Dark Matters: Twisted But True (2011) s02e02 Episode Script
Resurrection Row, Operation Brainwash, Rabid Roulette
Noble: This is your one and only warning.
Your screen will soon be filled with dramatized stories of scientific research that some people may find controversial and disturbing.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Ask yourself, "Does progress always come at a price? Are some experiments too risky or just wrong?" A little curiosity can't hurt anyone Can it? Scientific knowledge cannot be unlearned.
It has a power of its own.
No matter how or why it is obtained, good or evil intentions do not always result in good and evil outcomes, as you'll see, in these three stories of experimentation andunforeseen consequences.
I'll introduce you to a brainwashing, needle-happy psychiatrist funded by the C.
I.
A.
[ Electricity crackles .]
And you'll meet a world-famous chemist who infects a little boy with rabies to prove his own theory right.
But first meet a doctor eager to bring a man back to life.
And not just any man.
A murderer for whom the state of California has other plans.
Dr.
Robert Cornish is a brilliant scientist.
Operator, Time magazine please.
Noble: At 22, he was the youngest man to gain a doctorate at the University of California.
Now age 30, he's planning something big.
My name is Dr.
Robert Cornish.
You may have heard of me.
I'm about to carry out an experimental procedure that will change the world.
Oh, it's radical, all right.
Put simply, I am going to bring the dead back to life.
Vitkun: In the 1930s, the science of resuscitation really did not exist, after their death.
So if someone drowned or was electrocuted, they could not be meaningfully resuscitated.
Noble: Cornish hasn't yet brought a human back to life, but he has tried resuscitating dead dogs.
This is his fourth attempt.
He begins within minutes of the dog's last breath.
He knows this accurately because he killed it.
Cornish injects the dog's corpse with a special solution of his own design.
Swaminath: Cornish's secret elixir is a component of multiple things.
Saline, which is a water solution, defibrinated blood, which is blood with the clots taken out of it, adrenaline, which is a heart stimulant, and heparin, which is a blood thinner.
In fact, many of these things are still used during resuscitation today.
Noble: Cornish lays the dog on a new invention called the teeter-totter board.
Swaminath: In order to get this elixir around the body, he develops a seesaw mechanism to increase the circulation.
[ Heartbeat .]
Noble: After nearly four minutes of death, the dog breathes again.
Hey, Laz, old fella! You're back! Good boy! Noble: He's killed four dogs, all named Lazarus.
With Lazarus IV, he finds the secret to resurrection -- begin within four minutes of death.
Any longer, and the heart won't restart.
Laz, old fellow, you're my living, breathing success proof.
Robert Cornish.
Remember that name, Laz.
One day, everyone's going to know it.
Noble: Cornish is ready to revive a human.
Time magazine.
Editor, please.
Tell him I have his scoop.
Noble: Cornish gets all the publicity he could hope for -- some good, some not so great.
He becomes the target of animal rights activists, and his relationship with the press does him no favors at work.
Lederer: Cornish's experiments are being covered daily in the popular press, and then he gets a letter from the Dean, who tells him science is a serious affair, not something for public sensation, and Cornish is unceremoniously tossed out of the university.
He has a brilliant idea.
Why not make a feature film in which the scientist is the one reanimating dogs that have actually been killed at the animal pound? And that way he's able to turn reality on its head.
Dad, it's Scooter.
The dog catcher got him.
Dad, did you hear me, Dad? Scooter was dead! The dog catcher got him.
You've got to do something! In the course of the film, it's the scientist who reanimates this boy's lost dog, who's been gassed at the pound.
[ Crowd cheers .]
Didn't I tell you he was the greatest doctor in the world? [ Crowd cheers .]
The boy and his dog are reunited and it's science -- and the scientist -- that's brought it about, and it's really a testament to Robert Cornish's unique flair for self-promotion.
Dr.
Cornish is the man of the hour.
Noble: But Cornish's ultimate goal is to reanimate a human.
And there's only one place he can go to find someone less valuable to the public than a dog death row.
Cohen: What Cornish discovered with his experiments in dogs was that the best approach was to obtain the bodies very, very soon after death.
And, so, with the prisoner population, he had an ideal means to do this.
He knew the time of death, they hadn't sustained any overt injury, and they were not suffering from any specific type of disease.
Noble: He writes to prison wardens in search of a freshly executed corpse.
Cornish: I, Robert Cornish, renowned research scientist, humbly request permission from you, sir, to further my pioneering research.
It would give me the chance to perfect a method to revive far more deserving patients, and no doubt your name would go down in the history books.
Noble: But every prison rejects him.
Without access to a human body, his reanimation technique will become yesterday's news.
That's not going to happen to Robert Cornish.
Noble: It's 13 years since Robert Cornish was denied a fresh corpse for reanimation.
His lab is now a tin shed in his garden.
His teeter-totter board is gone, replaced by a new device made from a vacuum cleaner, radiator tubing, an iron wheel, and 60,000 shoelace eyes -- Cornish's version of a heart-lung machine.
The metal shoe eyes increase the surface area of the blood, allowing it to absorb more oxygen.
He took the blood from the patient, pressing it through this column of shoe eyes, and pumping back into the patient.
By running the blood across these shoe eyes, it thinned the blood, allowing oxygen to enter.
The blood, as it re-entered the patient, would then be superoxygenated, hopefully reviving them.
Noble: Cornish steps out of his garden shed back into the limelight.
This time, he succeeds in finding a willing subject.
Thomas McMonigle, convicted of the brutal murder of a 15-year-old girl.
Man: Stand.
Walk.
Stand.
[ Prison door slams .]
Sit down.
Cornish: Good afternoon.
This machine will be, well, plumbed into your body.
Oxygen will be forced by this blower through here.
That's a tube filled with 60,000 shoelace eyes to aerate the blood.
Well, now, that's a good amount.
You sure this thing works, Doc? Well, there are some wrinkles still, obviously.
Air bubbles in the blood can be troublesome, but when the time comes, it'll work like clockwork.
Lederer: He had a prototype for a machine, but it's clear he hadn't worked out all the potential difficulties.
One of the major problems was the fact that he had a column that had shoelace eyes, in which the blood would be dropped over, but it had the potential for picking up all kinds of air bubbles.
Air bubbles going into any living creature would mean death rather than life.
I would, in effect, be reborn.
Maybe that will wash away my sins, huh? Well, that I couldn't say.
But your name, though, would certainly be famous.
Right under mine -- the first reanimation of a human being.
Well, it looks like we got ourselves a deal.
Noble: Cornish has found his man.
Sure got my permission, Doc.
All Cornish needs now is access to the body immediately after execution.
Now, timing is everything in resuscitation.
Within minutes of the blood and oxygen supply being cut off from the brain, it starts to die, so for him to have any success in these experiments, he has within minutes of the event.
Warden Duffy, thank you for your time.
So, you are prepared to give me access to the body.
We are.
That is excellent news! Excellent! Any time after 1:00 a.
m.
Oh.
I see.
[ Chuckles .]
Perhaps I've not been clear.
With the execution at midnight, a one-hour delay will make the experiment completely pointless.
The body will be damaged beyond repair.
Ah.
[ Chuckles .]
It seems, Thomas, there is some concern that legally, once you have served your sentence, i.
e.
, being, um, executed.
They may not be able to -- to hold you, were you to be revived.
Lederer: In the case of McMonigle, you have a criminal who's committed heinous crimes -- murder, rape, and so forth.
He has been prosecuted, and he's about to be executed.
But what if he's successfully reanimated? That means he's served his sentence against society and under the process of double jeopardy, he can't be prosecuted again.
And this is a serious problem.
What's your point, Doc? With a one-hour wait, I'm afraid you cannot be revived.
It is indeed, um, a death sentence.
No! It's my body! I want him to do it! No, I want to live! I want to live again! I want to live! Noble: Thomas McMonigle is executed by lethal gas on February 20, 1948.
No! No! [ Slow motion .]
No! Noble: McMonigle's death ends Cornish's ambitions to bring the dead to life.
The legal risks are now obvious.
Robert Cornish, ressurrectionist, becomes just a footnote in the history of science.
Brainwashing -- science fiction or science fact? Psychiatrist Dr.
Ewen Cameron believes he has the answer.
The C.
I.
A.
agrees.
With their backing, Cameron will stop at nothing to manipulate the mind and change patients' memories permanently.
Imagine, if you can, taking control of another mind.
Make someone think what you want them to think, do what you want them to do.
American secret agents went looking for a doctor ambitious enough to overlook the questionable morality of reprogramming human brains, yet talented enough to pull it off.
And they found just the right man.
Dr.
Ewen Cameron, one of Canada's foremost psychiatrists.
Cameron wants to throw out old ideas and revolutionize psychiatry with a new approach.
Cameron is living in the industrial era.
And bigger, better, faster -- that's what everyone is thinking about, and that's what he's thinking about in terms of psychiatry.
Noble: He has a steady stream of patients to treat.
I get these terrible pains in my stomach.
And I worry.
About what? The others.
All of the others.
Sit down, please.
Nope.
I don't do the couch.
Well, Freud's technique is very popular, but the problem with it is that it takes a long time.
And, so, he just wasn't a fan of that.
So, he's thinking there must be a way to bring modern technology, medication to fix people in a much faster rate than Freud had.
Jane: And everybody knows it.
They must hate me.
Jane, I believe people like yourself shield themselves from the underlying cause of their disorder.
I will help you to confront it.
I will then give you something better to replace it.
You can do that? Cameron's idea is that what we ought to do is go deeply into the brain, find the thought patterns that are causing the person to be ill, and instead, implant more of what he considered to be more positive ways of thinking.
So that scraping process or washing, that's where we got the term "brainwashing.
" Jane: They must hate me.
Noble: Cameron records Jane's feelings about herself, then plays them back to her again and again.
She has to accept her negative feelings before he can give her positive ones.
Jane: And everybody knows it.
They must hate me.
I am pathetic.
Please.
And everybody knows it.
Stop it.
They must hate me.
Stop it.
I am pathetic.
Ross: He would use looped messages over and over and over and over.
Many patients either didn't respond or would get very angry and storm out, so then he started drugging them to keep them involved in the experiments.
Noble: Cameron says he's injecting his patients with drugs to make them more receptive to his methods.
Instead of brainwashing Give me your arm, please.
he calls it "psychic driving.
" What is that? It's just to make you more receptive to the treatment.
It's called sodium amytal.
Britt: Sodium amytal is one of a suite of medications that are commonly called truth serums.
What they do is they make people very relaxed and some people very suggestible.
He even claimed that he had an open-door policy, which is probably true, but if you are under the influence of sodium amytal, you're probably not gonna be getting up and leaving of your own accord.
Jane: And everybody knows it.
They must hate me.
Noble: Cameron believes his drugs will break down the patient's resistance and get to the core of their psychiatric problems.
How do you feel about yourself now? I guess if people do hate me, it's just because I'm pathetic.
And is that good? No.
That's awful.
Now Cameron will erase those old, bad thoughts, and replace them with good ones.
He would take the person's personalty, memories, identity, wipe them out and then insert new ideas and new perspectives that he approved of, which raises the question, who gets to decide what's the right way to look at the world? Jane: People admire and respect me.
Noble: Cameron keeps some patients in prolonged sleep.
He plays them the same recording up to 20 hours a day.
Because I am a great person.
Sometimes for 10 days straight.
People admire and respect me.
Because I am a great person.
Ross: One of the hallmarks of Cameron's approach was he would take different techniques that had been used individually and combine them all into one package in the same patient at the same time, without the patient really having that explained to them or understanding what was going on or why.
Because I am a great person.
Jane.
Jane.
Hello, Jane.
Hello, Doctor.
Do you recall what you've just said? People think I'm great.
They do.
Noble: Cameron publishes his findings in 1956, claiming astonishing success.
He's now gunning for a Nobel prize.
Well, the Nobel prize is really the pinnacle of academic success.
It's certainly not about the money.
It's not about the fame.
It's about your peers labeling you as brilliant, and that's what Cameron is after.
Only people like Einstein win the Nobel prize, so it's a pretty lofty goal, but that's where Cameron's going.
He has really one thought and that is to revolutionize psychiatry and win the nobel prize.
Noble: But his techniques catch the attention of a different organization -- the C.
I.
A.
Noble: Dr.
Ewen Cameron plans to change the field of psychiatry forever with his new technique, psychic driving.
George: I am a positive person.
Dr.
Cameron, a Mr.
Angeles is here.
Oh, yes.
Send him in.
George, why don't we take a break? Don't worry.
We'll soon crack this problem of yours.
One of my more challenging cases.
Mr.
Angeles.
Please.
Call me Clarence.
Yes, I got your letter, but I'm sorry to say I'm not familiar with the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.
The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology was a front organization that the C.
I.
A.
created to fund research they were interested in, such as Ewen Cameron's.
They were interested in him because he was erasing -- wiping out a person's memories.
You could use that on a Soviet spy or a diplomat, and then implant new attitudes that you wanted.
Noble: The C.
I.
A.
funds Cameron's research.
Brainwashing is too attractive to ignore.
Jane! How are you today? Not good, Doctor.
Really? But you do remember the sentence? What sentence? People admire you.
[ Scoffs .]
If only.
You better come inside.
Cameron's methods are failing.
So he uses increasingly potent drugs.
This time, we're gonna put you under a little deeper.
See if we can't drive that message home.
Will it hurt? Britt: The reason that we know so much about what Cameron did is that he published very widely, and that's how we know about all the different medications that he tried.
That he tried LSD, that he tried sodium amytal, a barbiturate, and sernyl, which is a form of PCP or what's known on the streets as angel dust.
There just wasn't anything that he would not try in his pursuit of the Nobel prize.
Noble: Still, Cameron fails to embed new thoughts in the patients' brains.
Even when they remember the words, they're just words with no emotional meaning.
They seem to resist everything.
I just need more time.
This will be Nobel prize-winning.
It will! [ Door slams .]
Ross: The C.
I.
A.
's mind control program was called "MK-Ultra.
" And within it, one of the best-funded subprojects was Ewen Cameron's, at $60,000, which is the equivalent of a half million today.
For this investment, of course, the C.
I.
A.
was expecting results.
Noble: Cameron locks patients in isolation chambers.
He deprives them of sight and sound for days at a time.
Time for your next treatment.
Cameron tries everything to wipe his patients' minds, including electricity.
[ Electricity hums .]
[ Crackles .]
Ross: Electroconvulsive therapy, ECT, is a method where you put electrodes on a person's skull and pass electricity through their brain, which causes them to have a seizure, which, in turn, treats a mental disorder.
And Ewen Cameron used this as part of his method for wiping out memories.
[ Electricity crackles .]
Noble: Cameron's use of electric shocks is extreme, even by the standards of his day.
Britt: If experts in shock therapy would use between 70 and 150 volts, Cameron would use 150 volts.
If the duration of that shock was acceptable between .
1 and one second, Cameron would use one second.
Noble: Some patients are subjected to 150 treatments, receiving a total of 900 electric shocks.
What is your name? Don't worry.
It's part of the process.
I'll sort your memories out.
In some cases, Cameron's treatments wipe away not only bad memories, but good ones, too.
George: My life is worth just as much as anybody else's.
I am not afraid of anything.
Some patients hear the repeated messages up to half a million times.
Some are put in the isolation chamber for a month.
Some receive hundreds of electric shocks.
Cameron: You do remember the sentence.
Jane: It hurt.
How do you feel about yourself now? This will be Nobel prize-winning.
It will! Despite continuous psychic battery, no matter what drugs or shock therapy he uses, he can't make positive thoughts stick in the patients' minds.
[ Telephone rings .]
Margaret.
[ Telephone rings .]
Hello? Oh, no, no.
No.
I'm working on it right now.
I-I think it's a breakthrough.
Yeah.
Yep.
No.
No.
No, I j-- I just need more time.
Really, it's -- [ Dial tone .]
Hello? Noble: In 1960, the C.
I.
A.
cuts off his funding.
He has failed to brainwash anyone.
It's clear that many of Cameron's patients didn't benefit from the extreme treatment that he offered them.
Some of his patients complained that his treatment had reduced them to infancy, and it also seems that some of his patients who had no history of mental illness received some of these extreme therapies.
One man who had come to Cameron for treatment over his grief over his mother couldn't remember that, in fact, his mother had died in his own arms.
Noble: Cameron never wins the Nobel prize.
But he certainly scrambles some of his patients' minds.
Famed 19th-century scientist Louis Pasteur believes he has created a new vaccine that will prevent rabies, a terrifying disease and 100% lethal.
To prove the effectiveness of his treatment, he takes one of the biggest gambles in medical history.
He injects rabies into a little boy.
Louis Pasteur was a 19th-century scientific superstar, who created a cure for a vicious and always-fatal disease or so he said.
To prove his vaccine, he needs to test it on a little boy who has come to him for help.
Pasteur gambles the child's life, but keeps to himself the fact that these dice are loaded.
has been bitten savagely by a mad dog.
No, no.
No, Joseph.
No, don't sit down.
No.
Joseph's mother travels more than 200 miles to Paris.
It is not much further.
We have come so far.
Joseph, what are you? You are my soldier.
She's searching for the only man in the world who may be able to save her son.
The great Louis Pasteur, one of the scientific heroes of his age.
Pasteur's experiments have confirmed germ theory and are revolutionizing medicine.
His method of killing bacteria with heat, Pasteurization, is saving untold lives and his vaccines are protecting livestock from incurable diseases.
Pasteur found that in low doses, giving sheep the Anthrax bacteria gave them immunity rather than the disease.
Noble: Now Pasteur plans to use vaccination to tackle a 100% lethal disease -- rabies.
[ Dog growling .]
Smith: Rabies is caused by a virus that you get from puncturing of the skin, usually from an animal bite, and it travels up the nerves from one nerve to the next nerve to the next nerve until it finally gets into the brain.
Once it gets into the brain, it causes a generalized infection, which is called encephalitis.
The neurons in the muscles in the throat become paralyzed so that you can't even swallow your own saliva, so that you froth at the mouth, and ultimately you become mad.
Noble: Pasteur's vaccines cannot cure disease, but they can prevent infection.
Rabies is uniquely suited to testing a vaccine.
It has a built-in early warning system that infection is coming.
There's a long time period between the first bite and the time of the encephalitis, which is usually more than a month.
And that was critical for Pasteur's approach to the disease.
Noble: This incubation period should allow time for a vaccine to stop the rabies virus in its tracks.
To prove it, he must test it on a human who has recently been bitten.
Pasteur needs Joseph Meister, and Joseph's mother puts all her faith in Pasteur.
Lederer: The Meisters were peasants who lived far from the capital of Paris.
But even there, Pasteur's name was well-known.
Joseph Meister's mother was determined to do whatever she could for her son, even if that meant exhausting the family's savings, taking a train all the way to the capital to see the great Pasteur.
And she did it.
I mean, she accomplished that.
That was no small feat.
Noble: Pasteur has his subject, but he cannot be certain Joseph has rabies.
Not every bite from a rabid animal is infectious.
Was the dog rabid? Can we be certain? She thinks so.
They shot him.
And the bites occurred yesterday? The day before yesterday.
Noble: The clock is ticking.
If Joseph has rabies, it is already spreading through his nervous system.
Because Pasteur is a chemist, not a medical doctor, he must convince Jacques Grancher, director of the Hospital of Sick Children, to administer the vaccine.
What does he think? Did you tell him about the dogs? We are looking at all the evidence.
Don't worry.
So you have discussed all your research with him? Pasteur says his experiments on dogs prove the vaccine works.
Vitkun: They made a weakened form of the disease, and according to Pasteur's written reports, they injected 50 dogs with this weakened form of the rabies disease and subsequently the dogs developed immunity and did not get rabies.
Noble: Grancher will inject rabies into the boy, but if Joseph is not already infected, Grancher and Pasteur will be committing murder.
Roux: This is a little boy's life.
Are we truly confident that the treatment will not fail? And if he has rabies, he will die if we do nothing.
Emile, please.
But it's not certain that Joseph has rabies, nor that the vaccine will work.
The problem for Pasteur was that this was new ground entirely.
Nobody had taken a drug from an experimental animal into humans before, and so he had no idea what effect this drug might have in the boy.
This might hurt.
Not as much as the dog, I promise.
You are a very brave boy.
Wait.
It's all right.
I'm a soldier.
Noble: Grancher sticks the needle deep into Joseph's stomach and administers the first painful injection.
The injections go on for days.
Every shot more virulent, more deadly than the last.
On the 10th day, Joseph receives the final injection, but Pasteur ups the ante.
This shot is 100% rabies, worse than the bite from a rabid animal.
Vitkun: He is exposing the boy to an unnecessary risk, but Pasteur needs to do this to scientifically prove that his vaccine has worked.
And this is a vaccine which could save countless lives.
Noble: If Joseph lives, it means Pasteur is right, but if Pasteur is wrong, the boy will pay the price.
Pasteur's assistant, Emile Roux, quits in protest.
This is murder, Louis.
And I want no part of it.
Emile Roux knows something that the others do not.
Louis Pasteur has been lying.
Noble: The life of 9-year-old Joseph Meister hangs in the balance, and Louis Pasteur is hiding something vital.
This is murder, Louis.
In 1971, Pasteur's research notebooks are made public.
They reveal that he had not completed a single dog trial using this vaccine, and his assistant knew it.
So you have discussed all your research with him? Louis, this is a little boy's life.
This is a page from Pasteur's actual laboratory notebook, and in here, he is recording the results of his first test of the rabies vaccine.
He's going to perform these on a series of 10 dogs.
He begins on the 28th of May and he finishes on the 9th of June.
However, in order to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, he needs a period of at least 30 days to make that determination.
We know that Pasteur injected Joseph Meister on July 6th with the rabies vaccine.
We also know that 30 days had not elapsed, but Pasteur had told authorities that he had actually completed the testing of the vaccine on 50 dogs.
His notebook makes clear that, in fact, he hadn't completed his testing on a single animal.
Noble: Pasteur's own notebooks prove he was lying when he claimed his vaccine definitely worked.
And there are worse secrets.
This is another page from Pasteur's laboratory notebook.
You can see the entry for June 22nd and the story of Fillette, a young girl, who has been bitten by a rabid dog.
She's taken to the hospital at Saint Denis, and Pasteur records how he went there and how she received two injections of his rabies vaccine.
Unfortunately, she died.
We don't know why she died.
What we do know is that Pasteur did not relate the details of this injection to the authorities, particularly when he was making a case to try the vaccine for the first time on Joseph Meister.
Noble: His assistant Roux must have known about this death.
This is my decision.
The girl, Louis.
Remember the girl.
We begin tonight.
Lederer: It's this real tension between what's going to be good for this individual child and what's going to be good for the, maybe, tens of thousands of people who will benefit by the availability of a proven, reliable treatment for rabies.
[ Dog growls .]
Noble: Pasteur's gamble pays off.
[ Pasteur chuckles .]
A month after the final injection, Joseph Meister remains free of rabies.
My friends, I have to say when Dr.
Grancher told me he had a small boy who may be a proper subject Noble: Pasteur announces the first ever human vaccine developed by science.
He has triumphed again.
Ladies and gentlemen, this will save our children.
It will save our children's children.
[ Applause .]
Noble: The vaccine is used with 100% successful results.
Cohen: Pasteur's gamble went far beyond the development of a vaccine for rabies.
He essentially gave birth to the entire field of immunology.
Had his experiments not worked and had the boy not survived, we could have seen a setback to the field of immunology that could have lasted for decades.
As it was, the emergence of vaccines for diseases such as polio and typhoid and measles have saved literally millions of people.
Noble: Pasteur dies 10 years later a national hero.
But his rabies vaccine might never have been created if he had told the truth.
Louis Pasteur -- a hero, a liar, or both?
Your screen will soon be filled with dramatized stories of scientific research that some people may find controversial and disturbing.
Viewer discretion is advised.
Ask yourself, "Does progress always come at a price? Are some experiments too risky or just wrong?" A little curiosity can't hurt anyone Can it? Scientific knowledge cannot be unlearned.
It has a power of its own.
No matter how or why it is obtained, good or evil intentions do not always result in good and evil outcomes, as you'll see, in these three stories of experimentation andunforeseen consequences.
I'll introduce you to a brainwashing, needle-happy psychiatrist funded by the C.
I.
A.
[ Electricity crackles .]
And you'll meet a world-famous chemist who infects a little boy with rabies to prove his own theory right.
But first meet a doctor eager to bring a man back to life.
And not just any man.
A murderer for whom the state of California has other plans.
Dr.
Robert Cornish is a brilliant scientist.
Operator, Time magazine please.
Noble: At 22, he was the youngest man to gain a doctorate at the University of California.
Now age 30, he's planning something big.
My name is Dr.
Robert Cornish.
You may have heard of me.
I'm about to carry out an experimental procedure that will change the world.
Oh, it's radical, all right.
Put simply, I am going to bring the dead back to life.
Vitkun: In the 1930s, the science of resuscitation really did not exist, after their death.
So if someone drowned or was electrocuted, they could not be meaningfully resuscitated.
Noble: Cornish hasn't yet brought a human back to life, but he has tried resuscitating dead dogs.
This is his fourth attempt.
He begins within minutes of the dog's last breath.
He knows this accurately because he killed it.
Cornish injects the dog's corpse with a special solution of his own design.
Swaminath: Cornish's secret elixir is a component of multiple things.
Saline, which is a water solution, defibrinated blood, which is blood with the clots taken out of it, adrenaline, which is a heart stimulant, and heparin, which is a blood thinner.
In fact, many of these things are still used during resuscitation today.
Noble: Cornish lays the dog on a new invention called the teeter-totter board.
Swaminath: In order to get this elixir around the body, he develops a seesaw mechanism to increase the circulation.
[ Heartbeat .]
Noble: After nearly four minutes of death, the dog breathes again.
Hey, Laz, old fella! You're back! Good boy! Noble: He's killed four dogs, all named Lazarus.
With Lazarus IV, he finds the secret to resurrection -- begin within four minutes of death.
Any longer, and the heart won't restart.
Laz, old fellow, you're my living, breathing success proof.
Robert Cornish.
Remember that name, Laz.
One day, everyone's going to know it.
Noble: Cornish is ready to revive a human.
Time magazine.
Editor, please.
Tell him I have his scoop.
Noble: Cornish gets all the publicity he could hope for -- some good, some not so great.
He becomes the target of animal rights activists, and his relationship with the press does him no favors at work.
Lederer: Cornish's experiments are being covered daily in the popular press, and then he gets a letter from the Dean, who tells him science is a serious affair, not something for public sensation, and Cornish is unceremoniously tossed out of the university.
He has a brilliant idea.
Why not make a feature film in which the scientist is the one reanimating dogs that have actually been killed at the animal pound? And that way he's able to turn reality on its head.
Dad, it's Scooter.
The dog catcher got him.
Dad, did you hear me, Dad? Scooter was dead! The dog catcher got him.
You've got to do something! In the course of the film, it's the scientist who reanimates this boy's lost dog, who's been gassed at the pound.
[ Crowd cheers .]
Didn't I tell you he was the greatest doctor in the world? [ Crowd cheers .]
The boy and his dog are reunited and it's science -- and the scientist -- that's brought it about, and it's really a testament to Robert Cornish's unique flair for self-promotion.
Dr.
Cornish is the man of the hour.
Noble: But Cornish's ultimate goal is to reanimate a human.
And there's only one place he can go to find someone less valuable to the public than a dog death row.
Cohen: What Cornish discovered with his experiments in dogs was that the best approach was to obtain the bodies very, very soon after death.
And, so, with the prisoner population, he had an ideal means to do this.
He knew the time of death, they hadn't sustained any overt injury, and they were not suffering from any specific type of disease.
Noble: He writes to prison wardens in search of a freshly executed corpse.
Cornish: I, Robert Cornish, renowned research scientist, humbly request permission from you, sir, to further my pioneering research.
It would give me the chance to perfect a method to revive far more deserving patients, and no doubt your name would go down in the history books.
Noble: But every prison rejects him.
Without access to a human body, his reanimation technique will become yesterday's news.
That's not going to happen to Robert Cornish.
Noble: It's 13 years since Robert Cornish was denied a fresh corpse for reanimation.
His lab is now a tin shed in his garden.
His teeter-totter board is gone, replaced by a new device made from a vacuum cleaner, radiator tubing, an iron wheel, and 60,000 shoelace eyes -- Cornish's version of a heart-lung machine.
The metal shoe eyes increase the surface area of the blood, allowing it to absorb more oxygen.
He took the blood from the patient, pressing it through this column of shoe eyes, and pumping back into the patient.
By running the blood across these shoe eyes, it thinned the blood, allowing oxygen to enter.
The blood, as it re-entered the patient, would then be superoxygenated, hopefully reviving them.
Noble: Cornish steps out of his garden shed back into the limelight.
This time, he succeeds in finding a willing subject.
Thomas McMonigle, convicted of the brutal murder of a 15-year-old girl.
Man: Stand.
Walk.
Stand.
[ Prison door slams .]
Sit down.
Cornish: Good afternoon.
This machine will be, well, plumbed into your body.
Oxygen will be forced by this blower through here.
That's a tube filled with 60,000 shoelace eyes to aerate the blood.
Well, now, that's a good amount.
You sure this thing works, Doc? Well, there are some wrinkles still, obviously.
Air bubbles in the blood can be troublesome, but when the time comes, it'll work like clockwork.
Lederer: He had a prototype for a machine, but it's clear he hadn't worked out all the potential difficulties.
One of the major problems was the fact that he had a column that had shoelace eyes, in which the blood would be dropped over, but it had the potential for picking up all kinds of air bubbles.
Air bubbles going into any living creature would mean death rather than life.
I would, in effect, be reborn.
Maybe that will wash away my sins, huh? Well, that I couldn't say.
But your name, though, would certainly be famous.
Right under mine -- the first reanimation of a human being.
Well, it looks like we got ourselves a deal.
Noble: Cornish has found his man.
Sure got my permission, Doc.
All Cornish needs now is access to the body immediately after execution.
Now, timing is everything in resuscitation.
Within minutes of the blood and oxygen supply being cut off from the brain, it starts to die, so for him to have any success in these experiments, he has within minutes of the event.
Warden Duffy, thank you for your time.
So, you are prepared to give me access to the body.
We are.
That is excellent news! Excellent! Any time after 1:00 a.
m.
Oh.
I see.
[ Chuckles .]
Perhaps I've not been clear.
With the execution at midnight, a one-hour delay will make the experiment completely pointless.
The body will be damaged beyond repair.
Ah.
[ Chuckles .]
It seems, Thomas, there is some concern that legally, once you have served your sentence, i.
e.
, being, um, executed.
They may not be able to -- to hold you, were you to be revived.
Lederer: In the case of McMonigle, you have a criminal who's committed heinous crimes -- murder, rape, and so forth.
He has been prosecuted, and he's about to be executed.
But what if he's successfully reanimated? That means he's served his sentence against society and under the process of double jeopardy, he can't be prosecuted again.
And this is a serious problem.
What's your point, Doc? With a one-hour wait, I'm afraid you cannot be revived.
It is indeed, um, a death sentence.
No! It's my body! I want him to do it! No, I want to live! I want to live again! I want to live! Noble: Thomas McMonigle is executed by lethal gas on February 20, 1948.
No! No! [ Slow motion .]
No! Noble: McMonigle's death ends Cornish's ambitions to bring the dead to life.
The legal risks are now obvious.
Robert Cornish, ressurrectionist, becomes just a footnote in the history of science.
Brainwashing -- science fiction or science fact? Psychiatrist Dr.
Ewen Cameron believes he has the answer.
The C.
I.
A.
agrees.
With their backing, Cameron will stop at nothing to manipulate the mind and change patients' memories permanently.
Imagine, if you can, taking control of another mind.
Make someone think what you want them to think, do what you want them to do.
American secret agents went looking for a doctor ambitious enough to overlook the questionable morality of reprogramming human brains, yet talented enough to pull it off.
And they found just the right man.
Dr.
Ewen Cameron, one of Canada's foremost psychiatrists.
Cameron wants to throw out old ideas and revolutionize psychiatry with a new approach.
Cameron is living in the industrial era.
And bigger, better, faster -- that's what everyone is thinking about, and that's what he's thinking about in terms of psychiatry.
Noble: He has a steady stream of patients to treat.
I get these terrible pains in my stomach.
And I worry.
About what? The others.
All of the others.
Sit down, please.
Nope.
I don't do the couch.
Well, Freud's technique is very popular, but the problem with it is that it takes a long time.
And, so, he just wasn't a fan of that.
So, he's thinking there must be a way to bring modern technology, medication to fix people in a much faster rate than Freud had.
Jane: And everybody knows it.
They must hate me.
Jane, I believe people like yourself shield themselves from the underlying cause of their disorder.
I will help you to confront it.
I will then give you something better to replace it.
You can do that? Cameron's idea is that what we ought to do is go deeply into the brain, find the thought patterns that are causing the person to be ill, and instead, implant more of what he considered to be more positive ways of thinking.
So that scraping process or washing, that's where we got the term "brainwashing.
" Jane: They must hate me.
Noble: Cameron records Jane's feelings about herself, then plays them back to her again and again.
She has to accept her negative feelings before he can give her positive ones.
Jane: And everybody knows it.
They must hate me.
I am pathetic.
Please.
And everybody knows it.
Stop it.
They must hate me.
Stop it.
I am pathetic.
Ross: He would use looped messages over and over and over and over.
Many patients either didn't respond or would get very angry and storm out, so then he started drugging them to keep them involved in the experiments.
Noble: Cameron says he's injecting his patients with drugs to make them more receptive to his methods.
Instead of brainwashing Give me your arm, please.
he calls it "psychic driving.
" What is that? It's just to make you more receptive to the treatment.
It's called sodium amytal.
Britt: Sodium amytal is one of a suite of medications that are commonly called truth serums.
What they do is they make people very relaxed and some people very suggestible.
He even claimed that he had an open-door policy, which is probably true, but if you are under the influence of sodium amytal, you're probably not gonna be getting up and leaving of your own accord.
Jane: And everybody knows it.
They must hate me.
Noble: Cameron believes his drugs will break down the patient's resistance and get to the core of their psychiatric problems.
How do you feel about yourself now? I guess if people do hate me, it's just because I'm pathetic.
And is that good? No.
That's awful.
Now Cameron will erase those old, bad thoughts, and replace them with good ones.
He would take the person's personalty, memories, identity, wipe them out and then insert new ideas and new perspectives that he approved of, which raises the question, who gets to decide what's the right way to look at the world? Jane: People admire and respect me.
Noble: Cameron keeps some patients in prolonged sleep.
He plays them the same recording up to 20 hours a day.
Because I am a great person.
Sometimes for 10 days straight.
People admire and respect me.
Because I am a great person.
Ross: One of the hallmarks of Cameron's approach was he would take different techniques that had been used individually and combine them all into one package in the same patient at the same time, without the patient really having that explained to them or understanding what was going on or why.
Because I am a great person.
Jane.
Jane.
Hello, Jane.
Hello, Doctor.
Do you recall what you've just said? People think I'm great.
They do.
Noble: Cameron publishes his findings in 1956, claiming astonishing success.
He's now gunning for a Nobel prize.
Well, the Nobel prize is really the pinnacle of academic success.
It's certainly not about the money.
It's not about the fame.
It's about your peers labeling you as brilliant, and that's what Cameron is after.
Only people like Einstein win the Nobel prize, so it's a pretty lofty goal, but that's where Cameron's going.
He has really one thought and that is to revolutionize psychiatry and win the nobel prize.
Noble: But his techniques catch the attention of a different organization -- the C.
I.
A.
Noble: Dr.
Ewen Cameron plans to change the field of psychiatry forever with his new technique, psychic driving.
George: I am a positive person.
Dr.
Cameron, a Mr.
Angeles is here.
Oh, yes.
Send him in.
George, why don't we take a break? Don't worry.
We'll soon crack this problem of yours.
One of my more challenging cases.
Mr.
Angeles.
Please.
Call me Clarence.
Yes, I got your letter, but I'm sorry to say I'm not familiar with the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.
The Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology was a front organization that the C.
I.
A.
created to fund research they were interested in, such as Ewen Cameron's.
They were interested in him because he was erasing -- wiping out a person's memories.
You could use that on a Soviet spy or a diplomat, and then implant new attitudes that you wanted.
Noble: The C.
I.
A.
funds Cameron's research.
Brainwashing is too attractive to ignore.
Jane! How are you today? Not good, Doctor.
Really? But you do remember the sentence? What sentence? People admire you.
[ Scoffs .]
If only.
You better come inside.
Cameron's methods are failing.
So he uses increasingly potent drugs.
This time, we're gonna put you under a little deeper.
See if we can't drive that message home.
Will it hurt? Britt: The reason that we know so much about what Cameron did is that he published very widely, and that's how we know about all the different medications that he tried.
That he tried LSD, that he tried sodium amytal, a barbiturate, and sernyl, which is a form of PCP or what's known on the streets as angel dust.
There just wasn't anything that he would not try in his pursuit of the Nobel prize.
Noble: Still, Cameron fails to embed new thoughts in the patients' brains.
Even when they remember the words, they're just words with no emotional meaning.
They seem to resist everything.
I just need more time.
This will be Nobel prize-winning.
It will! [ Door slams .]
Ross: The C.
I.
A.
's mind control program was called "MK-Ultra.
" And within it, one of the best-funded subprojects was Ewen Cameron's, at $60,000, which is the equivalent of a half million today.
For this investment, of course, the C.
I.
A.
was expecting results.
Noble: Cameron locks patients in isolation chambers.
He deprives them of sight and sound for days at a time.
Time for your next treatment.
Cameron tries everything to wipe his patients' minds, including electricity.
[ Electricity hums .]
[ Crackles .]
Ross: Electroconvulsive therapy, ECT, is a method where you put electrodes on a person's skull and pass electricity through their brain, which causes them to have a seizure, which, in turn, treats a mental disorder.
And Ewen Cameron used this as part of his method for wiping out memories.
[ Electricity crackles .]
Noble: Cameron's use of electric shocks is extreme, even by the standards of his day.
Britt: If experts in shock therapy would use between 70 and 150 volts, Cameron would use 150 volts.
If the duration of that shock was acceptable between .
1 and one second, Cameron would use one second.
Noble: Some patients are subjected to 150 treatments, receiving a total of 900 electric shocks.
What is your name? Don't worry.
It's part of the process.
I'll sort your memories out.
In some cases, Cameron's treatments wipe away not only bad memories, but good ones, too.
George: My life is worth just as much as anybody else's.
I am not afraid of anything.
Some patients hear the repeated messages up to half a million times.
Some are put in the isolation chamber for a month.
Some receive hundreds of electric shocks.
Cameron: You do remember the sentence.
Jane: It hurt.
How do you feel about yourself now? This will be Nobel prize-winning.
It will! Despite continuous psychic battery, no matter what drugs or shock therapy he uses, he can't make positive thoughts stick in the patients' minds.
[ Telephone rings .]
Margaret.
[ Telephone rings .]
Hello? Oh, no, no.
No.
I'm working on it right now.
I-I think it's a breakthrough.
Yeah.
Yep.
No.
No.
No, I j-- I just need more time.
Really, it's -- [ Dial tone .]
Hello? Noble: In 1960, the C.
I.
A.
cuts off his funding.
He has failed to brainwash anyone.
It's clear that many of Cameron's patients didn't benefit from the extreme treatment that he offered them.
Some of his patients complained that his treatment had reduced them to infancy, and it also seems that some of his patients who had no history of mental illness received some of these extreme therapies.
One man who had come to Cameron for treatment over his grief over his mother couldn't remember that, in fact, his mother had died in his own arms.
Noble: Cameron never wins the Nobel prize.
But he certainly scrambles some of his patients' minds.
Famed 19th-century scientist Louis Pasteur believes he has created a new vaccine that will prevent rabies, a terrifying disease and 100% lethal.
To prove the effectiveness of his treatment, he takes one of the biggest gambles in medical history.
He injects rabies into a little boy.
Louis Pasteur was a 19th-century scientific superstar, who created a cure for a vicious and always-fatal disease or so he said.
To prove his vaccine, he needs to test it on a little boy who has come to him for help.
Pasteur gambles the child's life, but keeps to himself the fact that these dice are loaded.
has been bitten savagely by a mad dog.
No, no.
No, Joseph.
No, don't sit down.
No.
Joseph's mother travels more than 200 miles to Paris.
It is not much further.
We have come so far.
Joseph, what are you? You are my soldier.
She's searching for the only man in the world who may be able to save her son.
The great Louis Pasteur, one of the scientific heroes of his age.
Pasteur's experiments have confirmed germ theory and are revolutionizing medicine.
His method of killing bacteria with heat, Pasteurization, is saving untold lives and his vaccines are protecting livestock from incurable diseases.
Pasteur found that in low doses, giving sheep the Anthrax bacteria gave them immunity rather than the disease.
Noble: Now Pasteur plans to use vaccination to tackle a 100% lethal disease -- rabies.
[ Dog growling .]
Smith: Rabies is caused by a virus that you get from puncturing of the skin, usually from an animal bite, and it travels up the nerves from one nerve to the next nerve to the next nerve until it finally gets into the brain.
Once it gets into the brain, it causes a generalized infection, which is called encephalitis.
The neurons in the muscles in the throat become paralyzed so that you can't even swallow your own saliva, so that you froth at the mouth, and ultimately you become mad.
Noble: Pasteur's vaccines cannot cure disease, but they can prevent infection.
Rabies is uniquely suited to testing a vaccine.
It has a built-in early warning system that infection is coming.
There's a long time period between the first bite and the time of the encephalitis, which is usually more than a month.
And that was critical for Pasteur's approach to the disease.
Noble: This incubation period should allow time for a vaccine to stop the rabies virus in its tracks.
To prove it, he must test it on a human who has recently been bitten.
Pasteur needs Joseph Meister, and Joseph's mother puts all her faith in Pasteur.
Lederer: The Meisters were peasants who lived far from the capital of Paris.
But even there, Pasteur's name was well-known.
Joseph Meister's mother was determined to do whatever she could for her son, even if that meant exhausting the family's savings, taking a train all the way to the capital to see the great Pasteur.
And she did it.
I mean, she accomplished that.
That was no small feat.
Noble: Pasteur has his subject, but he cannot be certain Joseph has rabies.
Not every bite from a rabid animal is infectious.
Was the dog rabid? Can we be certain? She thinks so.
They shot him.
And the bites occurred yesterday? The day before yesterday.
Noble: The clock is ticking.
If Joseph has rabies, it is already spreading through his nervous system.
Because Pasteur is a chemist, not a medical doctor, he must convince Jacques Grancher, director of the Hospital of Sick Children, to administer the vaccine.
What does he think? Did you tell him about the dogs? We are looking at all the evidence.
Don't worry.
So you have discussed all your research with him? Pasteur says his experiments on dogs prove the vaccine works.
Vitkun: They made a weakened form of the disease, and according to Pasteur's written reports, they injected 50 dogs with this weakened form of the rabies disease and subsequently the dogs developed immunity and did not get rabies.
Noble: Grancher will inject rabies into the boy, but if Joseph is not already infected, Grancher and Pasteur will be committing murder.
Roux: This is a little boy's life.
Are we truly confident that the treatment will not fail? And if he has rabies, he will die if we do nothing.
Emile, please.
But it's not certain that Joseph has rabies, nor that the vaccine will work.
The problem for Pasteur was that this was new ground entirely.
Nobody had taken a drug from an experimental animal into humans before, and so he had no idea what effect this drug might have in the boy.
This might hurt.
Not as much as the dog, I promise.
You are a very brave boy.
Wait.
It's all right.
I'm a soldier.
Noble: Grancher sticks the needle deep into Joseph's stomach and administers the first painful injection.
The injections go on for days.
Every shot more virulent, more deadly than the last.
On the 10th day, Joseph receives the final injection, but Pasteur ups the ante.
This shot is 100% rabies, worse than the bite from a rabid animal.
Vitkun: He is exposing the boy to an unnecessary risk, but Pasteur needs to do this to scientifically prove that his vaccine has worked.
And this is a vaccine which could save countless lives.
Noble: If Joseph lives, it means Pasteur is right, but if Pasteur is wrong, the boy will pay the price.
Pasteur's assistant, Emile Roux, quits in protest.
This is murder, Louis.
And I want no part of it.
Emile Roux knows something that the others do not.
Louis Pasteur has been lying.
Noble: The life of 9-year-old Joseph Meister hangs in the balance, and Louis Pasteur is hiding something vital.
This is murder, Louis.
In 1971, Pasteur's research notebooks are made public.
They reveal that he had not completed a single dog trial using this vaccine, and his assistant knew it.
So you have discussed all your research with him? Louis, this is a little boy's life.
This is a page from Pasteur's actual laboratory notebook, and in here, he is recording the results of his first test of the rabies vaccine.
He's going to perform these on a series of 10 dogs.
He begins on the 28th of May and he finishes on the 9th of June.
However, in order to evaluate the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, he needs a period of at least 30 days to make that determination.
We know that Pasteur injected Joseph Meister on July 6th with the rabies vaccine.
We also know that 30 days had not elapsed, but Pasteur had told authorities that he had actually completed the testing of the vaccine on 50 dogs.
His notebook makes clear that, in fact, he hadn't completed his testing on a single animal.
Noble: Pasteur's own notebooks prove he was lying when he claimed his vaccine definitely worked.
And there are worse secrets.
This is another page from Pasteur's laboratory notebook.
You can see the entry for June 22nd and the story of Fillette, a young girl, who has been bitten by a rabid dog.
She's taken to the hospital at Saint Denis, and Pasteur records how he went there and how she received two injections of his rabies vaccine.
Unfortunately, she died.
We don't know why she died.
What we do know is that Pasteur did not relate the details of this injection to the authorities, particularly when he was making a case to try the vaccine for the first time on Joseph Meister.
Noble: His assistant Roux must have known about this death.
This is my decision.
The girl, Louis.
Remember the girl.
We begin tonight.
Lederer: It's this real tension between what's going to be good for this individual child and what's going to be good for the, maybe, tens of thousands of people who will benefit by the availability of a proven, reliable treatment for rabies.
[ Dog growls .]
Noble: Pasteur's gamble pays off.
[ Pasteur chuckles .]
A month after the final injection, Joseph Meister remains free of rabies.
My friends, I have to say when Dr.
Grancher told me he had a small boy who may be a proper subject Noble: Pasteur announces the first ever human vaccine developed by science.
He has triumphed again.
Ladies and gentlemen, this will save our children.
It will save our children's children.
[ Applause .]
Noble: The vaccine is used with 100% successful results.
Cohen: Pasteur's gamble went far beyond the development of a vaccine for rabies.
He essentially gave birth to the entire field of immunology.
Had his experiments not worked and had the boy not survived, we could have seen a setback to the field of immunology that could have lasted for decades.
As it was, the emergence of vaccines for diseases such as polio and typhoid and measles have saved literally millions of people.
Noble: Pasteur dies 10 years later a national hero.
But his rabies vaccine might never have been created if he had told the truth.
Louis Pasteur -- a hero, a liar, or both?