Science is interesting and amazing, but it can involve some pretty weird and unpleasant things like experiments with "Pavlov's dog". Here is a list of scientific experiments that look creepy or downright insane to this day.
Be warned, reading this rating can make impressionable people nervous.
10. The Sand Flea Experiment
The sand flea or Tunga trimamillata is a parasite that lives in hot foreign countries. It hides under the skin of a warm-blooded host - such as a human - where it swells, defecates, and lays eggs.
Scientists know a lot about the disease caused by sand blocks (tungeosis), but their sex life has long been shrouded in mystery. However, a researcher living in Madagascar was so interested in the development of sand fleas that she allowed one of the parasites to live in her leg for 2 months. Her intimate observations paid off: she found that parasites are most likely to have sex when females are already inside their hosts.
9. Experiment with yellow fever
Stubbins Firff (1784-1820) was a University of Pennsylvania researcher obsessed with one particular scientific idea — and a very dangerous one. He was convinced that yellow fever was not contagious and went to extremes in trying to prove it.
Armed with only a sure blade and an incessant desire to find the truth, Firth cut his hand and rubbed the vomit of yellow fever patients into the incisions. The scientific community was not convinced, then the researcher dripped vomit into his eye, drank some vile liquid, fried it and inhaled the vapor, and - in the last act of madness - covered his body with blood, urine and saliva from infected patients.
Ultimately, Firff seemingly proved his theory as he didn't get sick. However, we now know that yellow fever is highly contagious if it enters the bloodstream directly, such as from a mosquito bite. In other words, Firf swallowed the infected vomit, but did not shed much light on the disease.
8. Experiments with blood for rejuvenation
One of the most evil and cruel women in history - Erzhebet Bathory - rumored to have bathed in the blood of young girls to preserve her own youth and beauty. But scientists from the University of California at Berkeley, studying the aging process, did not go as far as Erzhebet and used mice as rejuvenating donors.
Once the circulatory system of the old mouse was connected to the system of the younger mouse, the elderly rodent experienced positive changes in the muscles and brain.
But what if we take not mouse, but human blood for rejuvenation? And such an experiment was carried out by researchers from the Alkahest company. Twice a week, old mice were injected with the blood plasma of 18-year-olds.After such procedures, carried out for 3 weeks, the rodents have improved memory, they became more physically active and curious compared to their counterparts from the control group who did not receive injections.
While now is not the time to start asking your children for blood transfusions, scientists are eager to start clinical trials in humans.
7. Determining where fear lives in the brain
Fear is a pretty universal emotion. But where does it arise? And how does it feel to be truly fearless? Researchers attempted to answer the first question in 2011 when they studied a female patient, codenamed SM, who was not afraid. Her amygdala, a part of her brain believed to be the key to our experience of fear, was destroyed due to a genetic disorder.
Scientists showed SM the snakes and spiders she hated, took her to a haunted house, and made her watch scary movies. None of this made the woman scared.
However, in 2013, SM took part in the fear experiment again. This time, the researchers asked her to inhale carbon dioxide, which caused a feeling of suffocation. And this time she felt a panic attack. The results of this study showed that the amygdala is not the only part of the brain that generates fear, and that fear is indeed a universal emotion.
6. Experiments with the brain
University of Madrid graduate Jose Delgado was promoted to a prestigious professorship at Yale University, but his studies at the venerable institution's physiology department were odd because it dealt with mind control.
Delgado inserted electrode implants into the brains of primates and used a remote control to allow the animals to perform complex movements. Later, he implanted stimosiphera into the brains of the most aggressive bulls and sent signals to the caudate nucleus - the part of the brain responsible for coordinating the animal's movements.
However, Delgado did not limit himself to experiments on animals. He conducted experiments with human participation. Behaviorally, his device only worked on people's aggression, but he continued to strive for a way to achieve mind control, once stating, “We have to control the brain electronically. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electrical brain stimulation. ”
5. Project "MK-Ultra"
MKUltra is one of the most famous CIA projects to develop mind control methods that can be used for military purposes. For over ten years, from 1950 to 1970, researchers conducted illegal experiments on thousands of Americans who turned to the Allan Memorial Institute with various psychological problems (neuroses, anxiety, postpartum depression, etc.).
Using electroconvulsive therapy, drugs like LSD, and other forms of psychological torture, the agency tried to alter brain function and manipulate people's mental states. For example, subjects were put into a comatose state and were given to listen to recordings with repeated sounds or simple commands.
Key documentation related to the project was ordered to be completely destroyed, but in 1977 the Freedom of Information Act allowed more than 20,000 pages of the program to be published.
4. Experiment with a two-headed dog
Soviet and Russian biologist Vladimir Demikhov experimented with transplants of vital organs in animals, first by transplanting the heart and lungs, and then moving on to more difficult things: head transplants.
In 1954, Demikhov successfully transplanted the puppy's head, shoulders and front legs onto the neck of an adult shepherd. After the operation, both heads were active, eating and drinking, but a few days later the two-headed dog died. Demikhov repeated this frightening experiment several times, the life of the most successful experiment was one month.
3. Study of Tuskegee's syphilis
The study of all stages of syphilis, which was carried out in the American city of Tuskegee, is notorious for the inhuman attitude of experimenters towards the experimental subjects, who were people from poor black families.
Between 1932 and 1972, 600 people were enrolled in the project, including 399 people with latent syphilis and 201 healthy people as a control group. Under the supervision of US Public Health doctors, these people were given only placebos such as aspirin and vitamin supplements instead of being treated with penicillin, which was the recommended treatment for syphilis at the time.
The aim of the study was to understand the impact and spread of the disease on the human body. Due to the unethical actions of scientists, 28 participants died from syphilis, 100 people died from complications associated with the disease, and more than 40 spouses infected their wives, who, in turn, transmitted syphilis to their children at birth.
2. The experiments of Dr. Mengele
The name of Josef Mengele has forever gone down in the history of World War II as the name of one of the most terrible war criminals. The "Angel of Death", as Mengele was nicknamed in "Auschwitz," used living material - adults and children - for his experiments.
He conducted experiments such as changing the color of the cornea, performed surgeries without anesthesia, tried to create Siamese twins, anatomized living babies, studied the effects of oxygen starvation, electric shocks, extremely low and high temperatures on experimental subjects. In total, tens of thousands of people became victims of Mengele.
Mengele was not punished for his actions. After the end of World War II, he fled to Argentina, then to Paraguay and Brazil. In 1979 he drowned.
1. Experiments "Unit 731"
You may have heard of the creepy and inhuman experiments carried out by the Nazis during World War II. But they weren't alone.
A special squad of the Imperial Japanese Army has committed monstrous atrocities in the name of science, using prisoners of war and kidnapped people as guinea pigs.
The objective of Unit 731, led by Shiro Ishii, Doctor of Microbiology, was to develop biological weapons and was supported by Japanese universities and medical schools, which supplied doctors and research personnel with everything needed to conduct experiments.
Most of the worst scientific experiments in history involved the infection of prisoners of war with cholera, anthrax, plague, and other pathogens. Also, members of the "Unit 731" performed vivisection, organ removal, castration and abortions without anesthesia, and found out how long a person can live under the influence of various factors (frostbite, deprivation of food and water, exposure to X-rays, being in a high pressure chamber, etc. .).
Even children born to captured women took part in the experiments. For example, the Japanese have studied the transmission of syphilis from mother to child. Not a single child born in captivity, like other captives, survived after Unit 731 was disbanded in 1945.
After the end of World War II, the US administration provided safe passage for some of those associated with Unit 731 in exchange for the results of their experiments.