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US Army Ordered To Notify Soldiers Used In Chemical Experiments

Naval History and Heritage Command
American troops approach Omaha Beach on D-Day, 6 June 1944. For more than 100 years, the United States Army tested chemicals on soldiers.

Starting in at least the 1920s, the U.S. Army recruited soldiers to test the effects of dangerous and powerful chemicals. 

In response to a lawsuit initially launched by Frank Rochelle, a North Carolina veteran, a judge has ruled that the Army must notify soldiers who participated in the studies and provide accompanying medical care. The Army has started contacted the soldiers but they are not disclosing the substances each soldier was exposed to.

Host Frank Stasio speaks with News & Observer senior reporter Martha Quillin about her coverage of the lawsuit and about the history of the human experimentation program. 

Laura Pellicer is a digital reporter with WUNC’s small but intrepid digital news team.
Longtime NPR correspondent Frank Stasio was named permanent host of The State of Things in June 2006. A native of Buffalo, Frank has been in radio since the age of 19. He began his public radio career at WOI in Ames, Iowa, where he was a magazine show anchor and the station's News Director.