Conscientious Objectors Help Win the Peace

Fasting is a part of martial arts training, and so there is some irony in the fact that conscientious objectors helped win the peace after WWII.

One of the greatest killers of World War II wasn't bombs or bullets, but hunger. As the conflict raged on, destroying crops and disrupting supply lines, millions starved. During the Siege of Leningrad alone, over a thousand people a day died from lack of food. But starvation also occurred in a more unlikely place: Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was here that, in 1945, thirty-six men participated in a starvation experiment conducted by Dr. Ancel Keys.

One of the elements of "just war" is the aftermath cannot be reckoned to be worse than before the war.  Knowing how to care for victims of starvation after a war is obviously important, and oddly no one had studied it.

To find subjects willing to put themselves through such prolonged deprivation, Keys recruited volunteers from among the ranks of conscientous objectors — young men who had chosen to join the Civilian Public Service as an alternative to military service. Many of these conscientous objectors, though not all, were members of the historic peace churches (Brethren, Quakers, and Mennonites).

In WWI, conscientious objectors were imprisoned, and some worked and beaten to death.  This is better.

Keys published his full report about the experiment in 1950. It was a massive, two-volume work titled The Biology of Human Starvation. To this day, it remains the most comprehensive scientific examination of the effects of famine. And given modern restrictions on research with human subjects, it seems unlikely that an experiment on a similar scale could be repeated today.

Correct, one would think.  Especially after the Tuskegee Experiments.  But fact of the matter is, in spite of the prohibitions on human subjects trials without subject notification, any president of the USA can order secret, involuntary human subject trials the president deems necessary.  The FDA summary of the rules lists no less than 71 exceptions to the "no involuntary human subjects" regulations.

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