Donald Ewen Cameron

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Donald Ewen Cameron (1901-1967) was a Scottish-American psychiatrist. Born in Bridge of Allan, he graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1924.

Cameron lived and worked in Albany, New York, and was involved in experiments in Canada for Project MKULTRA, a United States based CIA-directed mind control program which eventually led to the publication of the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual.

Cameron was the author of the psychic driving concept which the CIA found particularly interesting. In it he described his theory on correcting madness, which consisted of erasing existing memories and rebuilding the psyche completely. After being recruited by the CIA, he commuted to Montreal every week to work at the Allan Memorial Institute of the McGill University, and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to carry out MKULTRA experiments there. The CIA appears to have given him the potentially deadly experiments to carry out, as they would be tried on non-US citizens. However, documents released in 1977 revealed that thousands of unwitting, as well as voluntary subjects, were tested on during that time period. These included United States citizens.^{[citation needed]}

In addition to LSD, Cameron also experimented with various paralytic drugs, as well as electroconvulsive therapy at 30 to 40 times the normal power. His "driving" experiments consisted of putting subjects into drug-induced coma for months on end (up to three in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple repetitive statements. His experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and post-partum depression, many of whom suffered permanently from his actions. His work in this field was inspired and paralleled by the British psychiatrist Dr William Sargant who carried out virtually identical experiments at St Thomas' Hospital, London and Belmont Hospital, Surrey, also without his patients' consent.

It was during this era that Cameron became known worldwide, serving as the second President of the World Psychiatric Association, as well as president of the American and Canadian psychiatric associations. He was also a member of the Nuremberg medical tribunal a decade earlier, where he accused German medics of things he himself did between 1934–60 or later, though his scientific work during World War II for the OSS has never been a secret.

[edit] Further reading

" I Swear By Apollo Dr. Ewen Cameron and the CIA-Brainwashing Experiments" by Don Gillmor
In the Sleep Room: The Story of CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada, Anne Collins, Lester & Orpen Dennys (Toronto), 1988.
Marks, John (1979). The Search for the Manchurian Candidate. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393307948.
Brainwash, Dominic Streatfeild, Thomas Dunne Books, 2007.
Father, Son and CIA, Harvey Weinstein, Goodread Biographies, 1990.
"The Shock Doctrine" , Naomi Klein, A. Knopf, 2007
" Journey into Madness: The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse", Gordon Thomas, Bantam, 1989