SHOULD YOU? TIP JAR THE TERMINAL MAN MOVIE REVIEW JACOB'S LADDER MOVIE REVIEW THE TERMINAL MAN - 1974 JACOB'S LADDER - 1990 !!!THE SCIENCE MOMENT!!!

SCIENCE MOMENT BY KELLY PARKS

It takes an effort of will to keep this short, not because there are mistakes that deserve mention – there are none – but because there are so many topics that apply. I'll limit myself by saying that, as is often the case when Michael Crichton is involved, this story is ahead of its time.

The bulk of the public is unaware that the field of neuroscience is about to unleash a host of discoveries that will raise as many ethical questions as genetic engineering. We've come to understand enough about the brain that soon we will have infallible lie detectors, drugs that genuinely enhance your intelligence, and methods that would allow the kind of control seen in this movie.

It's all closer than you think.

SCIENCE MOMENT BY E.C.MCMULLEN JR.

In fact, it may have been closer than the filmmakers thought: By about 10 years.

In the 1950s, the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under Harry S. Truman, began the MKUltra Project, which was officially sanctioned in 1953.

Despite it's official sanction, it was illegal because the principle aim of MKUltra was to experiment on the brains of unwilling human subjects: primarily U.S. and Canadian citizens.

By the time MKUltra allegedly ended in 1973, torture, deaths and the sexual abuse of children had entered the experiment.

Of course, animal experiments came first. The first successful operations to control the behavior of dogs with brain implants was recorded in 1964.

By the time Michael Chrichton's novel was released in 1972, the CIA had spent 8 years building upon their success.

Imagine half a century of progress since then.

The year following the release of the feature film, THE TERMINAL MAN, began the Church Committee and Gerald Ford's United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, both of which exposed the Horrors of the MKUltra Project, among other things involving the CIA and military (The U.S. army's Edgewood Arsenal human experiments, being only one).

This to a nation already reeling from the exposure of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman's Tuskeegee Experiment (An experiment in racial genocide that Truman shared with other countries who wanted to rid themselves of their "undesirables": most notably, Guatemala), already broke in 1972 by Jean Heller of the Associated Press, and ended by President Richard M. Nixon.

The complete knowledge base of MKUltra.

Article in Newsweek.

This review copyright 2004 by E.C.McMullen Jr.

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