filed soon. A 75-year-old grandmother known as Jane
Doe, who alleges she was given LSD and electroshock therapy while an inmate
at the Kingston jail in the 1960s, says she intends to bring a class-action
suit on behalf of other prisoners. She is asking Ontario's Superior Court
to grant her anonymity before she begins.

The question of consent has become key as the issue unfolds.

By the early 1960s, electroshock therapy had become widely accepted by
psychiatrists as a relatively low-risk treatment for a small group of
disorders linked to depression, wrote the McGill investigators Gilmore and
Somerville.

Carefully obtaining written, informed consent from inmates was a
prerequisite for the therapy by that time, they wrote, and it required
explaining the purpose of the treatment along with its potential benefits
and risks.

At 17, Proctor wasn't at the age of consent, and it's unknown whether LSD
treatments might have affected her ability to agree to shock therapy, they
added.

If medical staff were trying to control inmates' behaviour through drug use
and shock therapy, it likely wasn't justified even by the ethical standards
of the time, they wrote.

Even before research guidelines were introduced into the prison system,
general medical research had guidelines. In 1948, the Nuremberg Code was
developed in response to the experimental horrors of Nazi Germany and
required anyone serving as a research subject to give free and informed
consent.

Toronto lawyer James Newland, who represents Proctor and Jane Doe, argues
that inmates are never able to freely give consent because they are locked
in oppressive environments where their well-being depends on measuring up
to the expectations of their keepers.

The problem was also recognized by prison officials as early as 1949.

"No shock treatments were given during May as we are waiting for word from
the Dep't. in regard to the necessity of having signed permission from the
convict that requires treatment," Kingston Penitentiary psychiatrist C. M.
Crawford wrote on June 6, 1949.

"These patients are almost never in a position to say," he added.

Clearly, prison doctors at the time had their hands full. Psychiatric-ward
reports of the era paint a heart-wrenching picture of inmates drinking Fly
Tox and attempting hangings, stuffing their ears with toilet paper or
prying teeth out with a spoon.

"I don't have any sympathy for them (prison doctors)," Proctor says.
"Ethics are ethics. Ethics are a state of mind.

"If you had good intentions and were going to experiment on somebody, you
wouldn't come into (segregation) and (treat) an inmate in that shape. You
would immediately demand their release, get them to hospital and get them
cleaned up, fed and healthy.

"And then you would have a conversation with them about what you wanted to
do."