Cool USA Facts!

In 1950, the US Navy secretly infected over 800,000 residents of the San Fransisco Bay Area with Serratia marcescens, a human pathogen known to cause urinary and respiratory infections, during Operation Sea-Spray, in one of the largest human experiments in history. The residents of the area were not informed, making the event a serious violation of the Nuremberg Code on medical ethics. In the following month, 11 residents checked in at a local hospital with a rare urinary tract infection (one patient, Edward J. Nevin died as a result), and the area saw a spike in pneumonia cases. The military tested biological agents on US citizens in at least six other similar tests causing a variety of symptoms such as whooping cough throughout the 50s and 60s in Florida, the Midwest, New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania. 1