Bonus Army was the name for an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 U.S. World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C. in the summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Organizers called the demonstrators the "Bonus Expeditionary Force", to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Forces, while the media referred to them as the "Bonus Army" or "Bonus Marchers". The contingent was led by Walter W. Waters, a former sergeant.
On July 28, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two veterans were wounded and later died. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the Army to clear the marchers' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
After the cavalry charged, the infantry, with fixed bayonets and tear gas (adamsite, an arsenical vomiting agent) entered the camps, evicting veterans, families, and camp followers. The veterans fled across the Anacostia River to their largest camp, and Hoover ordered the assault stopped. MacArthur chose to ignore the president and ordered a new attack, claiming that the Bonus March was an attempt to overthrow the US government; 55 veterans were injured and 135 arrested.[14] A veteran's wife miscarried. When 12-week-old Bernard Myers died in the hospital after being caught in the tear gas attack, a government investigation reported he died of enteritis, and a hospital spokesman said the tear gas "didn't do it any good."[20]
Adamsite or DM is an organic compound; technically, an arsenical diphenylaminechlorarsine, used as a riot
control agent. DM belongs to the group of chemical warfare agents known as vomiting agents or sneezing
gases. Adamsite, first synthesized in Germany by Heinrich Otto Wieland in 1915, was independently
developed by the US chemist Roger Adams at the University of Illinois, Urbana–Champaign, Illinois in
1918.
DM was produced and stockpiled by the United States at the end of World War I, but never deployed to the
battlefield during the war. It was used against the Bonus Army (US) in 1932 who demonstrated in
Washington, DC, reportedly causing the death and serious injury of several children who had accompanied
their parents on the protests. It was used again in the Vietnam War.
DM is an odorless crystalline compound with a very low vapor pressure.
The color of the crystals ranges from bright yellow to dark green depending on the purity. It is readily
soluble in some organic solvents (e.g., acetone, dichloromethane), but nearly insoluble in water.
In vaporous form it appears as a canary yellow smoke.
Ref: Wikipedia.
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American[a] was an infamous and unethical clinical study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the U.S. Public Health Service.[1][2] The purpose of this study was to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis; the African-American men in the study were told they were receiving free health care from the United States government.[3]
The Public Health Service started working on this study in 1932 in collaboration with Tuskegee University, a historically black college in Alabama. Investigators enrolled in the study a total of 600 impoverished, African-American sharecroppers from Macon County, Alabama. Of these men, 399 had previously contracted syphilis before the study began, and 201 did not have the disease.[2] The men were given free medical care, meals, and free burial insurance for participating in the study. The men were told that the study was only going to last six months, but it actually lasted 40 years.[2] After funding for treatment was lost, the study was continued without informing the men that they would never be treated. None of the men were told that they had the disease, and none were treated with penicillin even after the antibiotic was proven to successfully treat syphilis. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the men were told that they were being treated for "bad blood", a colloquialism that described various conditions such as syphilis, anemia, and fatigue. "Bad blood"—specifically the collection of illnesses the term included—was a leading cause of death within the southern African-American community.[2]
The 40-year study was unethical for reasons related to ethical standards. Researchers knowingly failed to treat patients appropriately after the 1940s validation of penicillin was found as an effective cure for the disease that they were studying.
Ref: Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_syphilis_experiment
