"The UnXplained" Mad Scientists

1 00:00:01,870 --> 00:00:04,160 A trailblazing biologist determined to design 2 00:00:04,290 --> 00:00:06,500 a half-man, half-beast hybrid. 3 00:00:06,660 --> 00:00:09,226 A gifted neuroscientist 4 00:00:09,250 --> 00:00:12,250 whose machine can manipulate the human mind. 5 00:00:12,410 --> 00:00:15,160 And an eccentric aristocrat 6 00:00:15,370 --> 00:00:20,160 who inspired the world's greatest mad scientist. 7 00:00:20,290 --> 00:00:23,580 For thousands of years, mankind's great thinkers 8 00:00:23,750 --> 00:00:27,830 have made enormous contributions to scientific progress. 9 00:00:27,950 --> 00:00:29,410 Yet, throughout the centuries, 10 00:00:29,580 --> 00:00:32,660 there have been more than a few men of science who 11 00:00:32,870 --> 00:00:35,160 while brilliant in their own right 12 00:00:35,330 --> 00:00:39,000 pushed the boundaries of experimentation 13 00:00:39,160 --> 00:00:40,580 to the edge of madness. 14 00:00:40,750 --> 00:00:44,160 They were renegades, known for bizarre experiments 15 00:00:44,290 --> 00:00:49,620 involving human-animal hybrids, mind control devices, 16 00:00:49,830 --> 00:00:53,660 and even... Unspeakable torture. 17 00:00:53,830 --> 00:00:59,500 What were these mad scientists really trying to achieve? 18 00:00:59,660 --> 00:01:04,700 And what led them down a strange, dark path 19 00:01:04,870 --> 00:01:07,290 in their pursuit of knowledge? 20 00:01:07,450 --> 00:01:11,290 Well, that is what we'll try and find out. 21 00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:19,074 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm 22 00:01:28,200 --> 00:01:33,660 A Chinese district court finds biophysicist he jiankui 23 00:01:33,870 --> 00:01:36,580 guilty of illegal medical practices. 24 00:01:36,750 --> 00:01:41,160 His crime involves a highly controversial procedure 25 00:01:41,330 --> 00:01:45,500 where the DNA of three female embryos is genetically edited 26 00:01:45,700 --> 00:01:49,830 for the purpose of creating HIV-immune babies. 27 00:01:51,200 --> 00:01:53,040 The academic and medical communities 28 00:01:53,200 --> 00:01:57,540 call the radical experiment unsafe and unethical... 29 00:01:57,660 --> 00:02:02,250 And he jiankui is added to a long list of geniuses 30 00:02:02,410 --> 00:02:05,000 whose dangerous acts have deemed them 31 00:02:05,160 --> 00:02:08,200 "mad scientists." 32 00:02:08,370 --> 00:02:10,200 I think there are so many questions 33 00:02:10,370 --> 00:02:12,160 about what motivated him. 34 00:02:12,330 --> 00:02:15,040 Scientists are driven by the same kinds of motivations 35 00:02:15,200 --> 00:02:16,660 that other humans are driven by. 36 00:02:16,790 --> 00:02:20,330 In the same way that people want to gain fame or notoriety, 37 00:02:20,500 --> 00:02:22,790 scientists may want to gain fame or notoriety, too. 38 00:02:23,830 --> 00:02:27,120 Sometimes, that ambition drives them to cut corners 39 00:02:27,330 --> 00:02:29,450 or to do unethical experiments 40 00:02:29,620 --> 00:02:32,000 because it could lead to a major breakthrough 41 00:02:32,160 --> 00:02:33,750 that would advance their career. 42 00:02:33,910 --> 00:02:37,410 And that desire to become famous, to get a nobel prize, 43 00:02:37,580 --> 00:02:40,120 to be internationally recognized, 44 00:02:40,290 --> 00:02:43,120 can really, in many ways, poison the work 45 00:02:43,290 --> 00:02:44,540 rather than improve it. 46 00:02:44,700 --> 00:02:47,250 There's one particular 47 00:02:47,370 --> 00:02:51,830 psychological bias that scientists are more prone to 48 00:02:52,040 --> 00:02:54,200 than your regular person. 49 00:02:54,370 --> 00:02:58,290 And that's the idea that they can get seduced 50 00:02:58,450 --> 00:03:00,910 by the idea of their own brilliance. 51 00:03:01,080 --> 00:03:05,000 They can get attached to an idea, 52 00:03:05,120 --> 00:03:08,660 and they will go to extraordinary lengths 53 00:03:08,830 --> 00:03:10,726 to be proven right. 54 00:03:10,750 --> 00:03:13,870 The mad scientist represents this idea. 55 00:03:16,040 --> 00:03:17,500 When we think of a mad scientist, 56 00:03:17,620 --> 00:03:19,660 we often imagine an obsessed madman 57 00:03:19,830 --> 00:03:22,790 performing extreme and disturbing experiments 58 00:03:22,950 --> 00:03:24,410 in a dark laboratory 59 00:03:25,500 --> 00:03:27,870 but where does that image come from? 60 00:03:29,000 --> 00:03:32,250 The term "the mad scientist" really enters the mainstream 61 00:03:32,370 --> 00:03:36,290 in 1818 with Mary shelley's Frankenstein. 62 00:03:37,250 --> 00:03:39,200 Victor Frankenstein was the doctor, 63 00:03:39,370 --> 00:03:42,450 and she described him as a mad scientist, 64 00:03:42,660 --> 00:03:46,250 and that's really the character that we think of 65 00:03:46,410 --> 00:03:48,660 when we think of a mad scientist. 66 00:03:49,700 --> 00:03:53,040 Victor Frankenstein created a humanoid figure. 67 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:55,290 A monstrous humanoid figure. 68 00:03:55,410 --> 00:03:57,660 He was playing god, 69 00:03:57,830 --> 00:04:00,790 and therefore, he was the ultimate mad scientist. 70 00:04:01,830 --> 00:04:05,620 Mad scientists were fanatically driven to experiment 71 00:04:05,790 --> 00:04:09,000 well away from the eyes of the population, 72 00:04:09,120 --> 00:04:10,950 and often these experiments, 73 00:04:11,120 --> 00:04:13,160 they're unethical, they're immoral. 74 00:04:13,330 --> 00:04:16,080 They could be grotesque and horrifying, 75 00:04:16,250 --> 00:04:18,500 as with Dr. Frankenstein. 76 00:04:19,910 --> 00:04:22,120 The stereotype of the mad scientist 77 00:04:22,250 --> 00:04:25,120 comes from the early 19th century. 78 00:04:25,290 --> 00:04:27,450 We know that, at that time, 79 00:04:27,620 --> 00:04:30,290 many scientists worked in isolation, 80 00:04:30,500 --> 00:04:33,000 and so, this idea of a mad scientist, 81 00:04:33,200 --> 00:04:34,450 working by themselves 82 00:04:34,620 --> 00:04:37,580 in some dungeon or laboratory somewhere, 83 00:04:37,750 --> 00:04:41,870 who perpetrated some great crime against humanity, 84 00:04:42,040 --> 00:04:43,580 this comes from 85 00:04:43,700 --> 00:04:48,000 this victorian-era way of conducting science. 86 00:04:49,120 --> 00:04:50,580 While stories of evil geniuses 87 00:04:50,750 --> 00:04:53,500 have frightened and intrigued us for hundreds of years 88 00:04:54,540 --> 00:04:58,580 in reality, history can point to many gifted scientists 89 00:04:58,790 --> 00:05:02,660 whose work could be called progress... Or perversion. 90 00:05:03,700 --> 00:05:06,370 And perhaps the most surprising example of this 91 00:05:06,540 --> 00:05:10,370 is a brilliant mind from the 17th century 92 00:05:10,540 --> 00:05:13,950 who laid the foundation for modern science... 93 00:05:14,080 --> 00:05:15,580 Sir Isaac Newton. 94 00:05:16,450 --> 00:05:18,580 Isaac Newton was 95 00:05:18,700 --> 00:05:21,540 an extraordinary, extraordinary genius. 96 00:05:21,700 --> 00:05:27,790 He invented a way of expressing how the world works 97 00:05:27,950 --> 00:05:32,200 in his mammoth book principia mathematica, 98 00:05:32,370 --> 00:05:34,910 which was a bestseller in the day. 99 00:05:35,120 --> 00:05:37,540 Basically, he was showing people 100 00:05:37,700 --> 00:05:40,830 how to make sense of the world through mathematical formula. 101 00:05:41,750 --> 00:05:44,370 Newton articulated the three laws of motion. 102 00:05:44,540 --> 00:05:48,000 He devised the principle of universal gravitation. 103 00:05:48,160 --> 00:05:50,080 So, I think it is fair to say 104 00:05:50,200 --> 00:05:52,000 that even his contemporaries 105 00:05:52,160 --> 00:05:55,950 thought that the principia mathematica was extraordinary, 106 00:05:56,120 --> 00:05:58,200 and it almost put an end to science. 107 00:05:58,370 --> 00:05:59,850 That is to say, there was very little 108 00:06:00,040 --> 00:06:02,000 left to do after Newton's work. 109 00:06:02,160 --> 00:06:06,120 Yet despite Newton's groundbreaking achievements, 110 00:06:06,330 --> 00:06:09,160 to some, the "father of physics" was also 111 00:06:09,370 --> 00:06:12,750 the most famous mad scientist of his time. 112 00:06:14,700 --> 00:06:17,540 If you're talking about the trope of the mad scientist, 113 00:06:17,700 --> 00:06:23,250 Isaac Newton is a classic example in the sense that, 114 00:06:23,370 --> 00:06:29,040 on the one hand, he is an emblem of human rationality, 115 00:06:29,200 --> 00:06:32,450 of using human reason to figure out how nature works. 116 00:06:32,620 --> 00:06:35,660 But Newton was also a crackpot, 117 00:06:35,830 --> 00:06:37,846 we'd have to say, in modern terms. 118 00:06:37,870 --> 00:06:41,040 He was a practitioner in alchemy, 119 00:06:41,200 --> 00:06:45,080 which is this kind of occult precursor of modern chemistry. 120 00:06:45,200 --> 00:06:47,160 He actually did experiments, 121 00:06:47,370 --> 00:06:49,370 hoping he could find the philosopher's stone, 122 00:06:49,540 --> 00:06:52,500 which would be a way to turn lead into gold. 123 00:06:53,660 --> 00:06:56,500 In addition to his interest in alchemy, 124 00:06:56,620 --> 00:06:59,040 Newton's most notable achievements include 125 00:06:59,200 --> 00:07:01,200 the invention of calculus, 126 00:07:01,370 --> 00:07:04,410 the creation of the reflecting telescope, 127 00:07:04,580 --> 00:07:07,080 and groundbreaking work in optics. 128 00:07:08,080 --> 00:07:09,870 But his determination 129 00:07:10,040 --> 00:07:12,330 to understand the composition of light and color 130 00:07:12,500 --> 00:07:14,870 and how we see them 131 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:18,660 would lead him to conduct gruesome experiments... 132 00:07:18,870 --> 00:07:20,790 On his own eyes. 133 00:07:22,580 --> 00:07:25,160 Newton's experiments with his eyeballs 134 00:07:25,370 --> 00:07:27,540 are extraordinary. There's nothing like it. 135 00:07:28,580 --> 00:07:31,450 What he's trying to find out is, how do we see things? 136 00:07:32,370 --> 00:07:33,580 We have two separate notebooks 137 00:07:33,750 --> 00:07:36,000 where he describes in detail what he did, 138 00:07:36,200 --> 00:07:39,160 what the effects were, because they damaged his eyesight. 139 00:07:39,330 --> 00:07:42,830 We know that his eyesight was damaged by looking at the sun. 140 00:07:43,000 --> 00:07:45,830 So much so that, in the last months of his life, 141 00:07:46,040 --> 00:07:48,790 he recalled that he could still see the sun if he shut his eyes. 142 00:07:48,950 --> 00:07:50,660 That he'd clearly damaged his eyes 143 00:07:50,830 --> 00:07:53,200 so much that this lasted for 60 years. 144 00:07:54,540 --> 00:07:58,450 Newton was really interested in understanding sight. 145 00:07:58,620 --> 00:08:00,370 So, in the pursuit of this, 146 00:08:00,580 --> 00:08:04,870 he took what he called a bodkin, a large needle, 147 00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:07,500 and he decided to see what would happen 148 00:08:07,660 --> 00:08:10,250 if he stuck it into his eye 149 00:08:10,410 --> 00:08:13,580 and pushed it back as far as it would go. 150 00:08:14,540 --> 00:08:16,450 And he saw all these little lights going off, 151 00:08:16,580 --> 00:08:18,200 because if the eye is injured, 152 00:08:18,370 --> 00:08:21,040 it will send little screaming light signals to your brain. 153 00:08:22,580 --> 00:08:25,160 Now, you know, most people probably wouldn't do that. 154 00:08:25,330 --> 00:08:27,750 Isaac Newton was kind of crazy. 155 00:08:27,910 --> 00:08:32,620 On the one hand, it's perfectly possible to understand 156 00:08:32,790 --> 00:08:35,410 the rationale of what he was doing. 157 00:08:35,580 --> 00:08:38,040 It's a perfectly sensible question: 158 00:08:38,200 --> 00:08:40,410 What does happen to your sight when the eyeball 159 00:08:40,620 --> 00:08:43,040 is distorted in various ways? 160 00:08:43,200 --> 00:08:46,450 But the thought that a good way of answering that question 161 00:08:46,580 --> 00:08:47,950 would be to kind of 162 00:08:48,120 --> 00:08:50,450 push a needle around the back of your eye... 163 00:08:50,620 --> 00:08:55,000 It's just this horrible, horrible thought. 164 00:08:55,200 --> 00:08:58,000 No sane person would do something like that. 165 00:08:58,160 --> 00:09:00,620 But Newton clearly thought that this was 166 00:09:00,790 --> 00:09:03,410 a perfectly sane thing to do. 167 00:09:03,580 --> 00:09:06,250 You know, there lies the mad scientist. 168 00:09:15,200 --> 00:09:17,540 A scruffy-looking dog is found injured 169 00:09:17,750 --> 00:09:20,000 and brought to an animal hospital. 170 00:09:20,200 --> 00:09:23,370 But upon examination, doctors soon realize 171 00:09:23,540 --> 00:09:25,950 this is not a typical canine. 172 00:09:26,870 --> 00:09:28,910 In fact, this four-legged creature 173 00:09:29,040 --> 00:09:32,250 is an entirely new hybrid animal 174 00:09:32,450 --> 00:09:35,580 a unique combination of domesticated dog 175 00:09:35,700 --> 00:09:38,410 and pampas fox. 176 00:09:38,580 --> 00:09:44,580 Now identified as a dogxim, its origins are unknown. 177 00:09:45,540 --> 00:09:47,500 Was it created in nature, 178 00:09:47,660 --> 00:09:51,500 like the coyote-wolf hybrid called coywolves, 179 00:09:51,660 --> 00:09:54,450 or was the dogxim man-made, like the liger, 180 00:09:54,620 --> 00:09:58,120 which is half lion, half tiger? 181 00:09:59,450 --> 00:10:01,160 Our fascination with hybrid creatures 182 00:10:01,290 --> 00:10:04,370 can be traced back for thousands of years, 183 00:10:04,540 --> 00:10:06,500 and many times, these freaks of nature 184 00:10:06,700 --> 00:10:10,330 include strange, unthinkable combinations 185 00:10:10,540 --> 00:10:13,750 that are part animal and part human. 186 00:10:13,870 --> 00:10:18,080 If you go back and look at paleolithic art, 187 00:10:18,250 --> 00:10:23,040 40,000 years old, they were painting on cave walls 188 00:10:23,250 --> 00:10:28,500 hybrids of men and birds, women and bison. 189 00:10:28,700 --> 00:10:32,500 Another famous example is the sphinx in Egypt. 190 00:10:32,620 --> 00:10:36,660 The body of a lion and the head of a person. 191 00:10:36,870 --> 00:10:40,660 And one of the driving forces behind this was 192 00:10:40,870 --> 00:10:43,450 the idea that it might have been possible, 193 00:10:43,660 --> 00:10:47,290 using magic, to actually acquire 194 00:10:47,450 --> 00:10:50,080 some of the powers that animals had. 195 00:10:52,870 --> 00:10:55,160 While tales of half-man, half-animal creatures 196 00:10:55,370 --> 00:10:59,370 have been part of folklore and mythology since ancient times, 197 00:10:59,540 --> 00:11:01,790 has modern science now reached a point 198 00:11:01,910 --> 00:11:06,000 where human hybrids could become a reality? 199 00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:10,500 This mad notion was the focus of a Russian scientist 200 00:11:10,700 --> 00:11:12,910 with a disturbing vision. 201 00:11:20,620 --> 00:11:22,540 Dictator Joseph Stalin launches 202 00:11:22,750 --> 00:11:25,830 the first five-year plan for the Soviet union. 203 00:11:26,000 --> 00:11:29,500 Heavy industries like steel, coal and machinery 204 00:11:29,700 --> 00:11:33,040 are the focus of rapid industrialization. 205 00:11:33,200 --> 00:11:36,750 Farmers are pressured to increase their harvests 206 00:11:36,870 --> 00:11:38,870 to support the growing workforce. 207 00:11:39,040 --> 00:11:42,620 And scientists are tasked with figuring out 208 00:11:42,790 --> 00:11:45,790 how to breed stronger livestock. 209 00:11:46,830 --> 00:11:50,620 Leading this effort is a Soviet biologist named... 210 00:11:50,790 --> 00:11:52,580 Ilya Ivanov. 211 00:11:52,750 --> 00:11:55,580 Ilya Ivanov started his career 212 00:11:55,750 --> 00:11:58,910 as a biologist under the czarist regime, 213 00:11:59,080 --> 00:12:02,176 and one of the things that he was very interested in 214 00:12:02,200 --> 00:12:05,330 was the idea of the artificial insemination 215 00:12:05,500 --> 00:12:06,910 of horses and cattle. 216 00:12:07,040 --> 00:12:08,950 So this was a way to take 217 00:12:09,080 --> 00:12:13,160 particular desirable biological traits 218 00:12:13,290 --> 00:12:15,700 find the stallion who had the traits you wanted, 219 00:12:15,870 --> 00:12:19,250 and if you milked the sperm 220 00:12:19,450 --> 00:12:21,410 and artificially inseminated it, 221 00:12:21,540 --> 00:12:24,750 that one horse can fertilize five thousand mares. 222 00:12:25,790 --> 00:12:30,290 Before the 20th century, artificial insemination was 223 00:12:30,450 --> 00:12:33,386 looked at as something that just would not work. 224 00:12:33,410 --> 00:12:36,950 Ivanov helped to prove that this was not the case. 225 00:12:37,120 --> 00:12:39,830 And he began using these techniques 226 00:12:40,000 --> 00:12:42,790 to create strange new creatures. 227 00:12:42,950 --> 00:12:48,500 He created a zebra-donkey hybrid called a zedonk 228 00:12:48,700 --> 00:12:51,950 and a bison-cow hybrid called a zubron. 229 00:12:52,080 --> 00:12:54,660 And it was amazingly successful. 230 00:12:54,870 --> 00:12:57,830 He became the foremost expert in the world 231 00:12:57,950 --> 00:12:59,790 on artificial insemination. 232 00:12:59,950 --> 00:13:03,290 But then, he had an even bigger idea. 233 00:13:04,370 --> 00:13:09,160 He thought, could we breed a human with a chimpanzee? 234 00:13:10,700 --> 00:13:11,910 To most of us, the idea of 235 00:13:12,120 --> 00:13:13,870 a half-human, half-chimpanzee hybrid 236 00:13:14,040 --> 00:13:16,410 sounds, well, insane. 237 00:13:17,580 --> 00:13:19,080 But ilya Ivanov was convinced 238 00:13:19,250 --> 00:13:21,500 such a combination was possible, 239 00:13:21,660 --> 00:13:23,160 and he became obsessed with the idea 240 00:13:23,330 --> 00:13:27,290 of creating an entirely new species called... 241 00:13:27,450 --> 00:13:29,250 Humanzee. 242 00:13:29,410 --> 00:13:31,330 Ilya Ivanov wanted to create a crossover 243 00:13:31,500 --> 00:13:33,750 between apes and humans. 244 00:13:33,910 --> 00:13:36,540 He called these the "humanzee" experiments. 245 00:13:36,700 --> 00:13:38,700 It was government-funded research. 246 00:13:38,870 --> 00:13:42,290 Part of what people believe he was trying to show 247 00:13:42,450 --> 00:13:45,040 is that humans really did evolve from apes. 248 00:13:45,200 --> 00:13:48,040 And by showing this kind of inter species impregnation, 249 00:13:48,250 --> 00:13:51,620 it would, in theory, prove that kind of evolutionary link. 250 00:13:51,790 --> 00:13:53,120 As far as we know, ilya Ivanov 251 00:13:53,290 --> 00:13:54,676 tried this in a lot of different ways. 252 00:13:54,700 --> 00:13:58,250 He tried to get human women 253 00:13:58,370 --> 00:14:03,500 to be willing to be inseminated artificially by ape sperm. 254 00:14:03,660 --> 00:14:05,790 He tried to transplant tissue 255 00:14:05,950 --> 00:14:11,000 from the uterus of a human woman into an ape. 256 00:14:11,120 --> 00:14:14,250 He was willing to do it in any way that was possible. 257 00:14:14,410 --> 00:14:19,250 For one of his experiments, in the summer of 1927, 258 00:14:19,450 --> 00:14:22,160 Ivanov managed to bring back to the Soviet union 259 00:14:22,330 --> 00:14:24,290 a male orangutan. 260 00:14:24,500 --> 00:14:26,000 He named him Tarzan. 261 00:14:26,160 --> 00:14:28,160 And he actually managed to find 262 00:14:28,370 --> 00:14:32,000 five female volunteers in the Soviet union. 263 00:14:32,200 --> 00:14:37,040 One of the women memorably commented that 264 00:14:37,200 --> 00:14:38,950 "I'm willing to volunteer for this 265 00:14:39,160 --> 00:14:44,370 because I feel that my life has no more sense anymore." 266 00:14:44,540 --> 00:14:50,160 So, I think he was somehow tapping into the suicidal women 267 00:14:50,370 --> 00:14:55,080 in the Soviet union who were just gonna abandon all hope 268 00:14:55,250 --> 00:14:58,410 to participate in this gruesome experiment. 269 00:14:58,540 --> 00:15:01,950 But Ivanov had failed in his attempt, 270 00:15:02,120 --> 00:15:06,040 because the orangutan promptly died. 271 00:15:07,040 --> 00:15:09,330 Soon after that, one of his colleagues 272 00:15:09,500 --> 00:15:12,950 reported him for counterrevolutionary activities 273 00:15:13,080 --> 00:15:15,910 and he got arrested in one of Stalin's purges. 274 00:15:16,120 --> 00:15:19,830 They exiled him to Kazakhstan. 275 00:15:20,040 --> 00:15:22,370 Two years later, he died of a stroke. 276 00:15:22,540 --> 00:15:25,450 That was the end of his research project. 277 00:15:25,620 --> 00:15:30,950 Was ilya Ivanov's dedication to his delusional hybrid project 278 00:15:31,080 --> 00:15:35,580 simply to prove that human beings had evolved from apes 279 00:15:36,790 --> 00:15:38,330 or was there a more diabolical plan 280 00:15:38,540 --> 00:15:43,660 driving the 10-year odyssey to create a humanzee? 281 00:15:43,830 --> 00:15:47,450 Why would a Soviet scientist want to create a humanzee? 282 00:15:48,750 --> 00:15:52,450 Well, we don't really know, but we can take some guesses. 283 00:15:52,620 --> 00:15:55,500 One of those would be that he was trying to 284 00:15:55,660 --> 00:15:56,950 create a super soldier. 285 00:15:57,160 --> 00:15:59,160 When you talk about a chimpanzee, 286 00:15:59,370 --> 00:16:01,266 you're talking about more stamina, more strength. 287 00:16:01,290 --> 00:16:04,500 If you can pull some of those traits into a soldier, 288 00:16:04,700 --> 00:16:07,580 you would have, essentially, a real-life captain america, 289 00:16:07,790 --> 00:16:12,080 and if you ask me, it's probably what Ivanov was trying to do. 290 00:16:13,200 --> 00:16:14,870 While it's widely believed 291 00:16:15,040 --> 00:16:18,330 that Ivanov's controversial experiments failed... 292 00:16:18,540 --> 00:16:20,330 His work still raises 293 00:16:20,540 --> 00:16:22,790 some very important ethical questions. 294 00:16:23,830 --> 00:16:28,080 Even if Ivanov could create an ape-man in a laboratory, 295 00:16:28,200 --> 00:16:30,500 should he have ever been allowed 296 00:16:30,620 --> 00:16:33,410 to try in the first place? 297 00:16:33,580 --> 00:16:38,080 The humanzee experiments raise so many ethical concerns. 298 00:16:38,250 --> 00:16:41,750 Ilya Ivanov really regarded, 299 00:16:41,910 --> 00:16:44,330 you know, whether it was humans or apes, 300 00:16:44,500 --> 00:16:48,080 not as, you know, beings that required 301 00:16:48,250 --> 00:16:52,160 and demanded our respect, but really as instruments 302 00:16:52,330 --> 00:16:54,660 for his different scientific experiments. 303 00:16:54,870 --> 00:16:57,160 So, imagine for a moment 304 00:16:57,290 --> 00:17:00,250 that the humanzee experiments had actually succeeded. 305 00:17:00,370 --> 00:17:02,160 We have no idea what the consequences 306 00:17:02,290 --> 00:17:04,016 for the woman would have been. Would it have 307 00:17:04,040 --> 00:17:05,660 destroyed her health? 308 00:17:05,830 --> 00:17:07,830 And how would we regard that species? 309 00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:09,410 Would we think that was a human 310 00:17:09,580 --> 00:17:11,700 that had all of the same rights as a human? 311 00:17:11,870 --> 00:17:13,950 It's almost impossible 312 00:17:14,120 --> 00:17:16,160 to grapple with the full set of implications 313 00:17:16,330 --> 00:17:18,870 of an experiment like that. 314 00:17:19,040 --> 00:17:21,580 Why, for thousands of years, 315 00:17:21,750 --> 00:17:23,700 have humans been so obsessed 316 00:17:23,870 --> 00:17:25,660 with creating hybrid creatures? 317 00:17:25,830 --> 00:17:29,160 One thing that many mad scientists have in common 318 00:17:29,330 --> 00:17:31,330 is that they rarely consider 319 00:17:31,540 --> 00:17:34,120 the consequences of their experiments. 320 00:17:34,290 --> 00:17:38,540 Which was the case with the Harvard professor 321 00:17:38,750 --> 00:17:40,500 whose research into mind control 322 00:17:40,700 --> 00:17:42,870 may have turned one of his students 323 00:17:43,040 --> 00:17:45,580 into a dangerous madman. 324 00:17:51,540 --> 00:17:54,160 Since its founding in 1636, 325 00:17:54,370 --> 00:17:57,500 some of the brightest minds in science 326 00:17:57,700 --> 00:18:00,580 have taught at this esteemed institution 327 00:18:01,620 --> 00:18:05,500 including James Watson, a pioneer in the science of DNA, 328 00:18:05,660 --> 00:18:09,200 nobel-prize-winning physicist Sheldon glashow, 329 00:18:09,370 --> 00:18:12,040 and the highly controversial psychologist 330 00:18:12,200 --> 00:18:15,500 named Dr. Henry Murray. 331 00:18:16,450 --> 00:18:19,250 Henry Murray was a psychologist 332 00:18:19,410 --> 00:18:22,080 who, during world war ii, worked for the oss. 333 00:18:22,200 --> 00:18:24,040 The oss is the precursor to the CIA. 334 00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:26,000 So this is military intelligence. 335 00:18:26,120 --> 00:18:28,040 And what he was trying to find out was, 336 00:18:28,200 --> 00:18:30,790 how far can you push a man before he breaks? 337 00:18:30,950 --> 00:18:33,450 He was testing the limits of soldiers 338 00:18:33,580 --> 00:18:35,870 put under interrogation and pressure. 339 00:18:36,040 --> 00:18:38,160 After the war, 340 00:18:38,290 --> 00:18:41,500 Murray went to work at Harvard as a psychologist. 341 00:18:41,620 --> 00:18:44,000 During his time at Harvard, 342 00:18:44,200 --> 00:18:46,950 Henry Murray was very interested 343 00:18:47,160 --> 00:18:50,120 in how people respond under extreme stress, 344 00:18:50,290 --> 00:18:52,330 how personality is shaped and changes. 345 00:18:52,450 --> 00:18:55,540 He was committed to do so at any cost. 346 00:18:55,750 --> 00:18:57,830 And if that meant subjecting students 347 00:18:58,000 --> 00:18:59,200 to extreme stress to do it, 348 00:18:59,370 --> 00:19:01,200 then Henry Murray was, was okay with that. 349 00:19:01,370 --> 00:19:05,290 At Harvard, Murray began a new research project 350 00:19:05,450 --> 00:19:08,370 titled "multiform assessments 351 00:19:08,540 --> 00:19:11,910 of personality development among gifted college men." 352 00:19:12,080 --> 00:19:14,000 He would experiment 353 00:19:14,200 --> 00:19:16,410 with intelligent Harvard undergraduates 354 00:19:16,580 --> 00:19:19,830 to observe how they responded to extreme 355 00:19:20,000 --> 00:19:22,750 psychological stress. 356 00:19:22,910 --> 00:19:24,330 He wasn't looking for 357 00:19:24,540 --> 00:19:27,950 students that had a sense of self-confidence. 358 00:19:28,160 --> 00:19:31,000 He wanted students that were 359 00:19:31,200 --> 00:19:33,200 feeling isolated, out of place, 360 00:19:33,370 --> 00:19:37,160 having trouble acclimating to college. 361 00:19:38,500 --> 00:19:41,790 He wanted weak people to be part of this experiment 362 00:19:41,910 --> 00:19:45,250 not strong ones, because the weak mind 363 00:19:45,410 --> 00:19:47,540 is just much easier to break. 364 00:19:47,700 --> 00:19:50,500 So, he conducted very in-depth interviews 365 00:19:50,700 --> 00:19:53,290 with these students that were potentially for the study. 366 00:19:53,500 --> 00:19:55,660 He wanted to know what their values were, 367 00:19:55,790 --> 00:19:58,080 what their fears were, what they believed, 368 00:19:58,250 --> 00:20:00,050 what made them proud, what made them nervous, 369 00:20:00,160 --> 00:20:01,910 what made them ashamed. 370 00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:04,750 And, from there, selected 22 students 371 00:20:04,870 --> 00:20:06,330 to be part of the program. 372 00:20:06,450 --> 00:20:09,370 From 1941 to 1962, 373 00:20:09,540 --> 00:20:13,200 Dr. Murray engaged five groups of 22 men. 374 00:20:13,370 --> 00:20:17,160 Each group committed to 200 hours of intensive testing 375 00:20:17,330 --> 00:20:19,790 from their sophomore to senior years. 376 00:20:20,000 --> 00:20:21,330 After collecting information 377 00:20:21,500 --> 00:20:23,830 about each subject's life, beliefs and values, 378 00:20:23,950 --> 00:20:25,500 they were confronted with 379 00:20:25,700 --> 00:20:29,160 "vehement, sweeping and personally abusive attacks," 380 00:20:29,290 --> 00:20:31,160 all intended to trigger 381 00:20:31,330 --> 00:20:34,580 crippling levels of stress and mental collapse. 382 00:20:35,700 --> 00:20:37,410 He was using tactics 383 00:20:37,580 --> 00:20:40,886 that he'd learnt working in the intelligence services 384 00:20:40,910 --> 00:20:43,160 during the second world war. 385 00:20:43,370 --> 00:20:47,000 Murray's methodology was to, first of all, 386 00:20:47,200 --> 00:20:50,160 have a brightly lit room in which he'd create 387 00:20:50,330 --> 00:20:52,910 what were termed "confrontational scenarios." 388 00:20:53,750 --> 00:20:57,160 So, his subjects would be covered in electrodes 389 00:20:57,330 --> 00:21:00,950 and then basically shouted at, yelled at, 390 00:21:01,080 --> 00:21:02,830 and this was hugely distressing. 391 00:21:02,950 --> 00:21:06,330 In essence, Murray would spend many sessions 392 00:21:06,500 --> 00:21:09,830 just berating students, and they would use those things 393 00:21:09,950 --> 00:21:11,950 that were dear to those students 394 00:21:12,080 --> 00:21:14,290 to deflate their self-esteem. 395 00:21:14,410 --> 00:21:16,950 To make them feel like they were worthless. 396 00:21:17,120 --> 00:21:19,120 To give them a sense that, 397 00:21:19,250 --> 00:21:20,886 the things that they believe, 398 00:21:20,910 --> 00:21:24,040 the things that define them, were horrible things. 399 00:21:24,200 --> 00:21:27,290 Even Murray, by his own admission, said 400 00:21:27,410 --> 00:21:30,450 that these were vehement assaults on the ego 401 00:21:30,620 --> 00:21:32,950 with the intention of breaking individuals down. 402 00:21:34,370 --> 00:21:35,580 There was some controversy 403 00:21:35,750 --> 00:21:38,620 and some dissentment among his colleagues 404 00:21:38,790 --> 00:21:40,700 that he was a fringe psychologist. 405 00:21:40,870 --> 00:21:43,580 And when one considers lonely undergrads 406 00:21:43,790 --> 00:21:45,750 and the developmental period in which they're in, 407 00:21:45,870 --> 00:21:50,176 that kind of treatment, that kind of torture, 408 00:21:50,200 --> 00:21:52,056 it stays with the person. 409 00:21:52,080 --> 00:21:55,660 The students of Murray's experiments, 25 years later, 410 00:21:55,830 --> 00:21:58,250 noted serious negative side effects 411 00:21:58,410 --> 00:22:01,450 of both physical health, mental health, social health 412 00:22:01,620 --> 00:22:02,830 that remained with them. 413 00:22:04,410 --> 00:22:05,700 What motivated Dr. Murray 414 00:22:05,870 --> 00:22:09,000 to conduct such disturbing and cruel experiments 415 00:22:09,200 --> 00:22:10,870 on vulnerable young minds? 416 00:22:11,870 --> 00:22:14,200 Was it a radical act in the name of science, 417 00:22:14,370 --> 00:22:15,660 or was there a bigger force 418 00:22:15,830 --> 00:22:19,950 influencing the psychologist's mad project? 419 00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:23,160 While it's a matter of debate, 420 00:22:23,330 --> 00:22:25,160 some believe Henry Murray may have been 421 00:22:25,290 --> 00:22:27,226 working for the U.S. government's 422 00:22:27,250 --> 00:22:30,040 central intelligence agency. 423 00:22:30,200 --> 00:22:32,080 There are rumors that he was, in fact, 424 00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:34,660 still working for the CIA, 425 00:22:34,830 --> 00:22:37,540 trying to develop techniques of mind control. 426 00:22:37,700 --> 00:22:41,160 I mean, when asked, Murray was quite cagey 427 00:22:41,370 --> 00:22:44,290 about, you know, just what he was trying to do. 428 00:22:44,450 --> 00:22:45,910 Though I do sometimes wonder, 429 00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:48,830 was Murray really capable of 430 00:22:49,000 --> 00:22:52,040 controlling the way other people thought 431 00:22:52,250 --> 00:22:53,910 as a result of his experiments? 432 00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:58,370 Is it possible that Murray's diabolical Harvard experiment 433 00:22:58,540 --> 00:23:02,000 was secretly a mind control program for the CIA? 434 00:23:02,200 --> 00:23:04,120 We can only speculate. 435 00:23:04,290 --> 00:23:05,580 But what we do know 436 00:23:05,790 --> 00:23:08,080 is that one of Murray's test subjects 437 00:23:08,250 --> 00:23:10,040 died in a supermax prison 438 00:23:10,200 --> 00:23:14,540 for a crime spree that caused death and destruction 439 00:23:14,700 --> 00:23:16,910 across the United States. 440 00:23:17,040 --> 00:23:20,080 His name was Ted kaczynski, 441 00:23:20,200 --> 00:23:23,830 also known as the unabomber. 442 00:23:23,950 --> 00:23:26,870 Ted kaczynski was only 16 years old when he was at Harvard. 443 00:23:27,040 --> 00:23:28,370 This is a very, 444 00:23:28,540 --> 00:23:29,766 very impressionable developmental period 445 00:23:29,790 --> 00:23:33,160 and one can't help but think, what exactly was the role 446 00:23:33,370 --> 00:23:35,556 of Murray's experiments 447 00:23:35,580 --> 00:23:38,120 on Ted kaczynski's future behavior? 448 00:23:39,120 --> 00:23:42,160 The unabomber carried out a series of bombings 449 00:23:42,370 --> 00:23:46,540 in which three people were killed and 23 injured. 450 00:23:47,580 --> 00:23:49,020 And, of course, people have wondered 451 00:23:49,120 --> 00:23:52,330 was it as a result of Murray's experiments 452 00:23:52,540 --> 00:23:55,000 that kaczynski went on to become 453 00:23:55,200 --> 00:23:58,160 this sociopathic serial killer? 454 00:23:58,370 --> 00:24:00,910 We know that for a fact from his manifesto, 455 00:24:01,080 --> 00:24:05,080 where kaczynski specifically went after 456 00:24:05,200 --> 00:24:07,830 the American scientific community 457 00:24:08,000 --> 00:24:10,910 and he attacked psychology as a field. 458 00:24:11,080 --> 00:24:15,160 Now, we can't make a direct, exact correlation that, 459 00:24:15,370 --> 00:24:18,000 did this experiment in mind control 460 00:24:18,200 --> 00:24:20,330 cause Ted kaczynski 461 00:24:20,450 --> 00:24:22,790 to become, essentially, a domestic terrorist? 462 00:24:22,950 --> 00:24:23,886 We can't do that. 463 00:24:23,910 --> 00:24:27,200 But certainly these experiments 464 00:24:27,370 --> 00:24:29,700 built kaczynski's worldview. 465 00:24:30,790 --> 00:24:33,790 The psychological mind control experiments 466 00:24:33,950 --> 00:24:37,290 conducted by Dr. Murray are distressing, 467 00:24:37,450 --> 00:24:38,790 to say the least. 468 00:24:38,950 --> 00:24:41,870 But there's another mad scientist 469 00:24:42,040 --> 00:24:44,830 whose fascination with electric medicine 470 00:24:44,950 --> 00:24:50,700 led to the creation of manipulative... and shocking 471 00:24:50,870 --> 00:24:52,580 experiments. 472 00:25:01,700 --> 00:25:04,830 Cardiologist Dr. Claude s. Beck 473 00:25:05,040 --> 00:25:07,910 is performing open heart surgery 474 00:25:08,910 --> 00:25:11,870 when his patient suddenly goes into cardiac arrest. 475 00:25:12,040 --> 00:25:15,250 In that moment, Beck decides to use 476 00:25:15,410 --> 00:25:18,080 an untested invention of his own design 477 00:25:18,250 --> 00:25:21,830 and saves his patient's life by shocking him 478 00:25:22,000 --> 00:25:24,660 with 1500 volts of electricity. 479 00:25:26,910 --> 00:25:29,660 Dr. Beck's invention, called a defibrillator 480 00:25:31,540 --> 00:25:35,080 and other devices, like the pacemaker 481 00:25:35,290 --> 00:25:37,080 and the cochlear implant, 482 00:25:37,290 --> 00:25:41,410 has transformed lives through electric medicine. 483 00:25:41,580 --> 00:25:43,580 But while it's easy to see the benefits 484 00:25:43,750 --> 00:25:46,660 electricity has offered medical advancement, 485 00:25:46,870 --> 00:25:49,620 it is not without controversy. 486 00:25:51,750 --> 00:25:54,660 Such is the case surrounding a troubling tool 487 00:25:54,870 --> 00:25:57,000 invented by a brilliant brain scientist 488 00:25:57,200 --> 00:25:59,540 named José delgado. 489 00:26:01,080 --> 00:26:02,830 José delgado, I'd say, 490 00:26:03,040 --> 00:26:06,830 is the most flamboyant, outrageous, 491 00:26:06,950 --> 00:26:11,200 fascinating scientist I've ever interviewed personally. 492 00:26:12,410 --> 00:26:15,080 He moved to Yale in 1950. 493 00:26:15,200 --> 00:26:16,500 And while he was there, 494 00:26:16,660 --> 00:26:18,140 over the next two and a half decades, 495 00:26:18,330 --> 00:26:21,580 he did all these experiments involving brain implants. 496 00:26:22,790 --> 00:26:24,620 And he spelled this out in a book 497 00:26:24,750 --> 00:26:27,950 that was published in 1969 498 00:26:28,120 --> 00:26:31,330 called physical control of the mind. 499 00:26:32,450 --> 00:26:34,000 For example, he developed something 500 00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:35,620 called the stimoceiver, 501 00:26:35,750 --> 00:26:39,870 which is a device about the size of a half dollar 502 00:26:40,040 --> 00:26:42,160 that could be inserted inside the skull, 503 00:26:42,290 --> 00:26:44,660 and had electrodes inserted into the brain 504 00:26:44,830 --> 00:26:46,910 that could both detect signals 505 00:26:47,040 --> 00:26:49,330 being passed from one part of the brain to another 506 00:26:49,540 --> 00:26:53,160 and also stimulate the brain to get various effects. 507 00:26:54,160 --> 00:26:58,290 Through this period, delgado did a lot of experiments on monkeys. 508 00:26:58,500 --> 00:27:01,040 He had all these monkeys in a chamber, 509 00:27:01,250 --> 00:27:05,290 and there was one big Alpha male bully and... 510 00:27:05,450 --> 00:27:07,200 And a bunch of females. 511 00:27:07,370 --> 00:27:09,330 Delgado put a stimoceiver 512 00:27:09,450 --> 00:27:11,556 in the brain of the male monkey, 513 00:27:11,580 --> 00:27:15,370 and when he pushed the lever, it would pacify the male 514 00:27:15,540 --> 00:27:17,080 and the male would suddenly become 515 00:27:17,200 --> 00:27:18,910 meek and mild and cower in the corner. 516 00:27:19,080 --> 00:27:21,660 There was a little bit of this 517 00:27:21,870 --> 00:27:25,700 kind of mad scientist aspect of him. 518 00:27:25,870 --> 00:27:27,580 Through this period also, 519 00:27:27,750 --> 00:27:29,450 delgado had been experimenting 520 00:27:29,660 --> 00:27:33,160 not only on animals but also on humans. 521 00:27:35,290 --> 00:27:39,846 So, in the 1950s, he was going into mental hospitals 522 00:27:39,870 --> 00:27:44,160 and inserting brain implants into mental patients, 523 00:27:44,330 --> 00:27:47,160 most of whom had epilepsy or schizophrenia. 524 00:27:47,330 --> 00:27:50,700 He's trying to show the power of these technologies 525 00:27:50,870 --> 00:27:53,580 for treating severe mental illness, 526 00:27:53,750 --> 00:27:57,750 in his book physical control of the mind, 527 00:27:57,950 --> 00:28:01,250 he was showing that he could control people's emotions. 528 00:28:01,410 --> 00:28:05,290 He could make them laugh, he could make them feel rage, 529 00:28:05,410 --> 00:28:08,500 just by pressing a button 530 00:28:08,700 --> 00:28:12,290 which was controlling the, the stimoceivers 531 00:28:12,450 --> 00:28:14,540 implanted in their brains. 532 00:28:14,700 --> 00:28:16,290 He wanted to take the technology as 533 00:28:16,450 --> 00:28:19,120 as far as it could possibly go. 534 00:28:20,160 --> 00:28:23,540 Delgado claimed that his radical experiments with the stimoceiver 535 00:28:23,660 --> 00:28:26,870 showed evidence that human behavior could be manipulated 536 00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,250 by applying electricity to the brain. 537 00:28:32,160 --> 00:28:35,450 And to prove it, delgado created a public demonstration 538 00:28:35,620 --> 00:28:40,120 of his mind control machine after embedding his device 539 00:28:40,290 --> 00:28:42,790 in the brain of a bull. 540 00:28:42,910 --> 00:28:48,160 Delgado famously went into a ring with a bull. 541 00:28:48,330 --> 00:28:50,790 And the only thing he was holding in his hand 542 00:28:50,950 --> 00:28:53,500 was a radio receiver. 543 00:28:53,700 --> 00:28:56,500 And as the bull charged toward him, 544 00:28:56,660 --> 00:29:00,000 he pressed a button and the bull suddenly stopped. 545 00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:02,500 And what he was trying to show 546 00:29:02,700 --> 00:29:05,540 was that it was possible to control behavior 547 00:29:05,700 --> 00:29:07,830 of other species through electrodes. 548 00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:10,676 But what it also did was show people 549 00:29:10,700 --> 00:29:14,000 how powerfully the brain can be manipulated 550 00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:17,000 and induce fear in the public 551 00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:19,700 about the possibility of brain control 552 00:29:19,910 --> 00:29:21,200 and external brain control 553 00:29:21,370 --> 00:29:24,870 by what could be seen as a mad scientist. 554 00:29:25,040 --> 00:29:27,330 The problem with his technology is 555 00:29:27,450 --> 00:29:30,540 it isn't designed to suddenly change somebody 556 00:29:30,750 --> 00:29:33,000 from charging at you to stop charging at you. 557 00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:35,250 It's designed to suddenly change behavior 558 00:29:35,450 --> 00:29:39,160 and to make people or species into puppets. 559 00:29:40,620 --> 00:29:45,886 Delgado had a vision for humanity being reshaped 560 00:29:45,910 --> 00:29:48,450 by these technologies that he was developing. 561 00:29:49,700 --> 00:29:52,500 In his book physical control of the mind, 562 00:29:52,620 --> 00:29:56,386 he said that technologies like the one he was developing 563 00:29:56,410 --> 00:30:00,790 had the capacity to transform human society for the better, 564 00:30:01,000 --> 00:30:03,386 to create this kind of utopia, 565 00:30:03,410 --> 00:30:07,080 but he's describing his patients as though they are puppets. 566 00:30:08,080 --> 00:30:10,330 He can make their limbs move up and down. 567 00:30:10,450 --> 00:30:14,540 He can make them wave their arms and clench their fists. 568 00:30:14,750 --> 00:30:17,660 He can make them laugh on command. 569 00:30:17,830 --> 00:30:20,620 And what-what's creepy is that 570 00:30:20,790 --> 00:30:22,830 often these people thought they were 571 00:30:23,000 --> 00:30:25,500 doing these things of their own free will. 572 00:30:26,790 --> 00:30:28,290 Where does it cross the line 573 00:30:28,450 --> 00:30:31,660 between understanding how the brain works 574 00:30:31,790 --> 00:30:36,290 and then making it work in a particular way? 575 00:30:36,450 --> 00:30:39,580 So, if we could just have a remote control, 576 00:30:39,750 --> 00:30:44,000 and press a button and make them behave in certain ways, 577 00:30:44,160 --> 00:30:46,790 the next question becomes, why not? 578 00:30:47,000 --> 00:30:51,700 If we think of what delgado was doing 579 00:30:51,870 --> 00:30:56,660 to control human movement and behavior, 580 00:30:56,870 --> 00:31:00,000 then that raises the question of 581 00:31:00,200 --> 00:31:03,450 who gets to play god, in that sense? 582 00:31:03,620 --> 00:31:07,660 Who-who, then, gets to control that behavior? 583 00:31:07,830 --> 00:31:10,080 If we are like puppets, 584 00:31:10,290 --> 00:31:12,540 then who is pulling the strings? 585 00:31:15,870 --> 00:31:18,410 The idea of creating an army of human puppets 586 00:31:18,540 --> 00:31:20,500 is certainly unnerving. 587 00:31:20,700 --> 00:31:25,830 But when it comes to conducting diabolical human experiments, 588 00:31:26,040 --> 00:31:27,750 the medical atrocities committed 589 00:31:27,950 --> 00:31:31,500 during world war ii stand alone, 590 00:31:31,660 --> 00:31:37,290 and earned one mad scientist the terrifying nickname... 591 00:31:37,450 --> 00:31:40,000 "The angel of death." 592 00:31:44,500 --> 00:31:48,000 The Auschwitz-birkenau state museum, Poland. 593 00:31:50,250 --> 00:31:52,080 During world war ii, it was the site 594 00:31:52,290 --> 00:31:55,290 of some of the worst atrocities in all of human history. 595 00:31:56,620 --> 00:31:58,160 Over one million innocent victims 596 00:31:58,330 --> 00:32:00,410 were murdered here by the Nazis. 597 00:32:01,330 --> 00:32:03,080 And later, survivors would speak 598 00:32:03,250 --> 00:32:05,830 of a sadistic doctor stationed here, 599 00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:09,620 responsible for truly horrific experiments 600 00:32:09,830 --> 00:32:14,200 on the prisoners, named Dr. Josef Mengele. 601 00:32:15,500 --> 00:32:17,910 There's no more notorious example 602 00:32:18,080 --> 00:32:21,160 of the extremes of scientific experimentation 603 00:32:21,370 --> 00:32:25,016 than Josef Mengele at Auschwitz 604 00:32:25,040 --> 00:32:27,080 during the course of the second world war. 605 00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:32,000 His victims called Mengele "the angel of death." 606 00:32:32,160 --> 00:32:34,790 When he came around, they knew they were going to die 607 00:32:34,950 --> 00:32:38,580 in horrible, vicious ways. 608 00:32:40,080 --> 00:32:42,370 Mengele joins the Nazi party in '37. 609 00:32:42,500 --> 00:32:46,080 Early on, he's actually a combat doctor. 610 00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:48,290 He's wounded on the Russian front, 611 00:32:48,410 --> 00:32:50,500 sent back to Germany to recover, 612 00:32:50,700 --> 00:32:54,000 and then reassigned as the chief medical officer 613 00:32:54,160 --> 00:32:58,000 of this prison industrial extermination complex 614 00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:02,540 with an almost unlimited supply of test subjects, 615 00:33:02,750 --> 00:33:04,410 and given relatively free reign 616 00:33:04,580 --> 00:33:07,120 to conduct whatever research it was that he wanted. 617 00:33:07,290 --> 00:33:09,870 That consisted of things like 618 00:33:10,040 --> 00:33:11,580 removing a kidney from a prisoner 619 00:33:11,700 --> 00:33:13,910 and then putting them back in their work detail 620 00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:16,660 to see whether or not they could continue to do that. 621 00:33:16,790 --> 00:33:21,450 He deliberately infected prisoners with various diseases. 622 00:33:21,620 --> 00:33:24,450 But he was very interested in genetics. 623 00:33:24,620 --> 00:33:28,950 One of his favorite things was to work with children, 624 00:33:29,120 --> 00:33:31,080 particularly sets of twins. 625 00:33:31,200 --> 00:33:33,000 And he would take the twins 626 00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:35,620 and use one as the experiment 627 00:33:35,790 --> 00:33:38,040 and the other as a control. 628 00:33:38,200 --> 00:33:41,250 What is so inexplicable about Mengele 629 00:33:41,370 --> 00:33:44,870 is he could be so kind and warm and gentle 630 00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:46,700 to these children one day, 631 00:33:46,870 --> 00:33:48,750 giving them chocolates, giving them candy, 632 00:33:48,870 --> 00:33:52,790 and the next day, turn around and torture and murder them. 633 00:33:52,950 --> 00:33:55,250 What kind of monster does it take 634 00:33:55,410 --> 00:33:57,040 to do something like that? 635 00:33:57,200 --> 00:34:00,290 What madness causes a man of science 636 00:34:00,410 --> 00:34:02,580 to become a sadistic monster? 637 00:34:03,830 --> 00:34:05,370 Some believe the answer may be found 638 00:34:05,540 --> 00:34:09,040 by examining a secret Japanese program during world war ii. 639 00:34:13,700 --> 00:34:16,250 Tucked away in this city of ten million people, 640 00:34:16,370 --> 00:34:19,450 a group of brick buildings stand as a grim memorial. 641 00:34:20,700 --> 00:34:23,250 It is the home of a research and development unit 642 00:34:23,410 --> 00:34:26,700 created by the Japanese during their occupation of China 643 00:34:26,870 --> 00:34:29,200 in the 1930s and 1940s. 644 00:34:29,370 --> 00:34:32,450 And it is the place where thousands of prisoners 645 00:34:32,620 --> 00:34:35,000 were the victims of heinous experiments 646 00:34:35,160 --> 00:34:36,886 conducted under the direction 647 00:34:36,910 --> 00:34:40,290 of senior army surgeon shiro ishii. 648 00:34:40,450 --> 00:34:42,950 Shiro ishii was born in 1892 649 00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:45,330 into a wealthy family, a land-owning family. 650 00:34:45,500 --> 00:34:48,330 His father grew rice and made sake. 651 00:34:48,500 --> 00:34:51,200 Ishii, though, didn't want to follow in daddy's footsteps. 652 00:34:51,370 --> 00:34:53,620 Instead, he wanted to go into medicine. 653 00:34:54,660 --> 00:34:59,160 He joined the army to become a military surgeon. 654 00:35:00,120 --> 00:35:03,080 Ishii was interested in studying cholera, 655 00:35:03,200 --> 00:35:05,120 epidemic hemorrhagic fever, 656 00:35:05,290 --> 00:35:07,330 bubonic plague... which was one of his favorites 657 00:35:07,450 --> 00:35:09,540 but he also recognizes 658 00:35:09,700 --> 00:35:12,000 that you can weaponize these diseases, 659 00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:16,330 so he proceeded to examine biowarfare 660 00:35:16,450 --> 00:35:18,370 as an option for Japan. 661 00:35:21,250 --> 00:35:23,500 To test bio weapons for Japan, 662 00:35:23,700 --> 00:35:26,726 ishii formed a military research group 663 00:35:26,750 --> 00:35:29,330 known as unit 731. 664 00:35:30,250 --> 00:35:33,870 And between 1937 and 1945, 665 00:35:34,080 --> 00:35:36,660 they performed deranged experiments 666 00:35:36,870 --> 00:35:40,250 on thousands of prisoners of war and civilians. 667 00:35:41,540 --> 00:35:44,950 General ishii was focused on the military research. 668 00:35:45,120 --> 00:35:48,226 But again, the atrocities are unimaginable. 669 00:35:48,250 --> 00:35:51,000 These were usually Chinese prisoners of war, 670 00:35:51,160 --> 00:35:54,830 but it was really any non-Japanese. 671 00:35:54,950 --> 00:35:58,910 He infected patients with tuberculosis, Anthrax, 672 00:35:59,040 --> 00:36:03,330 all kinds of diseases, just to see what would happen 673 00:36:03,540 --> 00:36:06,830 and if he can find ways to make his soldiers immune 674 00:36:07,000 --> 00:36:09,290 or how to treat them. 675 00:36:09,410 --> 00:36:11,540 And this was his justification. 676 00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:16,870 It is estimated that shiro ishii's bio weapons experiments 677 00:36:17,080 --> 00:36:19,830 killed over 10,000 test subjects. 678 00:36:23,330 --> 00:36:25,950 After world war ii, both ishii and Mengele 679 00:36:26,120 --> 00:36:29,200 were never punished for their crimes against humanity. 680 00:36:29,370 --> 00:36:32,080 But ever since their horrific secret experiments 681 00:36:32,250 --> 00:36:36,000 were revealed to the world, we still don't understand 682 00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:38,000 why these deranged doctors 683 00:36:38,160 --> 00:36:40,870 would do such despicable things. 684 00:36:42,660 --> 00:36:46,120 One answer that Mengele and ishii both offered 685 00:36:46,330 --> 00:36:48,620 was that they were doing it for nationalism. 686 00:36:48,790 --> 00:36:52,580 They were trying to further, perhaps, 687 00:36:52,700 --> 00:36:55,200 important military aims of their country. 688 00:36:55,370 --> 00:36:59,830 But I think, beyond that, part of the answer is that 689 00:37:00,040 --> 00:37:02,660 these two were clearly psychopaths. 690 00:37:02,870 --> 00:37:05,290 They enjoyed doing this. 691 00:37:06,500 --> 00:37:09,040 We really don't know what would drive a person 692 00:37:09,200 --> 00:37:11,910 to dehumanize another person. 693 00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:14,040 What happens in their mind? 694 00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:16,160 Do they snap for some reason? 695 00:37:16,370 --> 00:37:19,000 Is there some trauma inflicted upon them as a child? 696 00:37:19,200 --> 00:37:21,950 How could a scientist be drawn 697 00:37:22,120 --> 00:37:25,500 to this type of experimentation? 698 00:37:25,660 --> 00:37:29,620 I think this is one of life's great mysteries. 699 00:37:37,410 --> 00:37:39,160 Sitting on a lonely hilltop 700 00:37:39,330 --> 00:37:41,500 is an imposing stone fortress 701 00:37:41,700 --> 00:37:44,120 that dates back to the year 1252. 702 00:37:44,290 --> 00:37:47,450 Known as castle Frankenstein, 703 00:37:47,620 --> 00:37:50,700 after the family who first laid claim to this land, 704 00:37:50,870 --> 00:37:53,500 legend says it is the location that inspired 705 00:37:53,700 --> 00:37:57,410 Mary shelley's world-famous gothic horror novel. 706 00:37:57,620 --> 00:38:00,160 But surprisingly, shelley's Frankenstein 707 00:38:00,290 --> 00:38:03,660 is not about the original 13th-century family. 708 00:38:05,580 --> 00:38:09,160 It is said inspiration for her mad doctor 709 00:38:09,370 --> 00:38:12,330 would come from tales of grotesque experiments 710 00:38:12,540 --> 00:38:15,160 conducted at the castle centuries later 711 00:38:15,330 --> 00:38:19,750 by an eccentric scientist named Johann dippel. 712 00:38:20,700 --> 00:38:23,580 In 1673, in castle Frankenstein, 713 00:38:23,790 --> 00:38:26,910 was born the perfect man for that name. 714 00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:29,160 That was Johann konrad dippel. 715 00:38:29,330 --> 00:38:32,160 He was technically a theologian. 716 00:38:32,330 --> 00:38:34,660 He went to college to study god. 717 00:38:34,830 --> 00:38:37,870 Dippel was a man fascinated with death, 718 00:38:38,000 --> 00:38:40,000 with other people's death, with his own death, 719 00:38:40,160 --> 00:38:43,870 and wanted to prolong his own as long as he could. 720 00:38:44,540 --> 00:38:49,200 He believed that the soul was a physical liquid 721 00:38:49,370 --> 00:38:50,910 inside the human body. 722 00:38:52,330 --> 00:38:56,000 And he procured cadavers, legally and illegally, 723 00:38:56,160 --> 00:39:01,330 to perform experiments on bodies in all kinds of ways. 724 00:39:01,500 --> 00:39:04,500 What it entailed was sticking a tube 725 00:39:04,660 --> 00:39:07,700 usually made of animal intestine... into a cadaver, 726 00:39:07,870 --> 00:39:10,160 extracting the fluids from the cadaver 727 00:39:10,290 --> 00:39:13,500 and then transfer it into another cadaver. 728 00:39:13,700 --> 00:39:17,250 The goal being to reanimate that cadaver 729 00:39:17,410 --> 00:39:19,330 with this other one's soul. 730 00:39:19,540 --> 00:39:21,700 It makes sense that, 731 00:39:21,870 --> 00:39:26,750 if the soul has a specific, physical location in the body, 732 00:39:26,870 --> 00:39:30,660 then you can kind of extract it, and 733 00:39:30,870 --> 00:39:34,200 and put it... put it in another body. 734 00:39:34,370 --> 00:39:36,330 So about half a century or so previously, 735 00:39:36,500 --> 00:39:39,000 the French philosopher rené descartes 736 00:39:39,200 --> 00:39:43,370 had developed a view of humans 737 00:39:43,540 --> 00:39:47,450 that the soul has a physical location inside the body. 738 00:39:47,620 --> 00:39:50,830 In case you're interested, your soul is there. 739 00:39:51,830 --> 00:39:53,450 That's where the pineal gland is. 740 00:39:53,620 --> 00:39:56,790 And the pineal gland, according to descartes, 741 00:39:56,950 --> 00:39:58,750 is where the soul lives. 742 00:39:58,870 --> 00:40:00,000 But nevertheless, 743 00:40:00,200 --> 00:40:02,750 even by the standards of the early 18th century, 744 00:40:02,870 --> 00:40:05,660 if dippel did indeed carry out 745 00:40:05,830 --> 00:40:07,950 these experiments on the dead, 746 00:40:08,120 --> 00:40:13,830 trying to transfer the soul from one body to another... 747 00:40:14,040 --> 00:40:17,410 This sounds, from our point of view, mad. 748 00:40:17,580 --> 00:40:19,830 Like the famous fiction, 749 00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:22,450 these stories of horrendous experiments... 750 00:40:22,580 --> 00:40:25,580 They serve as cautionary tales 751 00:40:25,750 --> 00:40:28,290 about the pursuit of knowledge. 752 00:40:28,450 --> 00:40:30,750 You really have to ask: 753 00:40:30,910 --> 00:40:33,330 Is the way science is being pursued, 754 00:40:33,500 --> 00:40:36,040 is it being done with wisdom 755 00:40:36,200 --> 00:40:40,950 or do we risk creating Frankenstein's monster? 756 00:40:42,000 --> 00:40:45,330 The mad scientist, for me, leaves me conflicted. 757 00:40:45,540 --> 00:40:47,540 We need to push science forward. 758 00:40:47,700 --> 00:40:50,620 We also have to maintain our ethics and our dignity. 759 00:40:51,500 --> 00:40:54,540 But there are experiments that may require us 760 00:40:54,660 --> 00:40:58,200 to for ego our ethics, even if just for a moment, 761 00:40:58,370 --> 00:40:59,910 for the greater good. 762 00:41:00,120 --> 00:41:03,330 And I think that's why the "mad scientist" archetype 763 00:41:03,450 --> 00:41:05,000 will continue to persist. 764 00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:07,330 As long as we pursue the boundaries of science, 765 00:41:07,450 --> 00:41:11,580 we'll always be questioning our own boundaries as humans. 766 00:41:13,040 --> 00:41:16,750 Were Johann dippel's attempts to resurrect the dead 767 00:41:16,910 --> 00:41:22,660 driven by ambition, curiosity... Or plain old madness? 768 00:41:22,830 --> 00:41:24,660 Maybe it was all of the above. 769 00:41:24,870 --> 00:41:28,160 And it stands to reason that a unique combination 770 00:41:28,330 --> 00:41:30,660 of genius and insanity 771 00:41:30,870 --> 00:41:34,500 may also apply to other great thinkers throughout history. 772 00:41:34,620 --> 00:41:38,370 But no matter how potentially groundbreaking 773 00:41:38,540 --> 00:41:41,830 their outrageous experiments might be... 774 00:41:42,040 --> 00:41:43,500 They serve as a chilling reminder 775 00:41:43,700 --> 00:41:48,200 that the price of progress is often paid in blood. 776 00:41:48,330 --> 00:41:52,870 Whether it's ego or a warped notion of right and wrong, 777 00:41:53,040 --> 00:41:58,160 what ultimately motivates these mad scientists remains 778 00:41:59,330 --> 00:42:00,910 unexplained. 778 00:42:01,305 --> 00:43:01,324 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm