EDITOR'S NOTE; Last Friday, Key West The Newspaper was first to tell you about the U.S. Army's plans to spray simulated chemical-biological material over the water near the Keys to determine the capability of radar to detect such "attacks". Those tests, involving materials such as powdered egg whites and clay dust, began last Monday. They are safe for humans and the environment, Army officials say.
The Army has been criticized for conducting similar experiments in the Keys and elsewhere in the 1950s and '60s— but neglecting to go public with information about those tests. We told you about that last November. Here's a re-trun of a story published here on November 2, 2001.
With many here fearful of anthrax in the mail and the possibility of other chemical and biological threats, Key Westers may be shocked to learn that, in the 1950s and 60s, Key West was one of a number of sites used by the U.S. government for simulated attacks using real biological agents.
In 1977, during hearings before a Senate subcommittee on health, U.S. Army officials testified that they conducted 239 open-air tests of biological agents in a number of locations, including San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., Panama City, Florida— and Key West. These experiments were conducted between 1949 and 1969, when President Richard Nixon ordered the Pentagon's biological weapons destroyed.
The name of the report that compiled after those Senate hearings was, "Biological Testing Involving Human Subjects by the Department of Defense." In that report, Key West was listed as just the site of at least one open-air experiment in 1953 involving Serratia marcessens. This substance causes pneumonia.
The "attack" on Key West was mentioned in an article in the Wall Street Journal on October 22, 2001. According to that article, no known illnesses resulted from the 1953 incident.
But according to a Key West Citizen news article, published during the 1977 hearings, there may have been "a tenfold increase in pneumonia cases as well as a sevenfold increase in deaths in the Key West area in the year after the Army's tests." Historian Tom Hambright found that clipping for KWTN in his files at the Monroe County Library.
The Army kept the biological warfare tests secret until word leaked out to the press in the 1970s. Residents who lived here in 1953 were not aware that they were beign used as subjects in a biological experiment.
According to the WSJ, several medical experts have since clarified that an untold number of people may have gotten sick as a result of the germ tests. But the Army justified its experiments, citing World War II concerns that U.S. cities might come under biological attacks. To prepare a response, Army officials said they had to test microbes on populated areas to learn how bacteria disperse.