neuro_exo

Thank you for writing a relatively unbiased article. Something like this would be extremely easy to sensationalize, but I thought you did a decent job of framing this procedure in the context of contemporary medical practice in the 40's and 50's. Its easy to look back with our current level of knowledge and say this was a terrible idea, but we have the benefit of hindsight and 60 years of biomedical research.

I saw in another comment you are need ideas for your next story. I think a good followup would be looking into how practices have changed, and what is currently being done to treat PTSD and other psychological disorders in both military and civilian medical facilities.

If you want to keep exploring strange military medicine, there were some pretty questionable practices that took place around the time of the Vietnam war. Persons who were drafted could take part in medical experiments that would effectively "exempt" them from the rest of their service. It is my understanding that there were several involving human nerve gas exposures. I used to work for the military doing traumatic brain injury research, and much of our work was based out of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, where we used a VX class nerve agent called soman (a variant of sarin) as a model for closed head injury. On base, there was a water tower type structure with strange perforations on the side. The consensus amongst researchers at this facility was that these perforations were at one time fitted with gaskets that would seal around a persons neck, and they would be exposed to aerosolized nerve agent inside. At the time, it was assumed that the levels of exposure were [relatively] safe. However, new evidence suggests this may not be the case. There are still active ongoing government projects studying low level exposure might influence short and long term health. This sort of research does not typically find its way into mainstream scientific journals, and is much more commonly detailed in military briefs not released publicly (these can sometimes be obtained with a FOIA request). A brief summary of previous human studies can be found here

You recently did a great interview with Congressman Ro Khanna about his proposed 'internet bill of rights'. Is there anything you would add to or remove from them? Which companies do you think are most likely to embrace regulation, and which do you think will fight it (and why)?