Podbit · Conspiracy Theories
Before Cameron ever ran the Allan Memorial Institute, he was subjecting patients to 107°F temperatures for an hour and restricting epileptics to 20 ounces of water a day. One epileptic patient died. The results were obvious and not worth the suffering — yet the CIA gave him money anyway.
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At 7:40 · chapter starts 7:35
Born in Scotland and settled in Montreal as a professor of psychiatry, Cameron is chosen to lead the Allan Memorial Institute because of his pioneering research into mood and brain disorders [1] — Carter Roy "Before Cameron ever ran the Allan Memorial Institute, he was subjecting patients to 107°F temperatures for an hour and restricting epilepti…" 07:40 . His stated aim — finding a cure for schizophrenia — sounds admirable. But his methods raise immediate red flags. In one experiment, Cameron exposes patients to extreme heat of up to 107°F for a full hour, concluding only that schizophrenic patients respond to heat just like everyone else — a result anyone could have predicted without harming a single person. In another, he restricts epileptic patients to just 20 ounces of water per day to study whether dehydration reduces seizures. The side effects are severe: acidosis, dangerous weight loss. One epileptic patient dies. The results are unremarkable. Carter Roy makes the damning observation explicit: all of this happens before the CIA gets involved. The ends, he says, do not justify the means.
Cameron subjected patients to temperatures as high as 107°F for a full hour in one experiment — concluding that schizophrenic patients respond to heat the same as anyone else.
Cameron's epilepsy patients were given only 20 ounces of water per day in a dehydration trial, causing acidosis and severe weight loss, and one patient died during the experiment.
Cameron took two ideas — communist brainwashing theory and a novelty language-learning pillow device — and fused them into 'psychic driving.' Patients heard recordings of their own voices attacking their worst traits for up to 20 hours a day, for days on end, until some felt like they were hearing voices.
Self-help fails because people are sold one universal cure by the hyper-responders who had a transformative result from it. The real problem is context: every method works for the right person at the right time, which is almost never you just because the author says so.
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