CBC Radio (National) THIS MORNING
Monday  November 09, 1998
Introduction/Interviewer:  Avril Benoit
Interviewer:   Rosie Rowbotham
Interview with:  Dorothy Proctor, Allen Hornblum,
Dr. George D. Scott

SECRET EXPERIMENTS ON CANADA'S CONVICTS

AVRIL BENOIT:
It is known that the U.S. government used prisoners as guinea pigs for often horrific experiments conducted in the name of commerce and science. Now there is growing concern over experiments on Canadian prisoners, experiments in sensory deprivation in which prisoners were placed in solitary confinement for weeks at a time. Experiments in pain tolerance using electric shocks and other experiments in which prisoners were given massive doses of LSD and other drugs without their knowledge nor their consent. Corrections Canada has investigated the matter and now a Federal Report calls the experiments "unethical, even by the standards of the day". One former inmate has launched a multi-million
dollar lawsuit against the doctors who used her as a human guinea pig and against Corrections Canada for allowing it to occur. The woman and one of  the doctors she is suing spoke with our Contributing Editor, Rosie Rowbotham, who joins me now:

AVRIL BENOIT: 
When did these experiments occur?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Well they started in the 1960's here in Canada and went as far
as the mid-1970's. It depends on which offender you are talking
to.

AVRIL BENOIT:
Which prisons did they occur in?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
They happened in Prison for Women [P4W], East Cell Block [ECB] inside Kingston Penitentiary and Millhaven.

AVRIL BENOIT:
How many prisoners were involved as guinea pigs?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
We're not sure of the exact number, but it is safe to say several dozens alone here in the Kingston area.

AVRIL BENOIT:
You spoke with several of them. What do they say about their experiences?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
I talked with both Canadian and American prisoners Avril, and some were ex-cons and some were still serving time. A few of the Canadians, one in particular, had served time in Raway (sp) Prison in New Jersey. His tale is of psychotropic drugs and eventually he has cirrhosis of the liver now, and is back doing time in Canada, and he is terminal, he is dying. Another Canadian who is doing time today talks about Millhaven ECB and he talks about sensory deprivation, shock therapy and many many types of drug experimentation. 

We talked about LSD experimentation. We are going to hear from one of the prisoners, a woman named Dorothy Proctor, in a few minutes. But I wanted to talk a little about America first.

AVRIL BENOIT:
Which is where the controversy started? How would you compare
then what happened here, to what happened in the States?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
In the USA there was a lot of experimentation with the pharmaceutical companies. They were using dioxins as a skin cream on many of the prisoners. Starting in the twenties, thirties and forties. Cancer cell injections, many things. 

In Canada the emphasis was more on drugs, especially LSD, shock therapy and isolation. But the important thing is that we came along and borrowed a lot of the idea from the USA because it is a perfect control group a prison population, for several reasons. Instead of an old folks' home or mental institution, they could report on what happens to these drugs, and so the experimentation gives them some results, some results they can follow.

AVRIL BENOIT:
You mean because they are lucid enough to tell you what they are experiencing.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
And the area is controlled where they are going, what they are eating.

AVRIL BENOIT:
And they can't leave.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
We have a completely controlled group.

AVRIL BENOIT:
Was it also the fact that many people of the time were absolutely
unsympathetic with prisoners, as many are still today?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Well, I would say it was back in the times, in the thirties and forties, I don't think anybody even gave a second thought about prisons or what was happening to them. Nobody was talking about it. I talked to an American author, Allen Hornblum. He has written a book about experiments on American prisoners called, ACRES OF SKIN. He went to Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia in the early 1970's as a literacy teacher, and this is what he saw there.

ALLEN HORNBLUM:
One of the things that immediately shocked me was the great number of inmates who had bandages and adhesive tape on their backs, on their chests, on their arms. I thought to myself, "is this from a prison riot, was there a fight on a cell block - I had no idea what it was." And the next day a guard told me, he said, " oh that's no big deal, that's just the experiments for the University of Pennsylvania. They are doing a perfume study." It turned out it was part of a very large research program by a famous doctor at the University of Pennsylvania.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
I understand the famous doctor you are talking about is Dr. Albert Kligman. How did he start off at Holmesburg? I understood this thing started off innocently enough.

ALLEN HORNBLUM:
That's right. Periodically there would be outbreaks of athlete's foot which you can imagine, in a large, unhealthy environment. Well, either a doctor or technician or pharmacist at the prison called Dr. Kligman and said we have this problem, take a look at it. He did come up, and when he walked through the front gates of Holmsburg I believe he was amazed by what he saw. As he said, what he saw before him were "acres of skin". He no longer, in my estimation, saw them as people or prisoners - he saw them as acres of skin which would be perfect for dermatologic study. He did in fact say, "He
felt like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time" and that these men represented an anthropoid colony perfect for dermatologic testing. He basically set up shop there. It ran from the very early fifties to the mid-seventies. 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
What is the worst thing that happened there, in your memories?

ALLEN HORNBLUM:
There are a number of them. One of things that makes the Holmesburg story unique is that so much was done there - it was really like a K-Mart of investigatory operations.  Holmesburg was like a university of research. They ran experiments on a cross-section of things on thousands of inmates for nearly twenty-five years. A
of it was very innocuous stuff, product testing. Hair dyes, lotions,
detergents, athlete's foot medication, eye drops, toothpaste, things of that nature.

They also did some more serious Phase One Testing - new drugs that were coming on the market. But worse and far more dangerous was the fact that Dr. Kligman was applying dioxin to the faces and backs of prisoners; injecting prisoners with radioactive isotopes; and for many years injecting prisoners with various chemical warfare agents for the Army and the CIA.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Now that wasn't just happening in Holmesburg. From reading your book, you talk about this expanding to other parts of the country.

ALLEN HORNBLUM:
That's right. Just about every state in America had at least one prison that was acting as a source for medical experimentation. We tend to see one prison focusing on one particular malady or problem over a short period of time. Pennsylvania, the state I am calling from, unfortunately had, in my estimation, the worst reputation. We had double to five times as many prisons involved and that is probably because the area of Philadelphia and South Jersey is such a hotbed for pharmaceutical companies and medical schools.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
But some of these are horror stories. Taking cancer cells and
injecting them in patients in Ohio State; having their testicles stuck in radioactive water as a test for sterilization. RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company testing for bladder cancer. It seemed to be out of control.

ALLEN HORNBLUM:
I think that's a good way to characterize it. And that's one of
the things I find so frustrating and outrageous. At the end of the War it was the United States (not Russia, not England, not France) that put the Nazi doctors on trial for what they did at Bergen Belsen, Auschwitz, Ravensbruk. We harangued those Nazi doctors, we lectured them, we found them guilty, we ultimately hung seven of them but at the same time we were doing that, in our own country we were injecting plutonium and uranium into unwitting hospital patients.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Didn't the Nazis say that at the trials at Nuremburg?

ALLEN HORNBLUM:
They did bring up the fact that the United States had used prisoners as test material. It surprised a lot of folks on the American side because they were not aware of it, but the Nazi doctors and their legal counsel became aware of it early in the trial, and they used it as exculpatory material. I am not sure it did them any good but what's worse in my estimation is after the trial we ended up doing up more of it rather than less of it.

AVRIL BENOIT:
American author, Allen Hornblum, talking with Rosie Rowbotham
about his book, ACRES OF SKIN: the human experiments at Holmesburg Prison, published by Rutledge.

Rosie, when Canadians started their own research on prisoners, did anyone raise any ethical objections?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
No, and at the time if they did, who would care if they did speak out?
These prisoners, again, were a perfect group to do experimentation on, especially when it comes to psychiatry.

AVRIL BENOIT:
You interviewed one woman, Dorothy Proctor, who has launched a five million dollar lawsuit against the doctors, and Corrections Canada. Tell me about her.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Well, she was born in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She had a fairly
tough upbringing. For her first adult crime she was sentenced
to three years for robbery at the age of seventeen. She was sent to the Kingston Prison for Women in 1961. This is what happened to her.

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Being a young girl and being labelled as a juvenile delinquent
I behaved as such. The authorities used my behaviour as an excuse to label me as a sociopath or a psychopath and that was just a label, that was just language they could put on paper so they could legitimately receive funding for the experiment. Now I know that I was being primed with sensory deprivation to prepare me for the other experiments. At that time I didn't know. I was told it was for disciplinary reasons. 

I was put in the Hole [solitary segregation] for all sorts of violations.
When I was in the Hole it was for twenty days or twenty-some days - but actually I used to go the Hole for fifty two days with just bread and water.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Tell us what that was like, being in the Hole for 52 days.

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
That was - what was it like? Well, at my age - actually Rosie,
I am glad I was the age that I was because I was young and ignorant, probably didn't have enough sense to realize what was going on. All I know is that it was frightening. I thought I was going to die. I thought "I can't live 52 days bread and water". Every third day I would get a bowl of porridge and a boiled potato and I wouldn't be let out. So what I would do to occupy myself was exercise, I would sing, I would dance. I had visitors - spiders, insects.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
These are real insects - this was before the LSD?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
(laughs) Oh yes. Real insects. Before the LSD. Little things that you find in these places. Because you have to amuse yourself. I never thought of a future because right then and there, there was no future to think about.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Okay now, what about the actual LSD? When did this come about? They started the sensory deprivation.

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Also electric shock - I had electric shock often - I would say when they began - maybe two, three times a week. That was within my first year and that was combined with going to the Hole. I would come out of the Hole and of course I would react. I mean look what they were doing to me. Sometimes I would physically engage with another inmate and so any infraction - I would be put in the Hole. But it seems strange to me Rosie, the other inmates I would engage with would never be put in the Hole. It was just me. I believe I was targeted from the very beginning. I don't want to play the race card but I really can't help but think that perhaps I was targeted because first of all I was very, very young. I think I was the youngest inmate there. I didn't have any family support. I didn't come from a
background of influence or power and plus I am Native and Black Canadian.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
After these electroconvulsive therapy, what was done with the LSD?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
After the electric shocks and the sensory deprivation I believe
they were preparing me. Mr. Eveson, the prison psychologist, used to come down - now this is where I am connecting the dots. I believe brainwashing was the issue here. He would come down, he was a
soft-spoken man, non-threatening in his body language and behaviour. He would come down to the Hole and he would speak to me like "Dorothy I am making arrangements to have you released. Please try to cooperate with me and I will try to help you." Almost a Stockholm Syndrome started to set in with me. He would be the person to come and release me, rescue me so to speak. He would be very soft spoken with me and kind. So now he's my friend.

Before Mr. Eveson, I was also seeing Dr. Scott, the psychiatrist.
Now Mr. Eveson comes down to the Hole, and he has a student with
him, a lady psych student from Queen's University and she's to take notes. He pulls up a chair for her and him, and they are outside in the hallway section of the cell - this is through the bars. I am on the floor, no mattress just a blanket, then I am taken out of the
cell that has a commode. I am now in cell with a hole in the floor for my toilet. That had backed up so I am also in my own waste and stench -- you can imagine.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
You set the ambience.

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Yes. So he comes out and presents me with this oh, you know, we want to help you so much, we want you to correct yourself, and we want you to be able to rehabilitate yourself. And I am your friend,
and you are worth saving, so just cooperate with me scenario. And I have here a pill or something like that just might help you. I am going to rescue you. That was the LSD.

I don't think it was fifteen or twenty minutes before Dante's Inferno. It was obvious. I am locked in. I can't get away. And the walls start the walls start to move in on me, and they melt. The bars turn to snakes, there was an awful physical vibration in my body. It was just awful, just awful, and of course, any mind that I had to think in reality, I just thought I had gone mad, that's it.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
How long did these LSD experiments go on?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I clearly remember over ten sessions but we could only find documents that support I think, three. That's fine with me, I am not going to play a numbers game here because one time, ten times, fifty times. It should have never have happened.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Did Dr. Scott or any of the other doctors or medical staff at the Prison for Women  at any time tell you why they were doing this?
Did they have any justification for doing these experiments? What did they tell you?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
They have no reason to tell me anything. I was a nothing, I was
just something to experiment on. They probably discussed it among
themselves but it was never discussed with me. I was not worthy of that respect.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Was there informed consent? Did they ask you to sign any forms
saying that you were aware what they were doing and you had given
permission for them to do these things?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
No, absolutely nothing. They took permission, they took charge
of me and my life and my brain. 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Tell us more about Dr. George Scott, he was man who actually ran these experiments. What was he like?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I don't have a clear memory - I have a clear memory the existence of a Dr. George Scott. I don't have a clear memory of interacting with him. The only evidence I have to support that are his own letters, documents referring to sessions with me, they gave me psychological tests, and I was "highly intelligent"  according to Dr. Scott. "Above average in intelligence" in his words, and "fairly gifted". Now Rosie, why would they take a child who was "highly intelligent" and "fairly gifted", and experiment on them and take a risk of making them "mad", causing them to be insane? 

Not only that, they created a drug addict, I had never done drugs.
I walked out of Kingston Prison for Women with $47.00 in my pocket, a one-way ticket to Montreal, and a full blown drug habit. I remained a drug addict for twenty-four years, and all that means.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Did you do drugs in prison, contraband drugs that were in prison as well, like heroin, while they were doing these experiments?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I didn't have to do contraband drugs. I had my own little drugstore with Dr. Scott and Mr. Eveson. They were giving me drugs. I had LSD and I had pharmaceutical drugs. I couldn't even pronounce the names. We have lists of them in our documents.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Do you have any lasting physical effects?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I have flashbacks. I have to live alert 24 hours a day. Most people can take their days, their movements, their actions, for granted.  I can't.  I am always making sure that I am stepping the right way but it's not noticeable to anyone who is watching me. It's something I have learned to live with and I handle. I don't go into deep sleeps. I have been drug free for eleven years and it took me about the first five years before I had some clarity and understand what was wrong with me. These are things that will live with me forever, plus my life has been drastically altered. My own government created a drug addict. I just can't get my mind around that.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Have you learned to forgive? Have you found some spiritual centre
through all this?

DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I don't have a problem with forgiving. I forgive them, I forgive everybody because I want to be forgiven so I have to forgive. I understand that with forgiveness comes accountability. They still have to be accountable to me whether I forgive them or not.

AVRIL BENOIT:
It really sounds like she went through chemical torture through
all that time. It's a wonder she pulled out of it at all. How is Dorothy
Proctor doing now, Rosie?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
She's fine. She leads a very careful and limited life, Avril. She has
claustrophobia. Incidentally when I was doing the interview with her, she felt that the interview room at the studio was closing in on her, so I was sensitive to that and tried to get the interview over as quickly as possible. But she is determined to get justice done, and she wants to bring this to a close.

AVRIL BENOIT:
You met with Dr. Scott?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Yes I did. I met him north of Kingston, around Sealeys Bay, he
has an old farmhouse. He was standing outside there, to meet us.
He is 82 years old, he is getting rather old now.

He took us in his back room - where he has some of his old psychiatric books, and a Carl Sandberg book on the wall. He had an old space heater going. You can maybe hear it in the background. We had a good chat for an hour and a half or so. He's been stripped of his license to practice medicine by the College of Physicians and Surgeons for an unrelated matter - sexual impropriety with two female patients. 

AVRIL BENOIT:
Who were prisoners?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
No. This is from his practice on the street, because the man had his own private psychiatric hospital. He was successfully sued for $400,000 in connection to one of those lawsuits. 

He refused to discuss the Dorothy Proctor case specifically with
me, although he did agree to talk in general terms about what went on at P4W and other prisons.

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
To start off with, I would like you to know that my interest in psychiatry has been from when I was the age of probably fiften.
When WWII ended, clinical psychiatry was just about beginning
to become a thing. It was gradually going uphill through difficulties,
ideas. In 1960 it was LSD, diethylalmide. It's a psychoactive one. We are being sued for it by a prison inmate.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Can you talk in a general way about the LSD? I don't mean on specifics, but what was that about?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Way back in 1960 a researcher found that the alcoholics - when they were deeply involved in alcohol - they would come out with no memory at all. They wouldn't remember what the hell happened. So they found that after the treatment periods in an alcoholic, that they had some type of awareness of something. There's something -- it's like a pea being in your pocket. You eventually begin to say "Jesus Christ. I've got a sore seat and I don't know what's going on." 
 

Well, there was something in their mind that was burning them.
Then they were more vulnerable to say "I remember when I was a little kid". [tries to sound like a child]  You know? The doors are open.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
So LSD opened their doors inside?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Yeah. The set of doors were - yeah - no psychiatrist was muttering at them. But that other life came out. And it was proven that 30-40% of the real serious alcoholics in the large metropolitan centres - New York, Pittsburgh, and the other places - they would be improved by LSD. And all the experiments in LSD finished off about 1982 or 1983. See, the -1960-1961 - everybody's ears were going up about LSD, and the dangers of it, and all the other stuff was 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Back in 1960-61?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Yeah. So that it became a problem. So LSD ran its gamut. LSD is now just a drug.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Let's talk about sensory deprivation, you did those studies. What did they help you - let's deal with the inmates - what did sensory deprivation teach mankind or psychiatry?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Well, that actually started in Montreal where a research psychiatrist
isolated people in big, like, balloons. A balloon that you could walk into and then a balloon on the outside of it. So that they lived in isolation for a period of time. And the one research we did, and I had the overt privilege of saying that - uh - being told that I was Boss of the whole thing - but Paul Gendreau was the real able guy. 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
This is in Correctional Services you are talking about?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Yeah. Paul and I and several other people did the paper and the results of the paper were that more than a week or two weeks of isolation in people who were already vulnerable. You see, the inmate, "He Ain't Normal" because he lives in a pathological
environment. If you live with rattlesnakes, you are either going
to get rattlesnake venom, and be able to bite the rattlesnake or
whatever. What happened was that the people, I think we had twelve people, and they found that the longer they were there, the more they wanted to stay and sleep.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
You say you had twelve. How did you select those twelve people?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Purely by deciding what would be the standards - anybody who get's
involved in the research project, it has to be explained, and they have to sign that they are doing this of their own free will, and
their own free control. That's the way it is. There was no forcing ever. I mean, it's not my line. You see, with my kind of personality, if I can't talk them into it, I might as well give up but if they needed it, I will go all the way.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Were they told?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Oh sure, they would know the whole show. Yeah!

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Did they sign?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Yeah, oh yes, absolutely. And there was no discomfort really.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
And for any other studies, did everybody know what they were -

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Nothing could be done - now the one that's up in the air now, I can't talk about that. 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Is that the LSD study you were talking about?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Yeah.

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
But I'll tell you, there was a  -

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Can you tell us this about that? How were they selected?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
I had nothing to do with selection. Nothing. See, I was the Boss Man. So I get shit on. So I get shoved around (laughs) as the Father of all this.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Somebody has to be responsible.

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
All I had to do was work the money and make sure that the limits
of research were all looked after.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
What did you, as a psychiatrist, learn from the experience with
any of these studies?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
LSD is not used in the medical context, anywhere in the world,
at this point. Not at all.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
So you would say certain drugs you would still use, and
psychiatry still uses, but LSD you say ran its gamut, and can't be used today because there is nothing from it? Did you learn anything from it?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Well, you see, I actually was not involved. I was sitting at the head of the class but - we worked with the Department of Psychology at the [Queen's] University. That was their part. The psychologists were involved greatly in that. Their work that they did was
exceptionally fine. There's nothing about them that could really
be questioned. I was more for the physical side of the psychiatric part.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
This is the LSD stuff.

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
That was done through a very capable guy who had the research background that he could allow LSD to be given for therapeutic
purposes. 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
This is in Canada.

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Yeah, in Ont... -  in this area.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Do we know who that is?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Oh, you could find out.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Did you ever work in Prison for Women?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
I have worked in every prison.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
When you hear about the LSD and Prison for Women, what is your perspective, at do you think of that, what do you feel about what people -

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
One troublemaker out of twelve is one troublemaker out of ten.(?)  That's an 8% casualty rate. That's not bad. That girl, or any person who goes through a system and thirty years later feels they have been poorly done by, it's what they say. I've got nothing to do with it.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
The other people who did the LSD, you're saying they probably had no problems?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Well, you'd hear from them if they were. Yeah.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
I just want to clarify a few things. You said you were not involved with any LSD studies or psychotropic drugs in the Prison for Women or Millhaven?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
No, No, No. The whole business - inmates were being experimented
on. 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
That's what I'm hearing, and I -

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
That's goddamn nonsense. I'm telling you. I've been there for about 35 years. Sure, I used electroshock when it was needed. I do intravenous on some very difficult offences. I would do arcoanalysis if the patient wanted narco. I got to be - I did more than 200 narcos during the period I was in the prison and it was always -

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
What is that?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT: 
Narcoanalysis?  I would use pentothal and ritalin together, one
follows the other. This is one technique I used in my private practice. 

For instance one boy came in who had been charged with murdering
a lady in the house he was living in. He was a good lad. He couldn't
remember a thing that happened the night of the party, not a damn thing. He says, "Am I a killer, or am I not? I don't know."  I used pentothal - the stuff that puts you to sleep when you have an operation - same thing. And then you give them a stimulant when they are closed down. For some reason I wasn't getting anywhere, and so I gave him 10 treatments and I finally got his pentothal up to 400 mg., that's quite a bit. 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Hmm. Hmm.

DR. SCOTT:
He went right to sleep. Of course I had to increase his ritalin
to wake him up again. And nothing happened except, out of this
corner of his eye, a little tear. (laughs) The tear was just as dramatic as that - this little tear just rolled down there. 

And he says, "That's funny. God, now I can remember." Then he said, "Then I went into the bedroom, went down 3 steps into the bedroom into - and I opened the door and I saw my brother with blood on his hands, just leaving the room." And he says, "And I think, I think she was on the bed."  He was exonerated from everything and that was one of the most interesting and the
most satisfying (laughs) twelve bloody injections - I am no big hero, by Jesus - but I was glad -

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
So you felt good about your -

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Yeah - but - it's one of those things. You win some, you lose some.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
You've always, you told us you consider yourself a rebel. Tell us why.

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
Yeah. I can get in more shit at any time than enough. Ha ha ha.

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
When you are looking back at your life and what you have been
through, how does it all sit with you?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
I couldn't be better off than I am. You know? Better off! I am happy with myself. I don't give a shit. 

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Do you have any regrets?

DR. GEORGE SCOTT:
No. None at all. Come wind, blow tide, at least we die with harness on our back. That's the way I feel about it. Right now.

I've been in shit with the Royal College (of Physicians and
Surgeons). But I've got news for them. But anyhow. That's part
of the ballgame. 

And I was telling my wife - the chickenshit I got in with the Royal College- I said it couldn't matter less to me. One thing it did. I made a good living. Damn good living. And I wouldn't have had enough brains to stop if I hadn't gotten tied into this situation. I would still be practicing medicine and I would be a useless character just practicing medicine. I am enjoying life now. Ha ha ha. I aim to go for
maybe go for another ten years I guess. I'm only 82 now and piss on it.

AVRIL BENOIT:
Boy, Rosie, after everything Dorothy Proctor told you about her
experience, and knowing that the Federal Government's Report into
all of this said Dr. Scott conducted LSD experiments on 
twenty-three women as well as isolation experiments on a dozen,
what did you make of him?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Whoa. That is a tough question. Avril, when I went there, I didn't
know what really to expect, but I felt that I would feel anger
and I was saying to myself, you know, "be professional, do your
job, and hold it in."  And from the moment I got there and saw him - you know, proud, defiant - maybe that was some of the things I liked about him,  but at the same time I knew a lot of the people who went through his experiments, or were under his care. I know he has to show accountability and responsibility, but at the same time I couldn't bring myself to hate the guy. I felt sorry for him in some way, and I felt good when I talked to Dorothy Proctor, because as an alleged victim of Dr. Scott, she showed compassion too, but again -

AVRIL BENOIT:
She said she forgave him -

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
But wants accountability and responsibility. That's what I felt. And it was really difficult.

AVRIL BENOIT:
As far as you know, are these experiments still going on?

ROSIE ROWBOTHAM:
Okay, while talking with the American author, Allen Hornblum, he says there is the potential of it happening at the smaller prisons in the United States. I can't speak to that. But in Canada, I can, and I don't believe so, today. I don't think it's happening, or I would have heard about it.

by Mike Blanchfield
OTTAWA CITIZEN 
July 21, 1998 p. A1 

. Federal documents appear to corroborate her claim. His 
voice pierced the darkness. "Dorothy," the psychologist said. "There's a new medicine out and I would like you to take it because it might help you, so that you don't ever have to come back to The Hole, so that you can calm down and get through your period with us." This was the basement of the federal prison in Kingston, the area staff referred to as "segregation" or "dissociation". To inmates it was "The Hole." In this five by eight foot, windowless cell lit by a single bulb, reeking from a plugged toilet, Dorothy Proctor was about to have her first experience with a powerful hallucinogenic drug called lysergic acid diethylamide, of LSD-25. It was some time in 1961, several years before the drug became part of the 60's counterculture, eight years before it was illegal in Canada. Ms. Proctor remembers taking five blue pills, 200 milligrams of LSD.

It was, she recalls, a very bad trip. "The ceiling and the floor started meeting each other," she says. "The walls started to melt. The bars became snakes and started coming at me ... I remember dry screaming - screaming but nothing coming out - no one there to help me, things all over my body." The details of that first exposure are seared into Ms. Proctor's brain. "I was reduced to a lab rat," she says, "a monkey in a cage." She says the effects of those LSD treatments continue to haunt her today. Ms. Proctor, now a long-recovered drug addict, says she is still plagued by flashbacks. According to a Corrections Canada report, her symptoms are consistent with a recognized psychiatric disorder - Post Hallucinogen Perceptual Disorder (PHPDF) - that was identified in the late 1950's. She must fold her arms across herself or clasp her hands together in order to sleep; she avoids her reflection in mirrors, store windows, or pools of water so she won't feel like she is being sucked into them; she imagines her skin bubbling and oozing if she looks at it too long. The LSD experiment whetted her appetite for other drugs, she contends, contributing to her becoming a cocaine and heroin addict after she was released. She complained in 1996 to Corrections Canada, which investigated and corroborated her story last year. The department recommended she receive compensation and an apology. The federal government has yet to respond. It referred the matter to a Montreal research institute for further consultation. Tired of waiting, Ms. Proctor launched a $5 million lawsuit earlier this month against the government and the men who gave her LSD while she was in prison. The defendants in the case have yet to issue a statement of defence. 

Ms. Proctor's experience sounds like a storyline from television's "The X-Files". However, the government's files corroborate many of her claims. For decades, those documents gathered dust. They were re-opened last year by a board of inquiry from Corrections Canada, which was investigating Ms. Proctor's complaint. Those files provide a glimpse into an era when bureaucrats, psychiatrists and prison wardens viewed LSD as a magic pill to cure criminal behaviour, a drug that could b reak down criminals' defences so their personality could be rebuilt, moulding them into respectable citizens.
"If you told this story to the typical Canadian citizen, I don't think they would have believed it happened," says Ms. Proctor's lawyer, James Newland, who has examined more than 300 pages of government files pertaining to his client. "People are now aware that it did happen, and their government did this." To him, the inference in her file is clear: Prison officials, with the full knowledge of senior federal bureaucrats, were determined at all costs to test a dangerous drug on a defiant teenager, who had embarrassed the system by escaping the penitentiary and who openly defied authority every chance she got.
During an investigation last year, Corrections Canada found evidence in its files of an LSD experiment involving 23 inmates, including Dorothy, at the Prison for Women in the early 60's. Corrections tracked down one of the women, and said the story she told had "an almost unbelievable similarity in terms of anecdotal reports" to the harrowing tale recounted by Ms. Proctor. "When I was locked with chain and padlock in my cell after one of my LSD treatments, I can remember slashing my left arm, and when it was bleeding, little tiny black things crawled out of my arm and floated with the blood. These were spiders. After the bleeding stopped, my arm stopped crying and howling and it wasn't swollen any more. That first night I couldn't remember how the spiders got in my body and some time in the middle of the night it came to me ... Spider semen crawled up my legs and into my vagina and some crawled up my body and entered through both ears. That night I wadded up toilet paper and 'plugged' my vagina, anus and ears. I never slept."
Corrections investigators concluded that officials tried to explain the experiment to Ms. Proctor and obtain verbal consent. But they could find no written consent forms. Even if they had, the investigators concluded an inmate in solitary confinement could never give informed consent. (Written consent forms did not become a necessity until the 1970's.) As Ms. Proctor told Corrections Canada investigators last year, "I'm assuming because of my circumstances and my environment I probably would have said, 'Yes' to anything." 

Dorothy Proctor entered the Kingston Prison for Women in 1960 as one of society's castoffs. At 17, she was facing a three-year robbery sentence, her first conviction as an adult. She was the product of a broken home and a life on the streets. Her mother abandoned her shortly after her birth in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. She was raised by grandparents and various relatives. She was sexually abused as a girl. Her teenage years were lived on the run, across Canada and parts of the U.S. She was reunited with her mother in the late 1950's. A juvenile court judge had ordered her to be sent to her mother, who lived in East Coulee, a small town in the heart of Alberta's Badlands. Dorothy took off again in 1959, bored with her rural surroundings and feeling ostracized from other children in the community because of her mixed-race background. Her mother was white and her birth father - no longer in the picture - was black. She linked up with a couple of other young people. Their run ended in Chatham, Ontario in early 1960, when they were convicted of stealing a car. Dorothy received three years in Canada's only federal penitentiary for women. She arrived in prison with an air of self-assuredness and "sophistication beyond her 17 years" wrote a prison social worker. She moved gracefully and had an expressive way of talking with her hands. "Dorothy is a striking looking girl of mixed origin. She has light coffee-colored skin, very dark eyes and black wavy hair," the social worker wrote. All of that hid a "lonely child craves affection," the social worker wrote. Dorothy adapted poorly to prison life. She fought occasionally with other inmates, smashed small items a couple of times, and once she tried to slash her left wrist. Usually, she simply refused to get out of bed in the morning for which she was routinely written up as "offending against good order and discipline."
On July 24, 1960, Dorothy became the first inmate to escape the Prison for Women. She had rolled up towels and an extra pillow under her covers and hid until dark at the back of the softball diamond. She scaled the 10 metre wall - a combination of stone, chain link and barbed wire - using a bench from the park and a blanket from her cell. By September, she had criss-crossed the country again, winding up back in East Coulee. After three months as a fugitive, she was arrested again when her mother called the Mounties. Her defiant behaviour behind bars continued. She smashed a broom handle on a matron's knuckles. She refused to get out of bed. Dorothy's lawyer believes Corrections officials selected her for the LSD experiment because they found her an embarrassment to the system. Her prison break earned national headlines, and she openly defied the warden in front of her guards, says Mr. Newland. On February 24, 1961, Dorothy was summoned to the office of Supt. Isabel MacNeill. She refused to get up. Three male guards were sent from the men's penitentiary to get her. She broke free in the prison laundry room. Dorothy flung an iron, narrowly missing a guard's head. Supt. MacNeill arrived just in time to hear "abusive and indecent language." 

Within months, Dorothy received her first dose of LSD in solitary confinement. At the time, the drug was legal, but unknown outside mental health circles. It was touted as a shortcut through the often long and difficult psychotherapy process. By 1962, more than 1000 research papers had been published on its therapeutic and experimental effects. However, the method was soon discredited, and the drug was outlawed in Canada in 1969. One month before the fight in the laundry room, Dorothy sat in the office of Dr. George Scott, the prison's head of psychiatry, and a respected prison physician. Dr. Scott prided himself on being on the vanguard of psychiatric developments. When a new drug like LSD came along, he believed it was the responsibility of scientists such as himself to test it. In the post-war years, Dr. Scott felt driven to test new therapies. Though some of these approaches have been criticized, Dr. Scott stands by them today. In a recent interview, he enthusiastically recalls how he became a convert to electroshock therapy in the 1950's. "The man who pioneered shock treatment was actually the man in charge of a hospital for epileptics. He noticed that when epileptics had a fit they were lucid for maybe two or three days. He got thinking about it. He tried finding a drug that he could inject that would produce a fit -- He found the patients improved themselves." 
Dr. Scott does not remember Dorothy Proctor. He estimates he has seen tens of thousands of patients since then. (Dr. Scott was stripped of his licence to practice medicine by the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons in August 1995 after pleading guilty to having sex with a patient.) However, as government files show, Dr. Scott was clearly excited about the possibility of treating Dorothy in the early 1960's. He saw her during "an extremely interesting orientation interview," according to a Feb. 3, 1961 report he wrote. Dr. scott said he wanted to see Dorothy "on a fairly intense [basis]" over the following three to four months. "I feel it will be of great psychological significance to see how she attempts to handle the therapeutic relationship," Dr. Scott wrote. He tried to convince her to enter into "treatment" with him, but Dorothy was reluctant. Dr. Scott's report doesn't specify the treatment he had offered. He again urged Dorothy to take therapy, according to his report dated May 16, 196l. "She inquired what 'therapy' meant," Dr. Scott wrote. "This was explained to her and it was pointed out that the therapeutic situation was designed to development some understanding within herself of her own weak points." Again, Dr. Scott's report does not specify the nature of the therapy being recommended. Again, he noted, "this case is extremely 
interesting from the therapeutic point of view, in that it will entail a fairly intense therapeutic relationship over a period of months." In his June, 1961 report Dr. Scott noted that Dorothy was "mystified that interest has been taken in her from a psychiatric point of view, and while she is pleasant and cooperative, does not really 'need this type of treatment' in her opinion." Again, "treatment" is never defined in Dr. Scott's report. 

In July 1961 Dorothy escaped for the second time, but was quickly rearrested. In August 1961 she was sent to The Hole. Supt. MacNeill personally outlined the reasons in a letter to Dorothy dated August 17, 1961: refusal to work in the sewing room; refusal to wear proper clothing at mealtimes; "insolence and threatening talk" to a prison staffer; defying Supt. MacNeill herself on one particular occasion. She told Dorothy her attitude was deplorable and that any attempt to gain parole would be "futile unless supported by recommendations from this institution." Supt. MacNeill continued: "You will have very few privileges at present - if you cooperate 100% you will get privileges gradually, but you must never again think you can get away with flaunting [sic] authority."

Last year's Corrections report concluded solitary onfinement "was not a venue suited to the administration of LSD." There is another interesting aspect to this trip to The Hole - there's no mentiion of it in Dorothy's conduct file. Dorothy's "Conduct Sheet" is part of her official government file. The five-page document lists 20 offences from April 26, 1960 to September 4, 1962 - everything from failing to get out of bed to fighting to damaging property, including the February 24, 1961 laundry room incident where she threw the iron and swore at Supt. MacNeill. The penalties are also well-documented, including token fines, reduced meal privileges, and trips to The Hole - including her first sentence, seven days beginning June 27, 1960. The record shows a gap between the laundry room incident and another incident on January 23, 1962 in which Dorothy was fined $5 for smashing a radio. According to the Conduct Sheet, the August 1961 trip to The Hole never happened. 

However officials in Ottawa were well aware of it. On October 23, 1961, Mark Eveson, a psychologist who was also working with Dorothy (and who is one of the defendants in the current lawsuit) wrote a two-page letter to the physician in charge of penitentiary medical services within the federal Department of Justice. Of Dorothy's bad acide trip, it said only that it "produced no change in the behaviour, and ... we felt that either the initial dose was too heavy to induce anxiety and recall, or, that this drug was unsuccessful with this kind of personality usually termed psychopathic." To that date, none of Dr. Scott's reports offered any diagnosis that concrete. Until then, no one had labelled Dorothy a psychopath. Mr. Eveson concluded Dorothy had undergone "a remarkable change in behaviour" as a result of LSD. All her "excessive violence" had disappeared. "She is now working well and is no longer a behaviour problem in the institution, and I feel that treatment has been highly successful." His conclusion was 
premature. Three months later Dorothy smashed a radio; in March 1962, she attacked a guard and got 30 days in The Hole; the following month she attacked Supt. MacNeill with a crutch when a kitten was taken away from her - an attack for which she was sentenced to another week in solitary. In a November 6, 1962 letter to Supt. MacNeill, Mr. Eveson concluded: "I do not think this young person is suitable for parole." He made no mention of the LSD treatments a year earlier.

Today, Dorothy Proctor lives a quiet life, in an undisclosed part of Canada. It is a modest life lived in fear and anonymity. After she got out of prison in 1963, she got hooked on cocaine, heroin and soft drugs. She cavorted with high-level crime figures on the eastern seaboard. She had the furs and the fine food, and then she lost it all. In the early 1970's she was down and out on Skid Row in Vancouver. That's when the RCMP recruited her to work as an undercover agent. For the next two decades, she used her street smarts to infiltrate criminal drug organizations across Canada gathering intelligence for police. She has worked in Ottawa, where she has helped lead police to top-level drug dealers. She has plenty of enemies, many of whom want to see her dead. She won't allow herself to be photographed, and she won't divulge where she lives.
In the late '80's clinging to her Catholic faith for support, she beat her drug habit and has been clean since. She no longer works with police. Two years ago, she launched two complaints through the Solicitor General of Canada. The first was against the RCMP alleging they'd breached their own code of conduct for using her as a sexual plaything during her 20 years working for them. The Mounties, as is their practice, investigated her complaint internally. They sent her a terse two-page letter dismissing it. 
They told her their records showed the officers in question were never alone with her at any time. The complaint centred on an Ottawa area narcotics officer with whom she worked between November 1982 and 1983. The RCMP turned the tables and accused her of making sexual advances to police. "These independent witnesses were interviewed and without going into any specifics it is evident from their responses that your sexual advances 
towards them - were neither appreciated nor accepted," says a letter sent to her earlier this year.

Dorothy isn't surprised. Dorothy calls the Mounties "schoolboys" who circle their wagons and cover each other when trouble strikes one of their rank. "I just wanted to rattle their cage and let them know I remember what they did to me," she says. Her other complaint centred on the LSD experiment. This time, investigators found a paper trail that appeared to support her allegations. The files don't dispute that Dorothy was one of about two dozen women to receive LSD while inmates in the early 60's. The government has shelved its first report - the one completed last year by the Corrections board of inquiry that recommended compensation - in favour of further study by the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law. It recently received an extension on its May reporting deadline. This time, Dorothy is getting support from outside the government. The Canadian Association of Elizabeth Fry Societies, a female prisoners' advocacy group, and the B'Nai Brith League for Human Rights have joined her fight against the government. They both say the government should stop stalling and compensate her. In the long run, they say it would be cheaper for taxpayers than a long legal battle. Kim Pate, executive director of Elizabeth Fry, says the government's reluctance to address the LSD issue is 
indicative of deep disregard for women's penal issues. She says little has changed since a royal commission investigated the outbreak of violence at the Prison for Women in 1994, when male riot guards strip-searched female inmates. In her findings, Justice Louise Arbour, then of the Ontario Court of Appeal, concluded the women's prison system "operates with virtually no public scrutiny or accountability." Dorothy Proctor realizes most Canadians have little sympathy for the travails of an ex-inmate. But she believes they ought to have some concern about how their government wields power. "In my opinion, the ultimate abuse is when the government abuses you," she says. "What they said to me is, 'You are worthless, you are piece of trash and we can use you anyway we want.' I'm not bitter. I'm not angry. I've already forgiven them. The only 
thing I feel is betrayed."

Transcription of CKLN “Shrinkrap” interview with Dorothy Proctor and James 
Newland (Toronto August 1998). Host and interviewer, Don Weitz. 88.1 FM 
RYERSON POLYTECHNICAL UNIVERSITY Toronto
DON WEITZ:
First of all I would like to welcome you, Dorothy Proctor, and James Newland, the attorney for Dorothy who is a former prisoner of P4W in Kingston back in 1963, right Dorothy?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
That was the end of my sentence.
DON WEITZ:
The reason we are doing this interview with both Dorothy and James is because of a lawsuit - Dorothy Proctor is suing both psychiatrists and the institutions for several important things. Do you want to summarize some of your major allegations Dorothy, and James, so our listeners will know about the very serious allegations here. 
JAMES NEWLAND:
Sure, I’ll start and then Dorothy you can jump in at any time. The suit is on behalf of Dorothy against the Government of Canada, as well as against a psychiatrist and a psychologist who were working at the Prison for Women between 1960 and 1963. In general terms, the case is that Dorothy was selected for experimentation using electroshock and LSD, and possibly other drugs as well. Shortly after her arrival at the Prison for Women in 1960, at that time she was 17 years old. The administration of LSD occurred at the prison - there is at least one instance of it occurring while Dorothy was in what is known as “The Hole” which is solitary confinement in the basement of the Prison for Women. The suit basically claims against the Government on the basis that she gave no consent to the administration of LSD nor to the electroshock, informed or otherwise and claims damages in the amount of $5 million. There are a number of different types of claims ranging from assault and battery to breach of fiduciary duty to negligence, and there is also a claim for punitive damages as well.
DON WEITZ:
Thanks. That’s a very good summary. Dorothy I wanted to ask you a couple of things about LSD. Was it Dr. George Scott, the psychiatrist named in your suit, or Dr. Gerald Wilson who was mainly responsible for authorizing and administering LSD to you? Or neither?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
No, it was the psychologist, Mark Eveson.
DON WEITZ:
The psychologist?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
The psychologist Mark Eveson administered the LSD to me under the authority of Dr. George Scott.
DON WEITZ:
And Eveson is not, or certainly was not a medical doctor then, correct?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Correct.
DON WEITZ:
So why is he fooling around with drugs?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
That’s the point isn’t it ... and he also was not qualified to give me other drugs and he certainly did give me other drugs and that came out in the investigation.
DON WEITZ:
Do you recall some of those other drugs given in conjunction with or together with LSD?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I don’t remember. I have it in my medical file and I am sorry, I don’t have my medical file in front of me. I don’t remember the names of the other drugs, but certainly were other drugs that were given to me. Dr. Wilson, as I remember, was the doctor who administered electroshock to me many, many times. I was given ECT before LSD. I think I was being prepared as I understand it now, for the LSD. Dr. Scott, according to my records, saw me often in what is referred to as a “session” ...
DON WEITZ:
Psychotherapy? Something like that?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I believe I was targeted for an experiment that was going on and I was one of many targets. I remember when I came forward and tried to expose it, I thought I was the only one and I didn’t know that other women had been experimented on until the investigation. It shows twenty-three women, but apparently Mark Eveson was setting up a protocol to experiment on I think it was thirty women to use the drugs on, and then another thirty to use placebos on. I am not sure. I would have to go back to my papers to find that.
DON WEITZ:
I see the Nuremburg Code is mentioned, James Newland, in your references and I am sure you are well aware of it as well Dorothy, that since they did not inform you of the effects of LSD or electroshock, both brain disabling, brain damaging procedures as we know, and they didn’t fulfill the requirements of informed consent - that this was a serious violation of the Nuremburg Code, is it not?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Yes, it is as well as the Helsinki Accord. I’ll tell you - the Nuremburg Code of 1948 was incorporated into policy at the Government level in 1950, many years before I was experimented on, and our Government ignored and the scientific blatantly ignored in such a vulgar way a Code that was created to protect citizens from the very thing they were doing.
DON WEITZ:
I think they are still doing it. Of course it’s bad enough Scott and Eveson and Wilson were doing it, but as well of course Dr. Cameron did, and many psychiatrists since have been ignoring the Code and this makes it extremely important to ...
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
And the ethics - they are using language and terminology, for example they are saying “back then” ... well, “back then” has nothing to do with it.  Ethics is ethics - ethics in 1898 is the same that exists in 1998. Either you have ethics or you don’t, ethics is a state of mind. It’s a conscience ...
DON WEITZ:
I totally agree. It’s the standards of very good practice to protect the patient and it’s obvious that they didn’t protect you and it seems twenty-some others. I wanted to get back a bit - to both of you - what do you think of this electroshock? What you remember ... I have talked with many shock survivors over the years and they all complain of permanent memory loss but I was curious about what, if anything, you were told about permanent memory loss or anything else around electroshock.
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Don, I was told absolutely nothing. And another thing we have neglected to speak about is the Hippocratic Oath. If we didn’t have the Nuremburg Code, the Helsinki Accord, or any of the other codes, laws in place -- just the Hippocratic Oath would have prevented these doctors from pursuing this line of experimentation if they were indeed honouring it.
DON WEITZ:
I wonder if you can just briefly summarize, and I know it can be very painful, and it’s up to you -- about some of the effects shock had on your life, as well as LSD?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I cannot separate the shock and the LSD and the sensory deprivation because they are connected, but I do know it certainly has affected my life in a very negative way. I have a difficult time in connecting, or staying connected or focused to anything. My livelihood has certainly been affected - my potential to accomplish anything. I believe that - first of all, when I went to Kingston, like most prisoners who go into facilities, I had my intake done. It shows on the document that I was above average in intelligence and highly gifted. So my question is, why would they take a highly gifted and above average in intelligence young girl and want to mess with her chromosomes? What was the purpose? What were they trying to do? It was mind rape.
DON WEITZ:
Yes - certainly what happened to you would qualify as psychiatric rape - possibly an attempt at mind control - because, as you know, right here in Canada and in the United States there were a lot of mind control experiments going on about that time and before, and probably since.
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
It wouldn’t surprise me.
JAMES NEWLAND:
I think it should be mentioned to your listeners that the C.S.C. struck a board of investigation as a result of Dorothy’s allegations and the board of investigation wrote a report which ultimately was released in March, 1998. That report makes certain findings which support Dorothy’s allegations and the findings basically are to the effect that she was administered LSD without informed consent in solitary confinement and that she has suffered severe long-term damage as a result. These are the findings of the C.S.C.’s own board of investigation. Now what has happened since then is the C.S.C. has basically put that report aside, and haven’t acted on it.
DON WEITZ:
I understand they have referred this now (as a delaying tactic?) to the McGill University Centre for Medicine, Ethics and the Law - Dr. Norbert Gilmore and his associates were supposed to give a report back to the Correctional Services Canada back in July if not earlier. What is going on there? Why the delay?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Apparently it is finished, from what we understand, and Professor Gilmore had sent the report out for peer review and then it goes to the Minister and then to us. From what we understand the report is finished. They did give an extension because it wasn’t ready for the original date set. We haven’t seen it yet.
DON WEITZ:
I am anxious to see it myself. I think I will write to them on behalf of the station because I assume it will be public, or will it not? 
JAMES NEWLAND:
It will presumably be released by the government shortly after they receive it.
DON WEITZ:
What is your best guess, James, of what this report will show?
JAMES NEWLAND:
It is my expectation that the McGill report will come to the same conclusion as the C.S.C.’s own internal report in the sense that there was no informed consent, certainly in Dorothy’s case, and arguably given the very serious nature of LSD-25 within the prison context - arguably it is not possible to obtain informed consent.
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
To me it’s Nazi-style science because you cannot experiment on captives.  Prisoners are captives. All of our laws, codes and rules suggest that. Most people understand that -- but how it happened is another issue.
DON WEITZ:
Well it seems that psychiatrists in particular haven’t learned the lesson well enough from the atrocious experiments coming out of the Nazi concentration camps or death camps ...
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Or maybe they learned too well?
DON WEITZ:
That’s arguably the case, I am sure ...
JAMES NEWLAND:
Don it should also be kept in mind that besides Dorothy there are at least twenty-two other women out there who need help and I would have thought it would have been incumbent on the C.S.C. to come forward and try to find these women and try to help them out. They are victims too.
DON WEITZ:
I was just going to ask why there isn’t a class action case, or is that coming?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
As far as I am concerned, we are dealing with numbers here. I am assuming that all of these women are not still alive and even if there are ten of them that are alive, I would like them to come forward even if they don’t want to get involved in a class action suit or an individual suit. Just to come forward as a witness. It’s not that I need it to strengthen my case -- because we have done our research and we have done our work and we are very strong. But I think these women need to come forward as a witness so that Canadians know. I am out there all by myself. I am getting kind of lonely.
DON WEITZ:
It takes amazing courage, and it can get extremely lonely I am sure Dorothy 
...
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
If a few other women would just come forward -- it’s a not a matter of my having to prove I am right for people to believe me, but it’s such a surreal story, such an unrealistic story that it would be nice if some of the other women would come forward and say, yes, this did happen to me, and I know it happened to Dorothy too.
DON WEITZ:
When I first read your accounts by Mike Blanchfield -- I think he was one of the first reporters in The Ottawa Citizen to start writing - I was surprised that there were no other women coming forward, at least not to my knowledge. And I wonder why there hasn’t been that support ...
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I think some of these women - if they are still alive - have pardons and they don’t want to re-visit their past and I don’t want to blame them for that.
JAMES NEWLAND:
Also Don - shortly after the C.S.C. released its report in March 1998, it also did a press release in which it asked for other women and men who had this happen to them to come forward to the C.S.C. It strikes me that is inappropriate in the circumstances because obviously if the C.S.C. or rather the Canadian Penitentiary Service as it was known back then - did this in the first place. So how many people would voluntarily come forward to the very body that experimented on them.
DON WEITZ:
It would have to be an independent body. I certainly wouldn’t. If it happened to me I certainly would think more than twice - in face I would flatly refuse to even let the C.S.C. know. I would let an independent counsel such as yourself.
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
That’s right, and I am hoping that there will be some of the ladies listening to your program who would get in touch with you.
DON WEITZ:
I will give our number out - they can leave a message here at the station for me which 416-595-5068 - leave a message for Don Weitz. Is there some other phone number of address either of you feel comfortable giving out for any women for example who were in P4W then and were subjected to these ‘crimes against humanity’?
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
Elizabeth Fry Society -- the one in Ottawa I am dealing with is 613-238-2422 and these women have to understand that their names won’t go to the media and that they will be handled with discretion and confidentiality. They do not have to go public, but they can actually be a Jane Doe. We can assure them they don’t have to go public - it might encourage some of them to come forward.
DON WEITZ:
I forgot to ask you, Dorothy and James, about what this means - the initials SEADAC - that is preceded by EST and ECT. Is that a form of electric shock treatment as well?
JAMES NEWLAND:
That’s one type of electroshock - the term SEADAC can be used interchangeably with electroshock.
DON WEITZ:
I never heard of it before. I wonder what it stands for.
JAMES NEWLAND:
I don’t know what it stands for. The term was used in the Board of Investigation report from C.S.C. and is contained in Dorothy’s records.
DON WEITZ:
I wondered if AC stands for alternating current - but maybe I am letting my imagination go ...
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I would like to something else - about language - about LSD being legal “back then”. LSD was legal by default in my opinion, simply because it wasn’t classified as “illegal”. There wasn’t a process put in place at that time to make it illegal. It was legal while it sat on a shelf in vial but it was not legal to take it and administer it to me and these other women in the context of the prison setting.
DON WEITZ:
This should never have happened to you. This is outrageous. It was used in more than one institution - it was used in the Oakridge Division of Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre when Dr. Barker was there. I have a copy of the requisition that went to Ottawa and they cheerfully sent him quite a few ampules of LSD to use on prisoners. And no doubt they were also subjected to this forced, highly unethical drugging. Of course, how do you give consent when you are a captive. I see that you are suing for $5 million plus costs. Has there been any reaction since C.S.C., Dr. Scott, Dr. Eveson or any of the others got notice of this?
JAMES NEWLAND:
The defendants have been served and in terms of the court procedures, the time hasn’t elapsed for their filing of Statements of Defense, so we don’t know what position they are likely to take with respect to the claim. It is anticipated that the McGill report will be in the government’s hands by 
September 1, 1998 and presumably released to the public in September. I guess we will wait and see, and go from there.
DON WEITZ:
I will definitely get right on that in September to get a copy which I will share with our listeners. I want to thank both of you very, very much but before we close I always ask people I interview if there is something you would like to add -- some message you would like to give our listeners about what happened to you Dorothy -- and about your role here, James Newsland, as Dorothy’s lawyer. Dorothy has been extremely courageous and wonderful.
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I would just like to speak to the Canadian taxpayers with respect to being vigilant about their tax dollars and to not in future take the position of “oh well they are only prisoners and we don’t have to concern ourselves with these people.” They have to understand that there is no “us and them” here because it can be them. If they look at 1962-3, it certainly could be them or one of their loved ones, or a friend in the future. If they are not on top of this, it can continue to happen and it will continue to happen.  They have to be vigilant, they have to ask questions, and they have to demand that our scientific community and government officials be accountable.
DON WEITZ:
I could not have said it better Dorothy. I keep reminding people and encouraging them to speak out, like yourselves, against forced drugging -- ie. Haldol and Thorazine is going on as we speak in virtually every psychiatric institution that I am aware of in Canada and the United States, and I am in touch with an awful lot of them.  Unfortunately we don’t have enough cases like yours to challenge and to oppose and to correct ...
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
It has nothing to do with rehabilitation in my opinion.
DON WEITZ:
It has nothing to do with treatment -- it has everything to do with social control.
DOROTHY PROCTOR:
I have rehabilitated myself in spite of the system -- not because of it.
JAMES NEWLAND:
I admire Dorothy incredibly because she had the courage to come forward in 1995 at great personal cost to her - she has had the courage to fight since then when the C.S.C. tried to put her off.  I think it’s a remarkable act of strength and courage to have done what she had done, and her allegations have been completely supported and vindicated by the C.S.C. board of investigation report. And I have a question to the C.S.C. and the Canadian government - a challenge really - to honour the findings and recommendations of its own board of investigation and to do the right thing. There are more people like Dorothy out there that haven’t been helped, and it is the duty of the C.S.C. to be proactive and deal with this in a proactive way, to try to help these people.
DON WEITZ:
Absolutely. You have my support Dorothy and James, and I greatly admire you, absolutely respect you, and CKLN the radio station stands firmly in support of survivors like yourself, whether in the prisons or in the psychiatric prisons themselves so we are going to watch this very carefully and I hope we can talk again after the McGill report comes out. I want to thank you very much for doing this.

A number of former inmates have since written the government to complain about being used in prison experiments, according to documents obtained by the Citizen and Southam News under the Access to Information Act. Newland said he interviewed the Toronto woman last week about her difficulty in dealing with Corrections. At the time, Corrections touted the toll-free line as a sensitive response to the LSD controversy and Proctor's suit. The experience of the Toronto woman, said Newland, was just the opposite. 

Corrections has repeatedly asked the woman to submit to a battery of psychological tests. "It seems like a pretty inhumane way to approach it to ask an elderly lady to go through psychological testing," said Newland, who added the woman remembers serving time with Proctor in 1961. The experiment involved 23 women at the Prison for Women in Kingston, Ont. At  least three - including Proctor and the Toronto woman - have approached Corrections saying they were part of the study. "It seems to me that there must be more
people who have come forward. And it wouldn't surprise me if they're being treated exactly the same way as this person," said Newland.

Newly released documents show Corrections scrambled in the wake of Proctor's LSD lawsuit and a subsequent Southam News-Ottawa Citizen investigation that uncovered how federal prison inmates were used in the 1960s and '70s as guinea pigs in various experiments, including testing of pharmaceuticals. In response to the stories, the government considered inviting inmates who had suffered long-term effects from any experiments to
come forward. However, it has yet to do so. 

As one memo notes: "This approach has cost implications with relation to treatment or care." 

The documents show that even before Corrections set up its toll-free line, at least three other inmates, two men and a woman, contacted the prison service in October complaining about being used in experiments. In her hand-written letter, dated Oct. 4, 1998, one woman tells Corrections  it had been three months since their last correspondence. "As I have heard nothing since then, I'd very much like a reply," the woman wrote.

Meanwhile, Newland said the Toronto woman has yet to decide whether to be a witness in the Proctor case or join the litigation. The woman recalls that Proctor, as a teenage inmate in the 1960s, spent a lot of time in solitary confinement. Proctor says her first overdose of LSD  occurred there. 

Newland said the Toronto woman "will be corroborating Dorothy Proctor's story with respect of such issues as lack of informed consent, and she'll be describing her own very upsetting and disturbing experiences as a result of this experimentation."
(Ottawa Citizen and Southam News)
 

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Last Updated June 6, 1999