Operation Whitecoat

Operation Whitecoat was a U.S. Army research program at Fort Detrick, Maryland, the center of American biological weapons work. Between 1954 and 1973 about 2,300 young men, nearly all Seventh-day Adventists drafted into the Army who refused to bear arms for religious reasons, volunteered to be exposed to infectious agents. They inhaled or were injected with organisms causing Q fever, tularemia and other diseases, sometimes after receiving experimental vaccines, so that doctors could measure infection, symptoms and protection. In one 1955 trial, volunteers sat outdoors at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah while a cloud of Q fever organisms was released upwind.¹²

Unlike many Cold War experiments, Whitecoat asked for written informed consent, and men could withdraw. The Adventist church, which encouraged noncombatant service, cooperated with the Army, and the volunteers saw the work as a way to serve without killing. No participant is known to have died. The program helped develop vaccines and treatments for diseases including Q fever, tularemia and Venezuelan equine encephalitis, and ended in 1973 when the draft did. Later questions about long term health effects and the ethics of the church's role have kept it under discussion.¹²³