Just Killing Time

💊 On July 15, 1962, The Washington Post called FDA reviewer Dr. Frances Kelsey a hero for keeping thalidomide off the U.S. market. What that front page left out: Richardson-Merrell of Cincinnati had already distributed more than 2.5 million thalidomide tablets as "investigational samples" to more than 1,200 American doctors, with no approval, no patient tracking, and no list for the government to check. 🕯️

In Episode 44 of Just Killing Time, Elizabeth Stanton follows the trail from a small town in Germany, to a Cincinnati sales force, to the front page of the Post, and to the American survivors still asking someone to admit what happened to them. 🔦

🔎 IN THIS EPISODE

⏱️ How a German sleeping pill sold as safe for pregnant women reached the U.S.

⏱️ Why 1960 FDA law judged only safety, ran on a 60-day clock, and let companies hand out samples without telling the agency

⏱️ What Dr. Frances Kelsey actually did, and why she kept saying "incomplete"

⏱️ The salesmen, the missing records, and a "trial" that never tracked patients

⏱️ The four months between Germany's recall and Merrell's

⏱️ How Senator Estes Kefauver's staff, Dr. Helen Taussig, and reporter Morton Mintz turned a bureaucrat into a legend

⏱️ The 1962 Kefauver-Harris Amendments

⏱️ The American survivors the official count of 17 may have missed

❓ QUICK ANSWERS

Was thalidomide ever approved in the U.S.? No, but it was legally distributed to doctors as an investigational sample before 1962.

How many doctors got it? Merrell reported 1,231 to the FDA. Other counts run 1,248 and 1,267; the Chicago Tribune says roughly 1,200.

How many American babies? The standard figure is 17. Survivors and researcher Jennifer Vanderbes dispute it.

What changed? The 1962 law required proof a drug works, FDA approval, reporting of side effects, and informed consent in trials.

 🗓️ TIMELINE

1957: Contergan launches in West Germany

Aug 1960: Frances Kelsey starts at the FDA; Kevadon application arrives that September

Nov 1961: Grünenthal pulls the drug in Germany

Mar 1962: Merrell recalls its tablets and withdraws the application

Jul 15, 1962: The Washington Post front page

Oct 10, 1962: Kefauver-Harris Amendments signed

📚 SOURCES

• Morton Mintz, "'Heroine' of FDA Keeps Bad Drug Off Market," The Washington Post, July 15, 1962 (Nieman Reports reprint)

• JFK Presidential Library, News Conference 40, Aug. 1, 1962

• Chicago Tribune, "Invisible victims," March 29, 2020

• TIME, "Medicine: The Thalidomide Disaster," Aug. 1962; "Drugs: Thalidomide on Trial," 1968

• AMA Journal of Ethics, July 2001

• Discover Magazine, "The Heroine of the FDA"

• Smithsonian Magazine, "The Woman Who Stood Between America and Epidemic Birth Defects"

• Lost Women of Science / Scientific American, "Medical Sleuthing Identified the Dangers of Thalidomide"

• USA Thalidomide Survivors, usthalidomide.org

• FDA, "Kefauver-Harris Amendments Revolutionized Drug Development"

• UPI, "Thalidomide maker issues apology," Sept. 1, 2012

• Austrian Parliament chronology of the Contergan case

• Journal Netzwerk FGF 14, "40 years later: health related quality of life of women affected by thalidomide"

• Medical History (Cambridge), "Before thalidomide: Heinrich Mückter and the Nazi typhus complex" (2026)

⚠️ Sources disagree on several counts and dates; the episode flags them. Opinions are labeled as Elizabeth's opinion.

 🕯️ Have a family story about a "sample" drug or an unexplained birth defect? Share it and we may read it on a future episode.

🎧 Subscribe so you never miss a story. 📱 TikTok & Instagram: @just.killing.time.pod

#JustKillingTime #Thalidomide #FrancesKelsey #FDA #TrueCrimePodcast #HiddenHistory #Conspiracy #MedicalHistory #KefauverHarris

💉 Episode 43: The Swine Flu Fiasco (1976), the pandemic that never came.

One Army recruit died. The U.S. government vaccinated tens of millions of Americans. The predicted pandemic never arrived. Reports of a rare paralysis did. 

😳 It starts on Monday, February 7, 1977, when CDC director Dr. David Sencer is told his career is over in front of cameras nobody meant to invite. Then we rewind eleven months to find out how it happened.

⏪ 🔎 IN THIS EPISODE 

• Fort Dix, New Jersey, a bet between two doctors, and Private David Lewis 🪖 

• Sencer's "action memo": 213 million people, $134 million, and no exit plan📄 

• The Cabinet Room, where President Ford asks for a show of hands 🖐️

 • "This is not a problem": the liability warning that was ignored, the insurers who refused, and the Swine Flu Act (Public Law 94-380) ⚖️ 

• Pittsburgh, nine states pause, and the arithmetic of coincidence 📉 

• Guillain-Barré syndrome (GEE-yan bah-RAY) and the December 16 decision to stop 🔦 

• Claims, lawsuits, and the court ruling that the government had a duty to warn 🏛️ 

• The 1977 "Russian flu" and the unproven lab-origin hypothesis 🧪 

⚠️ This story has been told for fifty years as a punchline, and the numbers drift. Where sources disagree, I say so. Where I could not confirm a detail, I say that plainly. My opinions are labeled as mine. 

🗣️ "We felt we were sitting on a bomb." "Sencer was canned for doing his job." "When lives are at stake, it is better to err on the side of overreaction than underreaction." 

❓ QUICK ANSWERS Did the 1976 swine flu pandemic happen? No. According to the official history, the virus was found at Fort Dix: one death, 13 hospitalized, and up to 500 recruits possibly infected. A later study counted more than 200. Who was David Sencer? CDC director from 1966 to 1977, removed in February 1977 and later New York City's health commissioner. What was the Swine Flu Act? Public Law 94-380, signed August 12, 1976, which let people sue the government instead of vaccine makers after insurers refused coverage. How many people got Guillain-Barré syndrome? The 1979 Schonberger study counted 1,098 cases during the vaccination period, 532 of them in vaccinated people, an attributable risk just under 1 per 100,000. The 2003 Institute of Medicine review found a small increased risk. Death counts vary by source and I could not confirm one, so I say that on the mic. How many claims were filed? As of October 2, 1980, 3,965 claims and 1,384 lawsuits, with about $13.2 million paid, per a GAO summary. 

🧠 Why it matters: the 1976 program shaped the vaccine injury compensation systems we still have, including the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and the PREP Act. Government failure is not always a villain in a dark room. Sometimes it is a plan with no off-ramp and a risk handed to the public. 

🔔 Follow the show for two new true crime, conspiracy and hidden history episodes every week, and leave a review to help other curious listeners find us.

📚 SOURCES 

• Neustadt & Fineberg, The Swine Flu Affair (1978, HEW) 

• Sencer & Millar, "Reflections on the 1976 Swine Flu Vaccination Program," Emerging Infectious Diseases, Jan. 2006 

• CDC summaries of the 1976 program and Petty v. United States 

• U.S. GAO claims figures via GlobalSecurity.org 

• Schonberger et al., 1979, Guillain-Barré syndrome and the National Influenza Immunization Program 

• Institute of Medicine, 2003, vaccine safety review 

• Rozo & Gronvall, mBio, 2015, the 1977 H1N1 strain

 • Burke & Schleunes, 2024 

• Congressional Research Service overview of vaccine injury compensation • New York Times, Feb. 13 and 20, 1976 

🎙️ Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton: truth, crime, conspiracy and a little hidden history sprinkled in.

#SwineFlu #CDC #VaccineHistory #HiddenHistory #TrueCrime #Conspiracy #JustKillingTime 

🦷 Why is fluoride in America's water and toothpaste? Episode 42 tells the true history of water fluoridation: a Colorado dentist, an Alcoa chemist, Grand Rapids in 1945, Crest toothpaste, and the 2026 court fight. 💧

At 4:00 p.m. on January 25, 1945, fluoride went into the water of Grand Rapids, Michigan, and a whole city became an experiment. 😳 It was planned to run fifteen years. Five years in, the government endorsed it anyway. From there the story runs through a 30-year dental mystery, an aluminum company's lab, a control city that quit, and the toothpaste on your sink.

This episode follows the money, the paperwork and the people who asked questions, and keeps documented fact separate from claims that are still argued. Both sides get heard: the ADA and CDC on one hand, the NTP review and the court fight on the other.

🔎 WHAT YOU'LL HEAR

🦷 Dr. Frederick McKay and "Colorado Brown Stain," 1901

⚗️ Alcoa chemist H. V. Churchill finds fluoride in Bauxite, Arkansas, 1931

📏 Dr. H. Trendley Dean, the 1 ppm threshold and the 21 Cities study

🏭 The contested industry thread: Kettering Laboratory, the Manhattan Project and Christopher Bryson's The Fluoride Deception

☢️ Harold Hodge and the plutonium injections (brief)

🧪 The four fluoridation trials: Grand Rapids, Newburgh, Brantford, Evanston

⚖️ A 1950 endorsement mid-experiment, and a control city that quit

🪧 Stevens Point, the John Birch Society and Dr. Strangelove

🪥 Crest, Muhler and Nebergall, and why fluoride is STILL in toothpaste

📜 2024 to 2026: NTP review, Judge Chen, Ninth Circuit, Utah, Florida, RFK Jr., EPA, FDA

 📌 QUICK FACTS

• First fluoridated city: Grand Rapids, January 25, 1945.

• Cause of Colorado Brown Stain identified by an Alcoa chemist in 1931.

• Public Health Service endorsement: June 1950, five years into a 15-year trial.

• Control city Muskegon began fluoridating: July 1951.

• First ADA-accepted fluoride toothpaste: Crest, 1960.

• Toothpaste poison-control warning required: April 1997.

• 2024 Cochrane review (157 studies): water fluoridation's benefit appears smaller since toothpaste became common.

• 2024 NTP review: moderate-confidence link between fluoride above 1.5 mg/L and lower IQ in children; insufficient data at 0.7 mg/L.

• May 21, 2026: Ninth Circuit vacated the ruling ordering EPA action, without deciding if 0.7 mg/L is safe.

 ❓ QUESTIONS THIS EPISODE ANSWERS

• Why is fluoride still in toothpaste? The ADA's 2010 recommendations say the topical effect is now believed to be the predominant one, and toothpaste is regulated as an over-the-counter drug with a warning label.

• Did a court rule fluoridated water unsafe? Judge Edward Chen said so in 2024. The Ninth Circuit vacated the ruling on procedural grounds in May 2026.

• Who found the cause of Colorado Brown Stain? Alcoa's chief chemist, H. V. Churchill, after dentist Frederick McKay chased it for thirty years.

 ⚠️ History and public debate only, not medical advice. Ask your dentist or doctor about fluoride. Documented fact, contested claims and Elizabeth's labeled opinions are kept separate.

📚 SOURCES

NIDCR, The Story of Fluoridation (nidcr.nih.gov) • CDC, Timeline for Community Water Fluoridation (cdc.gov) • Science History Institute, Pipe Dreams (sciencehistory.org) • ADA, Fluoridation Facts (ebooks.ada.org) • Colorado Dental Association (cdaonline.org) • Democracy Now!, Bryson interview, 2004 (democracynow.org) • Longworth review, The Plutonium Files (journals.sagepub.com) • National Inventors Hall of Fame (invent.org) • Indiana Public Media (indianapublicmedia.org) • PolitiFact (politifact.com) • University of Manchester (manchester.ac.uk) • ADA News (adanews.ada.org) • E&E News (eenews.net) • Beveridge & Diamond (bdlaw.com) • HHS and FDA (hhs.gov) • CareQuest (carequest.org) • WHO Bulletin (scielosp.org)

🕯️ Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton: truth, crime, conspiracy and a little hidden history sprinkled in. Email us your Time Killer Files at [email protected]

🧼🕯️ Episode 41: In 1847, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis cut deaths in a Vienna maternity ward from 18.3% to 2.2% with a basin of chlorinated lime. The medical establishment ruined him anyway. This is the true story behind the Semmelweis reflex.

At the end of July 1865, a Hungarian professor boarded an overnight train thinking he was headed to a German spa. Colleagues delivered him to a Vienna asylum instead. Within two weeks he was dead of blood poisoning, the very kind of infection he had spent his career fighting. 😳

A deep dive for fans of true crime, medical history, conspiracy and hidden history. Host Elizabeth Stanton takes you inside the free maternity wards of Vienna General Hospital, where poor women begged on their knees to avoid the doctors' clinic.

🔎 INSIDE THIS EPISODE

🏥 The 1840 decrees that sorted women into two clinics (9.9% vs 3.9% average fever deaths, 1841 to 1846)

⚰️ How Dr. Jakob Kolletschka's death in 1847 cracked the case📉 18.3% in April 1847, 2.2% in June, 1.27% for 1848

🏛️ The Ministry of Education and a career stalled by politics

📜 Hidden history: Alexander Gordon (1795), Oliver Wendell Holmes (1843) and Charles Meigs

✉️ The furious open letters and 1,924 avoidable deaths he counted

🔒 The last fourteen days, and an exhumation study that stops mid-sentence

 ❓ QUICK ANSWERS

Who was Ignaz Semmelweis? A Hungarian-born obstetrician (1818 to 1865) who ordered handwashing with chlorinated lime at Vienna General Hospital in 1847.

What is the Semmelweis reflex? Rejecting new evidence out of hand because it threatens what people already believe.

Was he first? No. Gordon argued in 1795 that attendants spread childbed fever, and Holmes in 1843.

How did he die? August 13, 1865, of pyaemia from a gangrenous wound on his right hand. Where the wound began is disputed.

Why was he rejected? Rivals like Johann Klein explained the results away, the Austrian Ministry of Education turned down his teaching post, and his book and open letters gave critics an easy target.

🌍 WHY IT STILL MATTERS: The WHO's modern hand hygiene guidance traces back to his idea of cleaning hands between patients. One review says hand hygiene alone can cut healthcare-associated infections by about half. 🧼

⚖️ Sources disagree on several details, and the episode says so out loud. Host opinion is always labeled as opinion.

🔑 Topics: Semmelweis, childbed fever, Vienna General Hospital, Alexander Gordon, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Charles Meigs, 19th century medicine.

💬 Have a family story about a doctor or hospital? Email Elizabeth with your own Time Killer Files. Follow @just.killing.time.pod

 📚 SOURCES

AJOG, "Ignaz Semmelweis: the Savior of Mothers": ajog.org/article/S0002-9378(18)30943-8/fulltext

Britannica: britannica.com/print/article/534198

Science History Institute: sciencehistory.org/education/scientific-biographies/ignaz-semmelweis/

Sinclair (1909): library.hungaricana.hu/en/view/KlasszikusOrvosiKonyvek_269/?pg=260

British Journal of Psychiatry, "Epidemics: wash your hands!": cambridge.org/core/journals/the-british-journal-of-psychiatry

Orvostörténeti Közlemények 55-56 (1970): library.hungaricana.hu/en/view/ORSZ_ORVO_OK_1970_055_056/?pg=107

J R Soc Med: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1299347

Holmes essay (PMC): pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2675443

Iowa Heirs of Hippocrates: heirs.lib.uiowa.edu/record.php?id=1744

Encyclopedia.com (DSB): encyclopedia.com/people/medicine/medicine-biographies/ignaz-philipp-semmelweis

NYRB, "The Fool of Pest": nybooks.com/articles/2004/02/26/the-fool-of-pest/

Check Your Fact: checkyourfact.com/2022/01/05/fact-check-hand-washing-inventor-insane-asylum

Hektoen International: hekint.org/2020/10/08/can-behavioral-variant-frontotemporal-dementia-salvage-semmelweis/

Hand hygiene review: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6053623/

 #Semmelweis #HandWashingHistory #ChildbedFever #HiddenHistory #MedicalHistory #JustKillingTime

🔪 "I suggested them not tell Howard anything about it." A doctor wrote that about a 12-year-old boy in 1960, days before a steel instrument was tapped through the bone above his eye with a hammer. The fee: $200. 🧠

This is the true story of the lobotomy and the part schools skip: it wasn't a hidden horror. Medical journals praised it, newspapers put it on the front page, state hospitals and the Veterans Administration used it, and a Nobel Prize committee honored it. 👏

🕯️ This episode is dedicated to my grandmother, Viola Reese.

🎧 Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton: your night light for the stories that keep us up at night. Truth, crime, conspiracies, and a little hidden history.

🔎 IN THIS EPISODE

Egas Moniz (EH-gahsh moo-NEESH) wins the 1949 Nobel Prize for leucotomy (loo-KOT-uh-mee). It has never been rescinded.

📍 The first U.S. lobotomy, Sept 14, 1936: a woman from Topeka, Kansas

👑 Rosemary Kennedy, 1941, and the secret her family kept

🧊 The kitchen ice pick, the grapefruit, and Dr. Walter Freeman's transorbital (trans-OR-bit-ul) method

🩺 "Operation Ice Pick": 228 operations in West Virginia, July 1952

🎖️ The VA's "Lobotomy Files": about 2,000 veterans

🚐 The Lobotomobile myth, and what the Soviet ban really said

🏥 Oklahoma psychiatric care in the 1940s and 50s, and one family's story of shock treatment

🕯️ Howard Dully, who read his own file after 44 years

❓ QUICK ANSWERS

Who invented the lobotomy? Egas Moniz, Lisbon, 1935. Freeman and James Watts brought it to the U.S. in 1936.

How many Americans were lobotomized? Roughly 40,000. Freeman performed about 3,400 to 3,500 himself, in 23 states.

When did it end? Thorazine arrived in 1954. Freeman's last operation was in 1967, and the patient died.

💬 REAL VOICES

A father: "I was sold a bill of goods." A daughter: "It was just peace." A WWII pilot lobotomized at a VA hospital: "mentally injured, not mentally ill." And Howard Dully: "I know my lobotomy didn't touch my soul." Where sources disagree on dates or numbers, we say so out loud.

📊 KEY FACTS

• 1937: psychiatric patients filled 55% of U.S. hospital beds

• Freeman's patients included at least 19 people under 18

• In Cherokee, Iowa, 3 of 25 patients died in one 1951 visit

• West Virginia, 1952: 25 women in a single day, $25 each

• The U.S. peak was 1949, with 5,074 lobotomies in one year

🔍 TOPICS: history of lobotomy, Walter Freeman ice pick lobotomy, Howard Dully My Lobotomy, Egas Moniz Nobel Prize, transorbital lobotomy, Rosemary Kennedy lobotomy, VA lobotomies of veterans, electroshock history, psychiatric hospital history, Kansas history, hidden history podcast, true crime podcast.

🕯️ Stay for the ending. It's personal, and it starts in Kansas.

▶️ If this episode made you angry, share it. Stories like this only survive when people pass them on.

📚 SOURCES

• NPR, "My Lobotomy: Howard Dully's Journey" (2005) and "A Lobotomy Timeline"

• Jack El-Hai, The Lobotomist; el-hai.com

• Howard Dully with Charles Fleming, My Lobotomy (2007)

• Michael M. Phillips, "The Lobotomy Files," Wall Street Journal, Dec 13, 2013

• Elliot Valenstein, Great and Desperate Cures (1986)

• Mical Raz, The Lobotomy Letters; Kate Clifford Larson, Rosemary

• Nobel Prize Foundation (nobelprize.org), Egas Moniz

• Bull Hist Med 2017;91(1):33-61 (Soviet ban)

• Kansas Historical Society, Menninger Foundation records

• KOSU, "The History of Mental Health Care in Oklahoma"; NLM, Mike Gorman profile; Asylum Projects, Norman State Hospital

• Kelly J. Sullivan, smallstatebighistory.com; Mental Floss; Freeman, JAMA, 1953

⚠️ Content note: medical detail of historical brain surgery, including on children. Host opinions are labeled as opinion. Not medical advice.

 🔔 Follow, rate, and share this with someone who stays up late with you. Did a relative spend time in a state hospital or VA ward? Send us your Time Killer Files.

#lobotomy #WalterFreeman #medicalhistory #hiddenhistory #truecrimepodcast #HowardDully

🧬 Who was Henrietta Lacks? In 1951, a 31-year-old Black mother of five went to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore for cervical cancer treatment. While she was under anesthesia, a surgeon took two small tissue samples that no one had asked her about. One of them grew in a lab when no human cells ever had. Those cells, called HeLa, are still alive today, and they have been used in research on polio, cancer, viruses, HPV and genetics. Her family was not told for decades. This is the full story. 🎙️

In this deep-dive episode of Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton, we follow Henrietta Lacks from a tobacco farm in Clover, Virginia, to a segregated ward in Baltimore, and then follow her cells around the world.

🔎 WHAT YOU'LL HEAR

• How a rookie reporter in 1974 found the scrawl "HELEN LANE LIVES" on a bathroom wall and unraveled a hidden name

• Henrietta's life as Loretta Pleasant, a mother of five in Turner Station, Maryland

• Dr. Howard Jones's notes on a tumor that looked like "grape Jello"

• What a radium treatment actually involved in 1951

• How George Gey and Mary Kubicek discovered the first immortal human cells

• Her death on October 4, 1951, and the red toenail polish that changed how a lab technician saw the cells

• The Tuskegee HeLa cell factory that helped test the Salk polio vaccine

• The "HeLa bomb," contaminated cell lines, and a scientific cover name

• The Lacks family's story: blood draws that felt like a cancer test, and Elsie's death at Crownsville

• The BTK connection: a daughter's stored Pap smear and the police warrant that used it 🕯️

• Moore v. Regents, the 2013 HeLa genome, the NIH-Lacks Family Agreement, the WHO award, and lawsuits against Thermo Fisher, Ultragenyx, Novartis and Viatris ⚖️

❓ QUICK ANSWERS

Was it legal? Sources agree taking the tissue was legal in the 1950s. Johns Hopkins says it never sold or patented HeLa cells.

Why "Helen Lane"? A scientist told Rolling Stone no one was sure how that name caught on.

Was she ever paid? No. Her estate has since settled confidentially with Thermo Fisher (2023), Novartis (2026) and Viatris (2026). The Ultragenyx case was active as of April 2026.

📌 KEY FACTS

• Born August 1, 1920, in Roanoke, Virginia; died October 4, 1951, at age 31

• HeLa cells double about every 20 to 24 hours (Johns Hopkins)

• About 20,000 tubes of HeLa cells a week were produced at Tuskegee at the peak of polio vaccine testing

• WHO posthumous award: October 13, 2021

🩺 WHY IT MATTERS

Johns Hopkins calls the 1951 collection of her cells an acceptable and legal practice for the time, says it never sold or patented HeLa, and says it could and should have done more to inform her family. In this episode, documented facts are kept separate from my opinions, and my opinions are labeled as opinion. Where sources disagree on a date or a number, I say so out loud.

💬 TIME KILLER FILES: Ever wonder what happened to a sample taken at your doctor's office? Email me your story and tell me what you think.

📚 SOURCES

• Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010)

• Johns Hopkins Medicine, "The Legacy of Henrietta Lacks"

• Britannica, "Henrietta Lacks"

• Embryo Project Encyclopedia (Arizona State University)

• Johns Hopkins Magazine, "Immortal Cells, Enduring Issues"

• Rolling Stone, "The Double-Edged Helix" (1976)

• NIH, "The NIH-Lacks Family Agreement"

• WHO news release, October 13, 2021

• Moore v. Regents, 51 Cal.3d 120 (1990)

• Lacks v. Ultragenyx, D. Md., Civ. No. DLB-23-2171

• Gartler, Nature 217:750 (1968)

• Brown & Lowenberg, Stanford J. of Law, Science & Policy (2009)

• 42 CFR 493.1105

• Seeger Weiss LLP case page (April 2026)

• NPR, PBS, CNN, AP, STAT News

🔔 Follow the show so you never miss an episode. 🎧 New episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and iHeartRadio. Follow @just.killing.time.pod on TikTok and Instagram.

#HenriettaLacks #HeLaCells #HiddenHistory #TrueCrime #BTK #JustKillingTime #KeepTheLightOn

Before there was Tuskegee's whistleblower, there was Guatemala — and almost nobody knew about it for 60 years. 🩺

Between 1946 and 1948, the U.S. Public Health Service — under Dr. John C. Cutler — deliberately infected more than 1,300 Guatemalan prisoners, sex workers, soldiers, psychiatric patients, and orphaned children with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid, without consent, to test venereal disease prevention methods for American soldiers.

In this episode of Just Killing Time, Elizabeth Stanton walks through:

🔎 The failed Indiana prison experiment that led researchers to Guatemala

🔎 The direct inoculation methods used — including injections at the base of the skull

🔎 The staggering fact that this ran the SAME YEAR the Nuremberg Code was written to prevent exactly this kind of experimentation

🔎 How historian Susan Reverby uncovered it by accident in 2003

🔎 President Obama's 2010 apology to Guatemala's president

🔎 The lawsuits that never resulted in a single dollar of compensation

🔎 The chilling fact that Dr. Cutler later worked on the Tuskegee Syphilis Study too

This is truth, crime, conspiracy, and hidden history — the version of American history that doesn't make it into a textbook.

🕯️ "This is Just Killing Time, I am your host Elizabeth Stanton, this is a podcast about truth, crime, conspiracy, and a little hidden history sprinkled in."

📚 SOURCES: Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues ("Ethically Impossible," 2011) • Susan Reverby, Journal of Policy History (2011) • CDC review of the John C. Cutler Papers • National Archives at Atlanta • PBS NewsHour • Al Jazeera • Baltimore Sun • CourtListener.com case records • National Library of Medicine (PMC)

💌 Got a hidden history or true crime lead? Send it in for the Time Killer Files.

🔔 Follow Just Killing Time on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and iHeartRadio so you never miss an episode.

#JustKillingTime #GuatemalaExperiment #HiddenHistory #TrueCrime #MedicalHistory #TimeKillers

🩸 They called it "bad blood." It was syphilis — and the U.S. government let it run untreated in 600 Black men for 40 years, on purpose.

Episode 37 of Just Killing Time takes you inside the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, the U.S. Public Health Service's 1932–1972 experiment in Macon County, Alabama that has become the defining case study in American medical ethics and government betrayal. Host Elizabeth Stanton walks through the real, documented history: what syphilis and "bad blood" actually meant medically and culturally in the Jim Crow South, the brutal mercury-and-arsenic treatments doctors used before penicillin existed, and exactly how — and why — the government let a curable disease run its full course in human beings who trusted them.

🔍 What you'll learn in this episode:

• Why Dr. Thomas Parran's 1929 report named Macon County the "ideal location" for a no-treatment syphilis study

• The real folk-medicine meaning of "bad blood," and how the government weaponized a trusted local term

• The actual medicine dangled in front of these men — arsenicals, bismuth, mercury, and the deceptive "Last Chance for Special Free Treatment" letters• Nurse Eunice Rivers, the Black public health nurse whose complicated 40-year role in the study is still debated by historians

• Whistleblower Peter Buxtun, who was ignored for six years before AP reporter Jean Heller broke the story in 1972

• The $10 million settlement, the National Research Act, the Belmont Report, and how they built the informed-consent rules that govern medicine today

• President Clinton's 1997 apology and survivor Herman Shaw's response, in his own words

• Why public health officials still cite Tuskegee today when explaining medical mistrust in Black communities

This is hidden history — fully documented, apologized for by a sitting U.S. president, and still barely covered in American classrooms. 📖

📚 Sources cited on-air include: Britannica; HISTORY.com; The Washington Post; James H. Jones's "Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment"; The American Scholar; BET News (Jean Heller interview); OJIN: The Online Journal of Issues in Nursing; Harvard's Schlesinger Library Black Women Oral History Project; The Baltimore Sun; the Clinton White House Archives official transcript; Encyclopedia of Alabama; and Actas Dermo-Sifiliográficas.

❓ Quick facts for anyone searching this case: The Tuskegee Syphilis Study ran from 1932 to 1972 in Macon County, Alabama. It involved 600 Black men — 399 with syphilis, 201 without, as a control group. Researchers told participants they had "bad blood" rather than disclosing their actual diagnosis. At least 28 men died directly of syphilis, roughly 100 more died of related complications, 40 wives were infected, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis. The study ended after AP journalist Jean Heller's 1972 exposé, and President Clinton formally apologized to survivors in 1997.

💬 Time Killers, this one is heavy — I want to know what stood out to you. Send your thoughts, and if you've got a case for a future Time Killer Files segment, you know where to find me.

🎙️ Just Killing Time is a true crime, conspiracy, and hidden history podcast hosted by Elizabeth Stanton. New episodes cover the cases and cover-ups your history class skipped — the stuff that's HIS-story, not history.

Thank you for killing time with me today. 🖤

#Tuskegee #HiddenHistory #TrueCrime #MedicalHistory #GovernmentExperiments #JustKillingTime #TuskegeeSyphilisStudy #BlackHistory #MedicalEthics #ConspiracyPodcast

🪱 "The Germ of Laziness" — the hidden history of hookworm, the Rockefeller cover-up, and the disease America pretended it cured.

For three centuries, poor Southerners were dismissed as lazy, backward, and shiftless. The truth was a parasite: Necator americanus, the hookworm, quietly infecting an estimated 40% of the Southern population by the early 1900s. In this episode of Just Killing Time, host Elizabeth Stanton traces the story from Dr. Charles Wardell Stiles's 1902 discovery, through the New York Sun headline that branded hookworm "the germ of laziness," to the formation of the $1 million Rockefeller Sanitary Commission for the Eradication of Hookworm Disease in 1909.

🔎 Inside this episode: the internal Rockefeller memos that show administrator Wickliffe Rose deliberately hiding the Rockefeller name from Southern communities; the racial theories Stiles built into his own public health messaging; the "hookworm picnics," free dispensaries, and school catechisms used to fight the disease across 11 Southern states; and the uncomfortable truth uncovered in 2017 — a Baylor College of Medicine DNA study found hookworm still infecting residents of Lowndes County, Alabama, a discovery that triggered a 2021 Department of Justice civil rights investigation into the state's sanitation system.

This episode blends documented fact with Elizabeth's own labeled opinion and commentary — always clearly separated so you know exactly what's history and what's her take. Conspiracy, true crime, and hidden history fans: this one connects 1902 to 2025 in a way that will make you look at "the lazy South" stereotype completely differently.

🎙️ Just Killing Time is a true crime, conspiracy, and hidden history podcast hosted by Elizabeth Stanton, exploring the cases and cover-ups your history class skipped. Our schools teach HIS-story — the version those in power want remembered. This show tells the other version.

📩 Got a Time Killer Files story of your own? Email the show — every submission gets read.

📚 Sources: Facing South ("The Great Hookworm Crusade" by Allen Tullos); NOVA/PBS ("How a Worm Gave the South a Bad Name" by Rachel Nuwer); Hektoen International ("The Germ of Laziness"); Wikipedia and Encyclopedia.com (Charles Wardell Stiles biographical entries); Equal Justice Initiative; Baylor College of Medicine; American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (McKenna et al., 2017); Vice; Governing; The Guardian via PressReader; Duke University Bass Connections. Full citations in the show notes.

🔔 New episodes of Just Killing Time drop regularly — subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or iHeartRadio so you never miss one.

#JustKillingTime #HiddenHistory #Hookworm #RockefellerFoundation #TrueCrimePodcast #AmericanHistory #MedicalHistoryPodcast #SouthernHistory

🩺⚖️ "Contain and eliminate" — two words buried in a federal court record that expose one of the most stunning hidden-history stories in American medicine. In this deep-dive episode of Just Killing Time, Elizabeth Stanton uncovers the true, documented story of the American Medical Association's secret Committee on Quackery, formed in 1963 with one internal mission: destroy the chiropractic profession before it could grow.

This episode is lovingly dedicated to Elizabeth's husband, Dr. Jason Stanton — a practicing chiropractor for over 20 years before his retirement — whose entire career unfolded inside the long shadow of a documented medical conspiracy most patients never knew existed. ❤️

🕰️ THE STORY: From D.D. Palmer's very first chiropractic adjustment on deaf janitor Harvey Lillard in 1895 Davenport, Iowa, to B.J. Palmer's media empire, to Morris Fishbein's decades running JAMA and branding chiropractors "cultists," to the 1967 AMA ethics rule that made it professionally forbidden for a medical doctor to so much as refer a patient to a chiropractor — this episode traces the entire arc of a war most Americans have never heard about.

⚖️ THE LAWSUIT: In 1976, Chicago chiropractor Chester Wilk — armed with internal AMA documents leaked by a whistleblower he nicknamed "Sore Throat," a nod to Watergate's "Deep Throat" — filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against the AMA. Eleven years later, in 1987, U.S. District Judge Susan Getzendanner ruled against the AMA, finding it had engaged in an illegal boycott and conspiracy in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act. The ruling was upheld on appeal in 1990.

🧠 THE NUANCE: This episode doesn't just tell the satisfying half of the story — Elizabeth also covers Judge Getzendanner's own careful clarification that her ruling was about illegal conduct, NOT a scientific endorsement of chiropractic itself — and shares her own clearly-labeled personal opinion on why that distinction actually makes the ruling more credible, not less.

🗂️ FULL SOURCE LIST:

- Wilk v. American Medical Association, 671 F. Supp. 1465 (N.D. Ill. 1987), Justia Law

- Wilk v. American Medical Association, 895 F.2d 352 (7th Cir. 1990)

- Journal of Chiropractic Education — "Looking back at the lawsuit that transformed the chiropractic profession," Parts 4 and 5 (via PMC/NCBI and Meridian Allen Press)

- Chicago Reader — "Chiropractors vs. AMA"

- Dynamic Chiropractic — "Wilk vs. AMA: Was It Worth the Fight?"

- Chiropractic Economics — "Wilk v. AMA: Almost Thirty Years Later"

- Foundation for Chiropractic Progress — "Contain and Eliminate"

- Wikipedia — "History of Chiropractic," "Morris Fishbein," "Wilk v. American Medical Association," "William Harvey Lillard"

- Palmer College of Chiropractic Library — D.D. Palmer First Adjustment archival collection

🎙️ Just Killing Time with Elizabeth Stanton is a true crime, conspiracy, and hidden history podcast — because our schools teach us HIS-story, the version those in power want us focused on, not the true, documented history underneath it. 🔍

💬 Time Killers, email me your own family's chiropractic story for a future Time Killer Files segment!

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