Speaker 1: Pushkin High Happiness Lab listeners, Doctor Laurie Santo's here today.
Speaker 1: I'm sharing with you an episode from another Pushkin podcast,
Speaker 1: Revisionist History. You might be familiar with Revisionist History. It's
Speaker 1: best selling author Malcolm Gladwell's podcast that re examines something
Speaker 1: from the past and asks whether we got it right
Speaker 1: the first time. This season, Malcolm's obsessed with something that's
Speaker 1: close to my heart as a scientist experiments. In this episode,
Speaker 1: Malcolm dives into a particularly fascinating human challenge trial known
Speaker 1: as the Minnesota Starvation Experiment. It took place near the
Speaker 1: end of World War Two. In the trial, thirty six
Speaker 1: volunteers participated in a study designed to investigate the physical
Speaker 1: and psychological effects of starvation, along with the best way
Speaker 1: to refeed people after they've been malnourished for many months.
Speaker 1: The goal was to help inform relief efforts during and
Speaker 1: after the war, but the study itself was really hard
Speaker 1: on the volunteers. As you can probably imagine, for an
Speaker 1: entire year, they lived on the campus at the University
Speaker 1: of Minnesota and ate only what the scientists allowed them
Speaker 1: to eat. The men lost a lot of weight, of course,
Speaker 1: but suffered many other effects, both physical and psychological, and
Speaker 1: yet most of them stuck it out for the full year.
Speaker 1: These days, a human challenge trial like this would violate
Speaker 1: a ton of ethical guidelines, but many of the volunteers
Speaker 1: left a fascinating record behind in the form of oral histories.
Speaker 1: I found their stories fascinating, and I think you will too. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's our visionist history. Minneapolis, nineteen forty four. Busy sidewalks,
Speaker 1: miles of street car tracks, businessmen in gray suits and hats,
Speaker 1: shop girls in knee length skirts. The Mississippi snakes through
Speaker 1: the middle of the city. The Fauchet Tower looms overhead. Overseas,
Speaker 1: the war in Europe and the South Pacific still rages.
Speaker 1: So many of the younger men are gone, but there
Speaker 1: is bustle and energy that makes the downtown feel like
Speaker 1: Chicago or New York City unless you look closely and
Speaker 1: pay attention day after day. And if you did that,
Speaker 1: you would see a strange sight that set Minneapolis in
Speaker 1: that moment apart. You would see men in groups of
Speaker 1: two walk in the streets early twenties, dressed identically in
Speaker 1: khakis and white shirts. They would seem healthy at first,
Speaker 1: but then as the fall of nineteen forty four turns
Speaker 1: into the long winter and spring of nineteen forty five.
Speaker 1: You would see them start to change. You'd see them
Speaker 1: start to move slowly, as if they were old men.
Speaker 1: Their clothes are one, then two, then three sizes too big, eyes,
Speaker 1: hollowed out, hair thinning, skin like parchment. They sit in
Speaker 1: restaurants and soda fountains and drink cup after cup of coffee,
Speaker 1: but never eat ever, even if you invited one of
Speaker 1: them to join your table, they just stare at your
Speaker 1: food with blank then move on, shuffling down the sidewalk
Speaker 1: across the Mississippi and back to a warn of rooms
Speaker 1: under the football stadium at the University of Minnesota. Back
Speaker 1: to the Department of Physiological Hygiene, run by a man
Speaker 1: named Ansel Keys. What does he look like? Ansel Keys?
Speaker 1: He was short, you know, I think that bothered him
Speaker 1: a little bit. He was very muscular, He was very
Speaker 1: i think, very good looking in his youth. That's Sarah Tracy,
Speaker 1: a historian at the University of Oklahoma who's writing a
Speaker 1: biography of Ansel Keys. Do you know he was a
Speaker 1: child genius. He was one of lewis Terman's fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: gifted children whom he tracked. He was a termite. Yes,
Speaker 1: he was a termite. You know about the termite? I do,
Speaker 1: I do. The termites were a group of children with
Speaker 1: super high IQs. You had to be very smart to
Speaker 1: be a termite. He was very self possessed as a child.
Speaker 1: You know, if he set his mind to doing something,
Speaker 1: he did it. He left high school three times, once
Speaker 1: to become a powder monkey in some mines gold mines,
Speaker 1: wants to become a lumberjack and wants to collect bat
Speaker 1: guano from caves in Arizona and so. Keys was America's
Speaker 1: first true celebrity doctor, a mountain climber, an adventurer. He
Speaker 1: was on the cover of Time back when that was
Speaker 1: the real measure of celebrity. He wrote best selling cookbooks
Speaker 1: with his wife. He had a fabulous villainear Naples. The
Speaker 1: Army has developed a now famous k Ration, the completely
Speaker 1: streamlined meal. Back before the Second World War, the Army
Speaker 1: came to him and asked him to make a high
Speaker 1: calorie preprepared meal. It was called the k Ration K
Speaker 1: for Keys, of course, and millions of gis ended up
Speaker 1: carrying his creation into battle. Originally designed for para truths
Speaker 1: K proved ideal for tank busters, commandos and all isolated units.
Speaker 1: Each package contains a balanced by them rich meal. With
Speaker 1: the K ration under his belt, An sol Keys then
Speaker 1: turned his attention to an even bigger question, one that
Speaker 1: had long obsessed those who study human physiology. What happens
Speaker 1: to people when, from months on end you deny them food.
Speaker 1: My name is Malcolm Gladwell. You're listening to Revisionist History,
Speaker 1: my podcast about things overlooked and misunderstood. This episode is
Speaker 1: about an audacious experiment conducted at the end of the
Speaker 1: Second World War by one of the most remarkable figures
Speaker 1: in twentieth century signs An sol Keys so verses at
Speaker 1: the tape, if you could just state your name and
Speaker 1: the location and date of your birth. This is Earl Heckman,
Speaker 1: living at eight eight eight had a line drive in
Speaker 1: elves in Illinois, and I was born on December one,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen. The best record we have of what exactly
Speaker 1: happened in ansel Kes's laboratory is in a box of
Speaker 1: taped interviews stored away in the archives of the Library
Speaker 1: of Congress. Each tape runs roughly two hours in length.
Speaker 1: They contained the recollections of eighteen of ansel Kes's subjects
Speaker 1: who sat down in their eighties to leave a permanent
Speaker 1: record of their experience. My name is Sam leg I
Speaker 1: was born in Hackensack, New Jersey, on November tenth, nineteen sixteen.
Speaker 1: Max Campbell Men with an M in the middle initial
Speaker 1: and November seventh, nineteen twenty. The interviews were conducted by
Speaker 1: two researchers from Johns Hopkins University, Richard Semba and Leah.
Speaker 1: The tapes were given to the library shortly thereafter, where
Speaker 1: they have sat on a shelf ever since, untouched, a
Speaker 1: forgotten record of eighteen voices talking about an experience none
Speaker 1: of them will ever forget. It was known as the
Speaker 1: Minnesota Starvation Experiment. We were in Stadium South Tower, the
Speaker 1: football stadium. Underneath the stadium had quite a complex for
Speaker 1: research there, and there was a We lived in a
Speaker 1: dormitory there. All the activities at the university were open
Speaker 1: to us. During their off hours, the men would roam
Speaker 1: the city. People living near the university saw them all
Speaker 1: the time, young men in white shirts and khaki pants,
Speaker 1: taking long walks along the Mississippi, sitting in restaurants drinking coffee,
Speaker 1: but never eating a thing. The men called themselves the
Speaker 1: guinea pigs. We were all in excellent physical health, and
Speaker 1: as far as as far as they knew, we were
Speaker 1: all in good metal health at the time. We did
Speaker 1: not stay that way during the experiment, but we were.
Speaker 1: You can go to the Library of Congress and listen
Speaker 1: to the tapes in the reading room yourself if you like.
Speaker 1: You might end up wondering what was ansel Keys trying
Speaker 1: to accomplish by putting his subjects through so much? And
Speaker 1: was it worth it? When I hear somebody say, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm simply starved, I know they don't know what they're saying,
Speaker 1: because there's a real difference between what your body craves
Speaker 1: for from the zur result of starvation than what you
Speaker 1: normally feel as hunger. The second episode of this season
Speaker 1: of Provision's history was devoted in large part to the
Speaker 1: story of the famous iodine experiments in Akron, Ohio during
Speaker 1: the First World War. A doctor named David Marine was
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to treat goiter, a condition
Speaker 1: that causes severe enlargement of the thyroid gland. Goiter was
Speaker 1: widespread in the early part of the twentieth century millions
Speaker 1: of people walked around with baseball sized bulges on their necks.
Speaker 1: Marine wanted to see if regular doses of iodine could
Speaker 1: solve the problem, so he convinced the Akrone school board
Speaker 1: to let him run a study on thousands of schoolgirls
Speaker 1: feeding them regular doses of iodine to see if it
Speaker 1: prevented goiter. Could that experiment, I wondered, be conducted today.
Speaker 1: I called up the bioethicist Art Kaplan, who teaches at
Speaker 1: New York University today. To attempt this experiment to prevent
Speaker 1: goiter would be a usually different experience for that researcher
Speaker 1: and for the subjects, the school board and their families.
Speaker 1: For one thing, when that experiment was done, there were
Speaker 1: no federal regulations. There was no federal overs of what
Speaker 1: was going on. These days, most experiments involving human subjects
Speaker 1: are closely regulated. They involve consent forms, disclosure statements, the
Speaker 1: right to drop out of a study at any given time.
Speaker 1: Kaplan's point was that, compared to today, medical research in
Speaker 1: the past starts to look like the Wild West. If
Speaker 1: you could find the money and talk people into participating,
Speaker 1: off you went. In Alabama between the nineteen thirties, and
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, the Public Health Service launched the Tuskegee
Speaker 1: Syphilis Study, where a group of African American men were
Speaker 1: tricked into signing up for what they thought was medical treatment,
Speaker 1: when in fact, all the researchers wanted to do was
Speaker 1: to find out what happened when you let untreated syphilis
Speaker 1: run its course. It was maybe the lowest moment in
Speaker 1: twentieth century American medicine. In early nineteen sixties, the Yale
Speaker 1: psychologist Stanley Milgram ran his infamous Obedient and Study two
Speaker 1: eighty five volts, where Milgram deceived otherwise unsuspecting subjects into
Speaker 1: thinking that they were delivering high voltage electric shocks to
Speaker 1: someone they'd never met. I absolutely repairs to answer anymore.
Speaker 1: Cut me out of me. You can't all reader, cut
Speaker 1: the out met the next words green place. In today's era,
Speaker 1: the number one consideration in any proposed experiment is its
Speaker 1: effect on the subject. Back then, the number one consideration
Speaker 1: was the value of what you could learn from the subject.
Speaker 1: The subject was thought of like a soldier in battle,
Speaker 1: someone whose well being was secondary to the larger cause.
Speaker 1: The answer to the vitamin question is not pill, but
Speaker 1: good food. In plenty of variety. According to doctor Key,
Speaker 1: the vitamins were missing from his food. A soldier might
Speaker 1: have to take concentrated vitamins. If he had vitamins but
Speaker 1: no food, he was still are The best way, naturally
Speaker 1: is the supply vitamins of the food. Now, remember the
Speaker 1: stature of Ansal Keys has attained during the Second World War.
Speaker 1: He's the world's greatest nutrition researcher. He's closely involved with
Speaker 1: the war effort. He just developed the k ration to
Speaker 1: great acclaim, and he looks around the world and he
Speaker 1: sees millions of people suffering from severe malnutrition. The war
Speaker 1: disrupted the food supply of entire continents. Millions of people
Speaker 1: were in concentration camps, reduced to skeletons. Ansal Keys knew
Speaker 1: how little his field understood about prolonged malnutrition. What was
Speaker 1: the effect of long term hunger on physical wellbeing, un
Speaker 1: psychological health, and what was the best way to bring
Speaker 1: the undernurshed back to health. What was more important how
Speaker 1: much you've fed someone or what you've fed someone. So
Speaker 1: Keys designs an experiment. He would need thirty subjects for
Speaker 1: at least a year. The first three months would be
Speaker 1: the control period. Each research subject would be stabilized at
Speaker 1: what Keys estimated to be their correct weight, three full
Speaker 1: meals a day intake matching outtake. Then after stabilization would
Speaker 1: come six months of severe calorie restriction, with the goal
Speaker 1: that each man losed twenty five percent of his ideal weight.
Speaker 1: Exercise would be mandatory throughout the study, twenty two miles
Speaker 1: a week of walking up and down the Mississippi or
Speaker 1: through downtown Minneapolis, all through the long Minnesota winter and
Speaker 1: through the following summer. Each participant tested on a regular
Speaker 1: basis blood samples, sperm samples, body fat, blood volumes. The
Speaker 1: men would be asked to keep journals and record their
Speaker 1: thoughts and dreams, and then, after six months of starvation,
Speaker 1: three months of recovery. The crucial part. Keys planned to
Speaker 1: test out different rehabilitatian diets with varying amounts of calories, protein,
Speaker 1: and vitamins. The experiment begins on November nineteenth, nineteen forty four.
Speaker 1: Keys gathers his guinea pigs at the Laboratory of Physiological
Speaker 1: Hygiene underneath the football stadium. He stands in front of
Speaker 1: all thirty six and gives them a speech. He had
Speaker 1: stayed up the previous night, practicing in front of his wife. Quote.
Speaker 1: We are here because of the problem of relief feeding
Speaker 1: in general, and particularly in the war devastated areas. Today,
Speaker 1: you can imagine a moment keys the brilliant scientist bringing
Speaker 1: the group of young men before him under his spell.
Speaker 1: Human misery and want are qualities of life which properly
Speaker 1: bring an emotional response, But starvation is quantitative and must
Speaker 1: be met with quantitative answers. Grand words tailor made for
Speaker 1: men of idealism, eager for a chance to serve their country.
Speaker 1: And then are you ready to begin? And a deafening
Speaker 1: cheer goes up. When we started this experiment, we were
Speaker 1: all given the same amount of proof. Right. Listening to
Speaker 1: the oral histories from the veterans of the Minnesota starvation
Speaker 1: experiment is a strange experience. We had six slices of
Speaker 1: bread for they take away two slices and four slices,
Speaker 1: six slices, and we still didn't lose weight. Then they
Speaker 1: started taking away your potato. The men are all at
Speaker 1: the end of their lives. Nearly sixty years have passed
Speaker 1: since the experiment ended, But rarely do any of them say,
Speaker 1: I don't remember or I don't know. They know, and
Speaker 1: they remember, and their memories are precise. In fact, it
Speaker 1: seems like they've been reliving the long year between the
Speaker 1: fall of nineteen forty four and the fall of nineteen
Speaker 1: forty five ever since. Do you remember what your lowest
Speaker 1: weight got down to? One hundred and thirty four? I
Speaker 1: believe what was sort of your standard weight entering one.
Speaker 1: I went in at two twenty, and they they standardized
Speaker 1: me down to one eighty before they really experiment began,
Speaker 1: So I got down to one thirty four. The thirty
Speaker 1: six subjects started the experiment with high hopes. Keys had
Speaker 1: arranged for them to take classes at the university. The
Speaker 1: men themselves organized dramatic productions and planned to hold educational seminars.
Speaker 1: Many wanted to prepare themselves for relief work after the
Speaker 1: war was over. In the recruitment leaflet Keys sent out,
Speaker 1: he mentioned the intriguing possibilities in the fact that there
Speaker 1: was an all women's dormitory nearby for those, as he
Speaker 1: put it, who wanted to be a guinea pig by
Speaker 1: day and a wolf by night. What happened after once
Speaker 1: the semi servation started, things went downhill very fast. Well,
Speaker 1: not real fast. It didn't seem much change at first.
Speaker 1: But when we got down to the to the place
Speaker 1: where we really knew what the word hunger meant. Instead
Speaker 1: of just saying I'm hungry, let's go eat, which isn't
Speaker 1: the word hunger, I mean, it's a different different when
Speaker 1: we really felt pangs of hunger, and we'd begin thinking
Speaker 1: about food most of the time, and so forth, we
Speaker 1: began to be more and more irritable. After the three
Speaker 1: months of initial rigor, while they stabilize their weight, the
Speaker 1: severe calorie restrictions kicked in. Everyone now got just two
Speaker 1: meals a day cabbage, potatoes, bread slices, Ruda Vegas, and
Speaker 1: occasional treats of macaroni and cheese. I was one of
Speaker 1: the few, now I shouldn't say few, but I was
Speaker 1: one of the many that metally was transfixed on cookbooks,
Speaker 1: and I collected probably one hundred cooks books. I would
Speaker 1: read cookbooks like he would read readers digest. Some of
Speaker 1: the men would walk into Minneapolis, sit in restaurants and
Speaker 1: watch other people eat the way they might have once
Speaker 1: gone to a concert or watched a play. They dreamt
Speaker 1: about food, They argued about food, at meal times, they
Speaker 1: fixated on their plates. I mean we would lick the plates,
Speaker 1: and I remember I heard that caused a bit of
Speaker 1: that caused a bit of tention. I think it did,
Speaker 1: particularly evening, for instance, one of the first that I
Speaker 1: saw doing that, and I thought, that's disgusting. I'm pretty sCOD.
Speaker 1: I were doing it myself, so oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I just thought, this is that you would actually degrade
Speaker 1: yourself to the extender looking up plate, give me a break,
Speaker 1: and that pretty soon we were all looking it. Coffee
Speaker 1: was one of the few indulgences they were allowed, so
Speaker 1: they drank it to excess, twelve eighteen cups a day.
Speaker 1: They chewed enormous amounts of bubblegum. They began souping their meals,
Speaker 1: their word for adding water to everything they were given
Speaker 1: to create the sense that their portions were bigger. One
Speaker 1: of the men took a day to see to have
Speaker 1: and have not, starring Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. I'm sorry, Slim,
Speaker 1: but I still say you're awfu good. And I wouldn't, oh,
Speaker 1: I forgot. You wouldn't take anything from anybody, would you.
Speaker 1: That's right. One of the great romantic dramas of the warriors,
Speaker 1: but he couldn't concentrate except for the part where Bogart
Speaker 1: goes to a restaurant. And if you went to a movie,
Speaker 1: you weren't particularly interested in a lot of scenes, but
Speaker 1: you noticed every time they ate and what they ate.
Speaker 1: During the long starvation phase, Keys began to lose some
Speaker 1: of his subjects. One of them went walking through down
Speaker 1: to Minneapolis, and suddenly his resolve broke. He'd been having
Speaker 1: dreams of cannibalism. He went into seventeen different soda fountains
Speaker 1: and gulped down a milkshake at each one. After that,
Speaker 1: we could not go out without a buddy, And if
Speaker 1: we had a girl friend, we could bring the girlfriend
Speaker 1: and the doctors would interview the girl and goal care
Speaker 1: so when we were on a date, she'd be your buddy. Finally,
Speaker 1: after six months of starvation recovery, on the final day,
Speaker 1: when you were able to finally break, what, do you
Speaker 1: remember what you did? Yes, they did a big breakfast
Speaker 1: for us, and that most of us stuffed ourselves. And
Speaker 1: then I think I went downtown and one restaurant and
Speaker 1: went in in another meal, and then got out and
Speaker 1: went and another one and and just I mean, one
Speaker 1: couldn't satisfy your craving for food by filling up your stomach.
Speaker 1: Many of us, I think did unreasonable things. I was
Speaker 1: invited out for him, I think a Swiss State dinner,
Speaker 1: and though I was filled to the brim, I went
Speaker 1: and stuffed a little bit more on in on top,
Speaker 1: and then got on a bus riding back to the
Speaker 1: to the stadium and Jos filling up and down on
Speaker 1: all of a sudden I lost it all. Oh no,
Speaker 1: I got off at the next so I felt sorry
Speaker 1: for the guy that was going to have to clean
Speaker 1: it up. Then I didn't stay around. In nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: years after the study ended, Keys published The Biology of
Speaker 1: Human Starvation, his landmark two volume account of what was
Speaker 1: learned during the study. To this day, that book helps
Speaker 1: doctors understand everything from famine relief to eating disorders. If
Speaker 1: you've ever used the terms metabolism, intermittent fasting, calories in,
Speaker 1: and calories out, then you're talking about concepts that go
Speaker 1: back to the Keys experiment. Ancil Keys did exactly what
Speaker 1: he set out to do, but his subjects, they were
Speaker 1: soldiers in a battle whose well being was secondary to
Speaker 1: the large cause. Years later, the subjects of the starvation
Speaker 1: experiment gathered for a reunion. Ansel Keys, by then an
Speaker 1: old man, addressed the group. Someone asked him did he
Speaker 1: think the benefits of what was learned were greater than
Speaker 1: the costs of what the men went through? He looked
Speaker 1: out at all the men in front of him and said, well,
Speaker 1: you're all here, aren't you. Out Of all the interviews
Speaker 1: in the box of tapes at the Library of Congress,
Speaker 1: one stands out the testimony of a man named Sam Legg.
Speaker 1: His father was a stockbroker in New York City. Sam
Speaker 1: went to the elite Saint Paul's private school in New
Speaker 1: Hampshire and then on to Yale. Sam Legg was someone
Speaker 1: the other guinea pigs looked up to, that is until
Speaker 1: his behavior took a sharp turn during the six month
Speaker 1: starvation period. His mooths began to swing back and forth.
Speaker 1: Like many others, he got obsessed with cookbooks. But his
Speaker 1: obsession was pronounced. He took to eating in the corner
Speaker 1: by himself. The historian Todd Tucker interviewed leg for his
Speaker 1: book The Great Starvation Experiment. He writes about the way
Speaker 1: Legs started to eat he combined all the food on
Speaker 1: his tray into one pile. He then took his fork
Speaker 1: and stirred it and mashed it all together, the thimblefuls
Speaker 1: of fish, chowder, spaghetti, peas, and potatoes, until it was
Speaker 1: a homogeneous, dark gray greenish paste on his plate. He
Speaker 1: then salted and peppered the amalgamation until it was crusted
Speaker 1: with seasoning. When he had scraped every morsel off his plate,
Speaker 1: he then picked it up and licked it noisily until
Speaker 1: not a molecule of food remained. The slurping noise was
Speaker 1: so loud it made the other men WinCE. In his
Speaker 1: Oral History interview, Mike talks about it how during the
Speaker 1: starvation phase he felt his character start to slip away.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a nasty moment. I was walking along
Speaker 1: and I obviously had a buddy, but I don't know
Speaker 1: who it was. And it was deep into the semi starvation,
Speaker 1: and we were tired. When they crossed the street, they
Speaker 1: didn't have the energy to take the half step up
Speaker 1: onto the sidewalk. We were tired and weak, and so
Speaker 1: we were standing at a corner waiting for a light
Speaker 1: or something, and a kid came along on a bicycle
Speaker 1: and he was really moving, pumping away, and I said,
Speaker 1: I wonder where he's going. And then I said ted
Speaker 1: to myself, I know where he's going. He's going home
Speaker 1: for supper, and I'm not. And then, for a very
Speaker 1: brief I hope it was brief moment, I suddenly hated
Speaker 1: that that boy, and that I hate at this point
Speaker 1: to tell you this because it doesn't speak very well
Speaker 1: for me, but I have remembered it with I guess
Speaker 1: horror that that I could feel such a thing so
Speaker 1: utterly irrational, But there was, and you ask an experience
Speaker 1: that I remember. I sure remember that the interview is
Speaker 1: almost over, Just one final question. There anything that we
Speaker 1: haven't talked about, or that I should have asked you,
Speaker 1: or you'd like to add that seem Elivan. You should
Speaker 1: have asked me why I'm missing fingers on my left hand. Okay.
Speaker 1: I keep saying to myself that this was because I
Speaker 1: was so weak and I was chopping wood and I
Speaker 1: got the act caught up in a tree and I
Speaker 1: didn't have an rapid enough reaction time to pull my
Speaker 1: hand away, so I removed some fingers. He was at
Speaker 1: the house of two elderly ladies in Minneapolis who had
Speaker 1: befriended some of the subjects. Leg and his buddy, We're
Speaker 1: going watch the women eat, then go outside to split
Speaker 1: wood to steal themselves against the temptation to take any
Speaker 1: of the women's food. I recognize that a human being
Speaker 1: can go through a period of mental illness. I think
Speaker 1: I was mentally ill. Was I mentally ill at the
Speaker 1: time that I removed the fingers? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: like to think that I wasn't. I like to think
Speaker 1: it was an act to that. I'm not gonna sit
Speaker 1: here and canagarically say that I didn't do it on purpose.
Speaker 1: Leg was rushed to the hospital. Pencil Keys heard the
Speaker 1: news and came straight to his bedside. Leg looked like
Speaker 1: a concentration camp survivor. His eyes had changed color, a
Speaker 1: strange side effect of deprivation that was common among the men.
Speaker 1: His corneas were a hard, brilliant white, the color of
Speaker 1: gleaming teeth. His skin was like flaky tree bark. His
Speaker 1: hand was a bloody mess. I'm quoting now from Tucker's account.
Speaker 1: Is there anything I can do for you, Sam asked
Speaker 1: Doctor Keys. Yes, said Sam. Keys leaned closer to here.
Speaker 1: Keep being the experiment, he said, Sam, I'm afraid I
Speaker 1: can't keep you in, said Keys, You need rest and
Speaker 1: decent meals. The two of them went back and forth,
Speaker 1: and Leg said, Doctor, he said, his voice still hoarse
Speaker 1: and quiet, for the rest of my life, people are
Speaker 1: going to ask me what I did during the war.
Speaker 1: This experiment is my chance to give an honorable answer
Speaker 1: to that question. Que And so for the next five days,
Speaker 1: until Leg was released from the hospital, they brought him
Speaker 1: his meals from the laboratory kitchen in a cardboard take
Speaker 1: up box, because of course he couldn't eat the hospital
Speaker 1: food that would be cheating. Could answer, Keys, do that
Speaker 1: experiment today? I asked the ethosist Art Caplain about Keys's experiment.
Speaker 1: Caplin knew the story well. He taught for years at
Speaker 1: the University of Minnesota, putting people on starvation diets, having
Speaker 1: them run around a city Minneapolis, being confronted with food everywhere,
Speaker 1: having them stressed out. Not a chance. The Minnesota starvation experiment,
Speaker 1: or any experiment like it, could never be repeated today.
Speaker 1: In the next episode of Revisionist History, we ask, are
Speaker 1: we sure that's a good thing? Revisionist History is produced
Speaker 1: by Eloise Linton, Leeming, Gustu and Jacob Smith with Tali
Speaker 1: Emlyn and Harrison VJ. Choi. Our editor is Julia Barton.
Speaker 1: Our executive producer is Milo Bell. Original scoring by Luis Gara,
Speaker 1: mastering by Flawn Williams, and engineering by Nina Lawrence. Beth
Speaker 1: Johnson is our fact checker. Special thanks to Todd Tucker
Speaker 1: go read his book The Great Starvation Experiment, Ansel Keys
Speaker 1: and The Men Who Starve for Science Special. Thanks also
Speaker 1: du Ariella Markowitz for production help on this episode. I'm
Speaker 1: Malcolm Glauber.