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The Department of Physiological Hygiene · Revisionist History

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Speaker 1: Pushkin Hello, Hello, Revision's History listeners. Malcolm here, I just
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Speaker 1: wanted to let you know that you can hear all
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Speaker 1: the remaining episodes of season seven right now.
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Speaker 1: early access. In this case, you won't have to wait
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Speaker 1: two weeks for the rest of the season, which is
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1:01
Speaker 1: slash Plus. Minneapolis forty four busy sidewalks, miles of street
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Speaker 1: car tracks, businessmen in gray suits and hats, shop girls
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Speaker 1: in knee length skirts. The Mississippi snakes through the middle
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Speaker 1: of the city. The Fauchet Tower looms overhead. Overseas, the
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Speaker 1: war in Europe and the South Pacific still rages. So
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Speaker 1: many of the younger men are gone, but there is
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Speaker 1: bustle and energy that makes the downtown feel like Chicago
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Speaker 1: or New York City unless you look closely and pay
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Speaker 1: attention day after day, and if you did that, you
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Speaker 1: would see a strange sight that set Minneapolis in that
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Speaker 1: moment apart. You would see men in groups of two
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Speaker 1: walk in the streets early twenties, dressed identically in khakis
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Speaker 1: and white shirts. They would seem healthy at first, but
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Speaker 1: then as the fall of nineteen forty four turns into
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Speaker 1: the long winter and spring of nineteen forty five, you
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Speaker 1: would see them start to change, could see them start
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Speaker 1: to move slowly as if they were old men. Their
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Speaker 1: clothes are one, then two, then three sizes, two, big eyes,
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Speaker 1: hollowed out hair, thinning, skin like parchment. They sit in
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Speaker 1: restaurants and soda fountains and drink cup after a cup
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Speaker 1: of coffee, but never eat ever, even if you invited
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Speaker 1: one of them to join your table, they just stare
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Speaker 1: at your food with blank eyes, then move on, shuffling
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Speaker 1: down the sidewalk across the Mississippi and back to a
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Speaker 1: warn of rooms under the football stadium at the University
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Speaker 1: of Minnesota. Back to the Department of Physiological Hygiene run
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Speaker 1: by a man named Ansel Keys. What does he look like?
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Speaker 3: Ansel Keys? He was short. You know, I think that
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Speaker 3: bothered him a little bit. He was very muscular, He
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Speaker 3: was very I think, very good looking in his youth.
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Speaker 1: That's Sarah Tracy, a historian at the Universe Versity of
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Speaker 1: Oklahoma who's writing a biography of ansel Keys.
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Speaker 3: You know, he was a child genius. He was one
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Speaker 3: of Lewis Urman's fifteen hundred gifted children whom he tracked.
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Speaker 1: He was a termite.
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Speaker 3: Yes, he was a termite. You know about the termite
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Speaker 3: I do.
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Speaker 2: I do.
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Speaker 1: The termites were a group of children with super high IQs.
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Speaker 1: You had to be very smart to be a termite.
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Speaker 3: He was very self possessed as a child. You know,
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Speaker 3: if he set his mind to doing something, he did it.
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Speaker 3: He left high school three times, once to become a
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Speaker 3: powder monkey and some mines gold mines, once to become
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Speaker 3: a lumberjack, and once to collect bat guano from caves
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Speaker 3: in Arizona.
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Speaker 1: Ansel Keys was America's first true celebrity doctor, a mountain climber,
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Speaker 1: an adventurer. He was on the cover of Time back
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Speaker 1: when that was the real measure of celebrity. He wrote
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Speaker 1: best selling cookbooks with his wife. He had a fabulous
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Speaker 1: villain near Naples.
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Speaker 4: The Army has developed a now famous k Ration, the
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Speaker 4: completely streamlined meal.
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Speaker 1: Back before the Second World War, the army came to
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Speaker 1: him and asked him to make a high calorie pre
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Speaker 1: prepared meal. It was called the k Ration K for Keys,
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Speaker 1: of course, and millions of gis ended up carrying his
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Speaker 1: creation into battle.
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Speaker 4: Originally designed for paratroops, K proved ideal for tankbusters, commandos
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Speaker 4: and all isolated units. Each package contains a balanced by
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Speaker 4: them and rich meal.
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Speaker 1: With the k Ration under his belt, Ansel Keys then
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Speaker 1: turned his attention to an even bigger question, one that
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Speaker 1: had long obsessed those who study human physiology. What happens
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Speaker 1: to people when, for months on end, you deny them food.
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Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
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Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and missuno stood. This episode
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Speaker 1: is about an audacious experiment conducted at the end of
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Speaker 1: the Second World War by one of the most remarkable
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Speaker 1: figures in twentieth century science, Ansel Keys.
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Speaker 5: So, for purposes of the tape, if you could just
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Speaker 5: state your name and the location and date of your birth.
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Speaker 6: This is Earl Hackman, living at eight eight eight Hadlai
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Speaker 6: and drive in elves And, Illinois, and I was born
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Speaker 6: on December one, nineteen eighteen.
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Speaker 1: The best record we have of what exactly happened in
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Speaker 1: ansel Kes's laboratory is in a box of taped interviews
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Speaker 1: stored away in the archives of the Library of Congress.
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Speaker 1: Each tape runs roughly two hours in length. They contained
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Speaker 1: the recollections of eighteen of ansel Keys's subjects, who sat
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Speaker 1: down in their eighties to leave a record of their experience.
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Speaker 2: My name is Sam Legg.
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Speaker 7: I was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, on November tenth,
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Speaker 7: nineteen sixteen.
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Speaker 8: Max Campbellman with an M in the middle initial November seventh,
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Speaker 8: nineteen twenty.
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Speaker 1: The interviews were conducted by two researchers from Johns Hopkins University,
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Speaker 1: Richard Semba and Leah kOhm. The tapes were given to
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Speaker 1: the library shortly thereafter, where they have sat on a
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Speaker 1: shelf ever since, untouched, a forgotten record of eighteen voices
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Speaker 1: talking about an experience none of them will ever forget.
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Speaker 1: It was known as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.
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Speaker 6: We were in Stadium South Tower, the football stadium. Underneath
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Speaker 6: the stadium had quite a complex for research there, and
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Speaker 6: there was a dormit. We lived in a dormitory there.
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Speaker 6: All the activities at the university we're open to us.
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Speaker 1: During their off hours, the men would roam the city.
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Speaker 1: People living near the university saw them all the time,
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Speaker 1: young men in white shirts and khaki pants, taking long
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Speaker 1: walks along the Mississippi, sitting in restaurants, drinking coffee, but
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Speaker 1: never eating a thing. The men called themselves the guinea pigs.
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Speaker 8: We were all in excellent physical health, and as far
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Speaker 8: as as far as they knew, we were all in
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Speaker 8: good mental health at the time. We did not stay
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Speaker 8: that way during the experiment, but we were.
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Speaker 1: You can go to the Library of Congress and listen
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Speaker 1: to the tapes in the reading room yourself if you like.
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Speaker 1: You might end up wondering what was ansel Keys trying
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Speaker 1: to accomplish by putting his subjects through so much? And
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Speaker 1: was it worth it?
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Speaker 9: When I hear somebody say, oh, I'm simply starved, I
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Speaker 9: know they don't know what they're saying, because there's a
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Speaker 9: real difference between what your body craves for from Thessouri's
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Speaker 9: heals of starvation then what you normally feel as hunger.
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Speaker 1: The second episode of this season of Provision's history was
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Speaker 1: devoted in large part to the story of the famous
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Speaker 1: iodine experiments in Akron, Ohio. During the First World War.
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Speaker 1: A doctor named David Marine was trying to figure out
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Speaker 1: how to treat goiter, a condition that causes severe enlargement
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Speaker 1: of the thyroid gland. Goiter was widespread in the early
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Speaker 1: part of the twentieth century. Millions of people walked around
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Speaker 1: with baseball sized bulges on their necks. Marine wanted to
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Speaker 1: see if regular doses of iodine could solve the problem,
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Speaker 1: so he convinced the Akron school board to let him
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Speaker 1: run a study on thousands of schoolgirls feeding them regular
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Speaker 1: doses of iodine to see if it prevented goiter. Could
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Speaker 1: that experiment, I wondered, be conducted today. I called up
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Speaker 1: the bioethicist Art Kaplan, who teaches at New York University today.
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Speaker 10: To attempt this experiment to prevent goiter would be a
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Speaker 10: hugely different experience for that researcher and for the subjects,
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Speaker 10: the school board and their families. For one thing, when
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Speaker 10: that experiment was done, there were no federal regulations. There
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Speaker 10: was no federal oversight of what was going on.
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Speaker 1: These days, most experiments involving human subjects are closely regulated.
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Speaker 1: They involved consent forms, disclosure statements, the right to drop
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Speaker 1: out of a study at any given time. Caplan's point
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Speaker 1: was that, compared to today, medical research in the past
9:51
Speaker 1: starts to look like the wild West. If you could
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Speaker 1: find the money and talk people into participating, off you went.
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Speaker 1: In Alabama, between the nineteen thirties and the nineteen seventies,
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Speaker 1: the Public Health Service launched the Tuskegee Syphilista, where a
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Speaker 1: group of African American men were tricked into signing up
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Speaker 1: for what they thought was medical treatment, when in fact
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Speaker 1: all the researchers wanted to do was to find out
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Speaker 1: what happened when you let untreated syphilis run its course.
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Speaker 1: It was maybe the lowest moment in twentieth century American medicine.
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Speaker 1: In the early nineteen sixties, the Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram
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Speaker 1: ran his infamous Obedient Study two.
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Speaker 10: One hundred and eighty five volts.
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Speaker 1: Where Milgram deceived otherwise unsuspecting subjects into thinking that they
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Speaker 1: were delivering high voltage electric shocks to someone they'd never met.
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Speaker 3: I have reduced to ancel anymore, cut me out of
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Speaker 3: me who kid al readers cut me.
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Speaker 11: Out, keet me out of contending.
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Speaker 2: The next word is green played.
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Speaker 1: In today's era, the number one consideration in any proposed
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Speaker 1: experiment is its effect on a subject. Back then, the
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Speaker 1: number one consideration was the value of what you could
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Speaker 1: learn from the subject. The subject was thought of like
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Speaker 1: a soldier in battle, someone whose well being was secondary
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Speaker 1: to the larger cause.
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Speaker 4: The answer to the vitamin question is not pill, but
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Speaker 4: good food in plenty of variety. According to doctor Key,
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Speaker 4: if vitamins.
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Speaker 7: Were missing from his food, the soldier might have to
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Speaker 7: take concentrated vitamins.
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Speaker 4: If he had vitamins but no food.
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Speaker 10: He was still starved.
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Speaker 5: Best way, naturally is supply vitamins and the food.
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Speaker 1: Now, remember the statue of Ansel Keys has attained during
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Speaker 1: the Second World War. He's the world's greatest nutrition researcher.
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Speaker 1: He's closely involved with the war effort. He just developed
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Speaker 1: the k ration to greater claim, and he looks around
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Speaker 1: the world that he sees millions of people suffering from
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Speaker 1: severe malnutrition. The war disrupted the food supply of entire continents.
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Speaker 1: Millions of people were in concentration camps, reduced to skeletons.
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Speaker 1: Ansel Keys knew how little his field understood about prolonged malnutrition.
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Speaker 1: What was the effect of long term hunger on physical
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Speaker 1: well being, on psychological health, and what was the best
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Speaker 1: way to bring the undernourished back to health? What was
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Speaker 1: more important how much you fed someone or what you
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Speaker 1: fed someone. So Keys designs an experiment. He would need
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Speaker 1: thirty six subjects for at least a year. The first
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Speaker 1: three months would be the control period. Each research subject
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Speaker 1: would be stabilized at what Keys estimated to be their
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Speaker 1: correct weight, three full meals a day intake matching outtake. Then,
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Speaker 1: after stabilization would come six months of severe calorie restriction,
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Speaker 1: with the goal that each man losed twenty five percent
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Speaker 1: of his ideal weight. Exercise would be mandatory throughout the study,
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Speaker 1: twenty two miles a week of walking up and down
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Speaker 1: the Mississippi or through downtown Minneapolis, all through the long
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Speaker 1: Minnesota winter and through the following summer. Each participant tested
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Speaker 1: on a regular basis blood samples, sperm samples, body fat,
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Speaker 1: blood volumes. The men would be asked to keep journals
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Speaker 1: and record their thoughts and dreams, and then after six
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Speaker 1: months of starvation, three months of recovery. The crucial part
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Speaker 1: Keys plan to test out different rehabilitation diets with varying
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Speaker 1: amounts of calories, protein, and vitamins. The experiment begins on
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Speaker 1: November nineteenth, nineteen forty four. Keys gathers his guinea pigs
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Speaker 1: at the Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene underneath the football stadium.
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Speaker 1: He stands in front of all thirty six and gives
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Speaker 1: them a speech. He had stayed up the previous night
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Speaker 1: practicing in front.
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Speaker 2: Of his wife.
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Speaker 1: Quote. We are here because of the problem of relief
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Speaker 1: feeding in general, and particularly in the war devastated areas.
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Speaker 2: Today.
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Speaker 1: You can imagine a moment Keys, the brilliant sign, bringing
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Speaker 1: the group of young men before him under his spell.
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Speaker 1: Human misery and want are qualities of life which properly
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Speaker 1: bring in emotional response. But starvation is quantitative and must
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Speaker 1: be met with quantitative answers. Grand words tailor made for
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Speaker 1: men of idealism, eager for a chance to serve their country.
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Speaker 1: And then are you ready to begin? And a deafening
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Speaker 1: cheer goes.
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Speaker 12: Up when we start this experiment. We were all given
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Speaker 12: the same amount of proof.
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Speaker 1: Listening to the oral histories from the veterans of the
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Speaker 1: Minnesota Starvation experiment is a strange experience.
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Speaker 12: We had six slices of bread. They take away two
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Speaker 12: slices and four slices six slices, and if you still
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Speaker 12: didn't lose weight, then they just started taking away your potato.
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Speaker 1: The men are all at the end of their lives.
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Speaker 1: Nearly sixty years have passed since the experiment ended. But
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Speaker 1: rarely do any of them say I don't remember or
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Speaker 1: I don't know. They know, and they remember, and their
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Speaker 1: memories are precise. In fact, it seems like they'd been
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Speaker 1: reliving the long year between the fall of nineteen forty
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Speaker 1: four and the fall of nineteen forty five ever since.
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Speaker 5: Do you remember what your lowest weight got down to?
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Speaker 2: One hundred and thirty four?
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Speaker 5: I believe what was sort of your standard weight entering.
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Speaker 2: I went in at two twenty and they they do
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Speaker 2: standardized me down till.
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Speaker 6: One to eighty before the real experiment began, So I
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Speaker 6: got down to one thirty four.
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Speaker 1: The thirty six subjects started the experiment with high hopes.
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Speaker 1: Keys had arranged for them to take classes at the university.
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Speaker 1: The men themselves organized dramatic productions and planned to hold
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Speaker 1: educational seminars. Many wanted to prepare themselves for relief work
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Speaker 1: after the war was over. In the recruitment leaflet Keys
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Speaker 1: sent out, he mentioned the intriguing possibilities in the fact
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Speaker 1: that there was an all women's dormitory nearby for those,
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Speaker 1: as he put it, who wanted to be a guinea
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Speaker 1: pig by day and a wolf by night.
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Speaker 5: What happened after once the semi servation started.
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Speaker 8: Things went downhill very fast, well, not real fast. It
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Speaker 8: didn't seem much change at first, But when we got
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Speaker 8: down to the place where we really knew what the
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Speaker 8: word hunger meant.
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Speaker 13: Instead of just saying.
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Speaker 8: I'm hungry, let's go eat, which isn't the word hunger,
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Speaker 8: I mean, it's a different different. When we really felt
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Speaker 8: pains of hunger and we began thinking about food most
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Speaker 8: of the time, and so forth, we began to be
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Speaker 8: more and more irritable.
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Speaker 1: After the three months of initial rigor, while they stabilized
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Speaker 1: their weight, the severe calorie restrictions kicked in. Everyone now
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Speaker 1: got just two meals a day cabbage, potatoes, bread slices,
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Speaker 1: ruda begas, and occasional treats of macaroni and cheese.
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Speaker 8: I was one of the few, now I shouldn't say few.
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Speaker 8: I was one of the many that metally was transfixed
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Speaker 8: on cookbooks, and I collected probably one hundred cooks and books.
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Speaker 2: I would read.
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Speaker 8: Cook books like you would read readers digest.
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Speaker 1: Some of the men would walk into Minneapolis, sit in
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Speaker 1: restaurants and watch other people lead the way they might
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Speaker 1: have once gone to a concert or watched a play.
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Speaker 1: They dreamt about food, They argued about food. At meal times,
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Speaker 1: they fixated on their plates.
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Speaker 13: I mean we would lick the plates, really and I remember.
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Speaker 5: Well, I heard that a bit of that caused a
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Speaker 5: bit of tension.
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Speaker 13: I think it did, particularly abling for instance, one of
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Speaker 13: the first that I saw doing that, and that's disgusting.
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Speaker 13: I'm pretty sud I were doing it myself, so oh yeah,
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Speaker 13: I mean I just just thought, this is that you
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Speaker 13: would actually degrade yourself to the extent of licking a plate,
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Speaker 13: kid me a break, and that we were all looking at.
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Speaker 1: Coffee was one of the few indulgences they were allowed,
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Speaker 1: so they drank it to excess, twelve eighteen cups a day.
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Speaker 1: They chewed enormous amounts of bubblegum. They began souping their
19:15
Speaker 1: meals their word for adding water to everything they were
19:18
Speaker 1: given to create the sense that their portions were bigger.
19:22
Speaker 1: One of the men took a date to see to
19:24
Speaker 1: Have and Have Not, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall.
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Speaker 13: I'm sorry, Slim, but I still say you're awful good
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Speaker 13: And I wouldn't.
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Speaker 5: Oh, I forgot. You wouldn't take anything from anybody, would you.
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Speaker 2: That's right?
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Speaker 1: One of the great romantic dramas of the Warriors. But
19:41
Speaker 1: he couldn't concentrate except for the part where Bogart goes
19:44
Speaker 1: to a restaurant.
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Speaker 9: And if you went to a movie, you weren't particularly
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Speaker 9: interested in a lot of scenes, but you noticed every
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Speaker 9: time they ate and what they ate.
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Speaker 1: During the long starvation phase, Keys began to lose some
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Speaker 1: of his subjects. One of them went walking through down
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Speaker 1: to Minneapolis, and suddenly his resolve broke. He'd been having
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Speaker 1: dreams of cannibalism. He went into seventeen different soda fountains
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Speaker 1: and gulp down a milkshake at each one.
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Speaker 12: After that, we could not go out without a buddy,
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Speaker 12: and if we had a girlfriend, we could bring the
20:23
Speaker 12: girlfriend in. The doctors would interview the girl and go
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Speaker 12: care So when we were on a date to your buddy.
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Speaker 1: Finally, after six months of starvation recovery.
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Speaker 5: On the final day, when you were able to finally
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Speaker 5: break what, do you remember what you did?
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Speaker 9: Yes, they did a big breakfast for us, and that
20:49
Speaker 9: most of us stuffed ourselves. And then I think I
20:53
Speaker 9: went downtown in one restaurant and went and ate another meal,
20:57
Speaker 9: and then got out and went to another one. And
21:01
Speaker 9: just I mean, one couldn't satisfy your craving for food
21:05
Speaker 9: by filling up your stomach. Many of us, I think
21:08
Speaker 9: did unreasonable things. I was invited out for I think
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Speaker 9: a Swiss steak dinner, and though I was filled to
21:17
Speaker 9: the brim, I went and stuff a little bit more
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Speaker 9: in on top, and then got on a bus writing
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Speaker 9: back to the to the stadium and jostling up and
21:32
Speaker 9: down on the All of a sudden I lost it all.
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Speaker 9: Now I got off at the next time. I felt
21:39
Speaker 9: sorry for the guy that was going to have to
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Speaker 9: clean it up, but I didn't stay around.
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Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty five, years after the study ended, Keys
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Speaker 1: published The Biology of Human Starvation, his landmark two volume
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Speaker 1: account of what was learned during the study. To this day.
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Speaker 1: That book helps doctors understand everything from in relief to
22:10
Speaker 1: eating disorders. If you've ever used the terms metabolism, intimate
22:15
Speaker 1: and fasting, calories in and calories out, then you're talking
22:18
Speaker 1: about concepts that go back to the Keys experiment. Ansel
22:23
Speaker 1: Keys did exactly what he set out to do, but
22:26
Speaker 1: his subjects they were soldiers in a battle whose well
22:30
Speaker 1: being was secondary to the larger cause. Years later, the
22:35
Speaker 1: subjects of the starvation experiment gathered for a reunion. Ansel Keys,
22:40
Speaker 1: by then an old man, addressed the group. Someone asked
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Speaker 1: him did he think the benefits of what was learned
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Speaker 1: were greater than the costs of what the men went through?
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Speaker 1: He looked out at all the men in front of
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Speaker 1: him and said, well, you're all here, aren't you. Out
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Speaker 1: Of all all the interviews in the box of tapes
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Speaker 1: at the Library of Congress, one stands out the testimony
23:14
Speaker 1: of a man named Sam Legg. His father was a
23:17
Speaker 1: stockbroker in New York City. Sam went to the elite
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Speaker 1: Saint Paul's private school in New Hampshire and then on
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Speaker 1: to Yale. Sam Legg was someone the other guinea pigs
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Speaker 1: looked up to, that is until his behavior took a
23:30
Speaker 1: sharp turn during the six month starvation period. His moods
23:34
Speaker 1: began to swing back and forth. Like many others, he
23:38
Speaker 1: got obsessed with cookbooks, but his obsession was pronounced. He
23:42
Speaker 1: took to eating in the corner by himself. The historian
23:46
Speaker 1: Todd Tucker interviewed Leg for his book The Great Starvation Experiment.
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Speaker 1: He writes about the way Legs started to eat. He
23:54
Speaker 1: combined all the food on his tray into one pile.
23:57
Speaker 1: He then took his fork and stirred it and mashed
24:00
Speaker 1: it altogether, the thimblefuls of fish, chowder, spaghetti, peas, and
24:05
Speaker 1: potatoes until it was a homogeneous, dark gray greenish page
24:09
Speaker 1: on his plate. He then salted and peppered the amalgamation
24:13
Speaker 1: until it was crusted with seasoning. When he had scraped
24:17
Speaker 1: every morsel off his plate, he then picked it up
24:20
Speaker 1: and licked it noisily until not a molecule of food remained.
24:25
Speaker 1: The slurping noise was so loud it made the other
24:28
Speaker 1: men WinCE. In his oral history interview, Leg talks about
24:34
Speaker 1: how during the starvation phase he felt his character start
24:38
Speaker 1: to slip away.
24:39
Speaker 2: I'll tell you a nasty moment.
24:42
Speaker 7: I was walking along and I obviously had a buddy,
24:45
Speaker 7: but I don't know who it was.
24:48
Speaker 2: And it was deep into the semi starvation, and we
24:58
Speaker 2: were tired.
25:00
Speaker 1: When they crossed the street, they didn't have the energy
25:03
Speaker 1: to take the half step up onto the sidewalk.
25:05
Speaker 2: We were tired and weak and so well.
25:09
Speaker 7: We were standing at a corner waiting for a light
25:12
Speaker 7: or something, and a kid came along on a bicycle
25:16
Speaker 7: and he was really moving, pumping away and going to shoot.
25:20
Speaker 7: I said, I wonder where he's going. And then I
25:22
Speaker 7: said said to myself, I know where he's going. He's
25:25
Speaker 7: going home for supper, and I'm not. And then, for
25:31
Speaker 7: a very brief I hope it was brief moment, I
25:34
Speaker 7: suddenly hated that that boy, and that I hate at
25:41
Speaker 7: this point to tell you this because it doesn't speak
25:46
Speaker 7: very well for me, but I I have remembered it
25:51
Speaker 7: with I guess horror that that I could feel such
25:58
Speaker 7: a thing so utterly irrational, But there was, and uh,
26:04
Speaker 7: you ask an experience that I remember. I sure remember that.
26:13
Speaker 1: The interview is almost over. Just one final question.
26:19
Speaker 5: Is there anything that we haven't talked about or that
26:22
Speaker 5: I should have asked you or you'd like to add
26:25
Speaker 5: that seems all of them.
26:27
Speaker 2: He should have asked me why I'm missing fingers on
26:29
Speaker 2: my left hand.
26:31
Speaker 5: Okay.
26:33
Speaker 7: I keep saying to myself that this was because I
26:39
Speaker 7: was so weak and I was chopping wood, and I
26:44
Speaker 7: got the acts caught up in a tree, and I
26:49
Speaker 7: didn't have a rapid enough reaction time to pull my
26:53
Speaker 7: hand away, so I removed some fingers.
26:58
Speaker 1: He was at the house of two elderly ladies in
27:00
Speaker 1: Minneapolis who had befriended some of the subjects. Leg and
27:04
Speaker 1: his buddy would go and watch the women eat, then
27:06
Speaker 1: go outside to split wood to steal themselves against the
27:09
Speaker 1: temptation to take any of the women's food.
27:12
Speaker 7: I recognized that a human being can go through a
27:16
Speaker 7: period of mental illness.
27:19
Speaker 2: I think I was mentally ill.
27:22
Speaker 7: Was I mentally ill at the time that I removed
27:24
Speaker 7: the fingers, I don't know.
27:28
Speaker 2: I like to think that I wasn't. I like to
27:31
Speaker 2: think it was an accident.
27:33
Speaker 7: I'm not going to sit here and categorically say that
27:37
Speaker 7: I didn't do it on purpose.
27:40
Speaker 1: Leg was rushed to the hospital. Hansel keyes heard the
27:43
Speaker 1: news and came straight to his bedside. Leg looked like
27:47
Speaker 1: a concentration camp survivor. His eyes had changed color, a
27:51
Speaker 1: strange side effect of deprivation that was common among the men.
27:55
Speaker 1: His corneas were a hard, brilliant white, the color of
27:58
Speaker 1: gleaming teeth. His skin was like flaky tree bark. His
28:02
Speaker 1: hand was a bloody mess. I'm quoting now from Tucker's account.
28:08
Speaker 1: Is there anything I can do for you, Sam asked
28:11
Speaker 1: doctor Keys. Yes, said Sam. Keys leaned closer to hear.
28:17
Speaker 1: Keep being the experiment, he said, Sam. I'm afraid I
28:21
Speaker 1: can't keep you in, said Keys. You need rest and
28:23
Speaker 1: decent meals. The two of them went back and forth,
28:27
Speaker 1: and Leg said Doctor He said, his voice still hoarse
28:31
Speaker 1: and quiet. For the rest of my life, people are
28:34
Speaker 1: going to ask me what I did during the war.
28:37
Speaker 1: This experiment is my chance to give an honorable answer
28:41
Speaker 1: to that question. And so for the next five days,
28:49
Speaker 1: until Leg was released from the hospital, they brought him
28:52
Speaker 1: his meals from the laboratory kitchen in a cardboard takeout box,
28:56
Speaker 1: because of course, he couldn't eat the hospital food. That
29:00
Speaker 1: would be cheating. Could Ansel Keys do that experiment today?
29:06
Speaker 1: I asked the atheicist Art Captain about Keys's experiment. Kaplan
29:10
Speaker 1: knew the story well, he taught for years at the
29:12
Speaker 1: University of Minnesota.
29:14
Speaker 10: Putting people on starvation diets, having them run around a
29:20
Speaker 10: city Minneapolis, being confronted with food everywhere, having them stressed out.
29:27
Speaker 10: Not a chance.
29:33
Speaker 1: The Minnesota Starvation experiment, or any experiment like it, could
29:38
Speaker 1: never be repeated today. In the next episode of Revisionist History,
29:42
Speaker 1: we ask, are we sure that's a good thing? Revisionist
30:01
Speaker 1: History is produced by Elouise Linton, Leeman Gestu, and Jacob Smith,
30:05
Speaker 1: with Tlly Emlin and Harrison VJ. Choi. Our editor is
30:09
Speaker 1: Julia Barton. Our executive producer is mie La Belle. Original
30:13
Speaker 1: scoring by Luis Karra, mastering by Jean Williams, and engineering
30:17
Speaker 1: by Nina Lawrence. Beth Johnson is our fact checker. Special
30:21
Speaker 1: thanks to Todd Tucker go read his book The Great
30:24
Speaker 1: Starvation Experiment, Hansel Keys and The Men Who Starve for
30:28
Speaker 1: Science Special. Thanks also to Ariela Markowitz for production help
30:32
Speaker 1: on this episode.
30:35
Speaker 11: I'm Malcolm Glaba much about Connectur.
30:56
Speaker 1: I mean, if you target towns and cities, it's as
31:03
Speaker 1: clear as day that there will be civilian victims. Teen
31:09
Speaker 1: forty five the US firebomb Tokyo, destroying a quarter of
31:13
Speaker 1: the city and killing more than a hundred thousand people.
31:17
Speaker 1: I wrote about this infamous bombing campaign in my audiobook
31:20
Speaker 1: The Bomber Mafia, and one of the survivor's voices we
31:23
Speaker 1: Hear is from a project called Paper City. Paper City
31:28
Speaker 1: is now out as a groundbreaking feature documentary director Adrian
31:33
Speaker 1: Francis explores what we choose to remember and hope to forget.
31:39
Speaker 1: To find out more, visit papercityfilm dot com and follow
31:44
Speaker 1: at paper City Tokyo on social media.