Online Book Links Torture Tests to Government

'Torture bible' details studies
By Colleen Barry,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 6, 2007 11:52 AM CDT
Online Book Links Torture Tests to Government
Jade Lai holds a sign as she listens to speakers at a rally protesting the American Psychological Association participating in military interrogations at Guantanamo Bay in San Francisco, Friday, Aug. 17, 2007. Psychologists will consider a measure banning members of their profession from working with...   (Associated Press)

A "torture bible" recently unearthed online indicates that the US government sanctioned and funded the torture of test subjects in psychological experiments in the '50s, apparently to perfect interrogation techniques, Boing Boing reports. The studies were commissioned by the government and involve methods "likely to be regarded as highly unethical," says a post by Xeni Jardin.

The seven projects in the 1961 book, The Manipulation of Human Behavior, researched brainwashing and interrogation techniques by giving people drugs, placing subjects in sensory deprivation situations and hypnotizing them, among other things. The book has not been reprinted but has been making the rounds online. (More torture stories.)

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