Lana’s father went to the hospital for asthma - but he was referred to another hospital - renowned Canadian psychiatric hospital, the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal - where they proceeded to secretly conduct experiments on him and hundreds of others over many years.

I had a vague recollection of hearing about the secret CIA brain-washing experiments of the 50s and 60s, but recently I was made aware of a class action lawsuit started by the surviving victims and their families. 

It turns out that in 1977 it emerged that the CIA had been funding experiments in mind-control brainwashing as part of a project known as MK Ultra.

At the time, the CIA was scrambling to deepen its understanding of brainwashing, after a handful of Americans captured during the Korean war had publicly praised communism and denounced the US. 

This so-called ‘research’ was undertaken at more than 80 institutions, including colleges and universities, prisons, and hospitals.

One of the doctors the CIA connected with, was Montreal psychiatrist Ewen Cameron, who was trying to discover whether doctors could erase a person’s mind and instill new patterns of behaviour.

Some of the things he did to his patients, like Lana’s father, are so horrible and unbelievable that it sounds like the stuff of b movie nightmares.

Patients were subjected to high-voltage electroshock therapy several times a day, forced into drug-induced sleeps that could last months and injected with megadoses of LSD.

Other experiments included sensory deprivation, isolation, verbal and sexual abuse and other forms of torture.

After reducing them to a childlike state – at times stripping them of basic skills such as how to dress themselves or tie their shoes – Dr Cameron would attempt to reprogram them by bombarding them with recorded messages for up to 16 hours at a time. First came negative messages about their inadequacies, followed by positive ones, in some cases repeated up to half a million times.

Dr Cameron couldn’t get his patients to listen to them enough so he put speakers in football helmets and locked them on their heads. Reportedly, patients were going crazy banging their heads into walls trying to escape the constant messages. 

So what does Dr Cameron do with these non-compliant medical experiments? He put them in a drug induced coma and so he could play the tapes as long as he wished.

Lana tells how the man her father was - successful and upwardly mobile in his career - was destroyed by these secret experiments. The effects reverberate throughout his family to this day. Lana’s father could no longer work, and they lived in poverty as her mother struggled to put food on the table --- and then she was required to pay for her husband’s shock therapy - as Lana says, her mother was paying for father’s torture.

SHOW NOTES:

Consumer Law Group for class action lawsuit.

Survivors Allied Against Government Abuse (SAAGA) for support and connection.

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Be my Guest

I am always looking for guests to share their medical error experiences so we help bring awareness and make patients safer.

If you are a survivor, a victim’s surviving family member, a health care worker, advocate, researcher or policy maker and you would like to share your experiences, please send me an email with a brief description:  [email protected] 

Need a Counsellor?

Like me, many of my clients at Remedies Counseling have experienced the often devastating effects of medical error.

If you need a counsellor for your experience with medical error, or living with a chronic illness(es), I offer online video counseling appointments.

**For my health and life balance, I limit my number of counseling clients.** 

Email me to learn more or book an appointment:  [email protected]

Scott Simpson: 

Counsellor + Patient Advocate + (former) Triathlete

I am a counsellor, patient advocate, and - before I became sick and disabled - a passionate triathlete. Work hard. Train hard. Rest hard.

I have been living with HIV since 1998. I was the first person living with HIV to compete at the triathlon world championships.

Thanks to research and access to medications, HIV is not a problem in my life.

I have been living with ME (myalgic encephalomyelitis) since 2012, and thanks in part to medical error, it is a big problem in my life.

Counseling / Research

I first became aware of the ubiquitousness of medical error during a decade of community based research working with the HIV Prevention Lab at Ryerson University, where I co-authored two research papers on a counseling intervention for people living with HIV, here and here. 

Patient participants would often report varying degrees of medical neglect, error and harms as part of their counseling sessions.

Patient Advocacy

I am co-founder of the ME patient advocacy non-profit Millions Missing Canada, and on the Executive Committee of the Interdisciplinary Canadian Collaborative Myalgic Encephalomyelitis Research Network.

I am also a patient advisor for Health Quality Ontario’s Patient and Family Advisory Council, and member of Patients for Patient Safety Canada.

Medical Error Interviews podcast and vidcast emerged to give voice to victims, witnesses and participants in this hidden epidemic so we can create change toward a safer health care system.

My golden retriever Gladys is a constant source of love and joy. I hope to be well enough again one day to race triathlons again. Or even shovel the snow off the sidewalk.