The Juggler said:

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mcgruff10 said:

You guys ever see this? /www.cnn.com/2019/10/30/health/swedish-cavity-experiment-wellness/index.html

The Swedish cavity experiments: How dentists rotted the teeth of the mentally handicapped to study candy's effect

Today it sounds like a Halloween horror story, concocted to scare children out of eating too much candy.

But in the late 1940s in Sweden, children and adults with mental disabilities were deliberately fed sticky candies to see what would happen to their teeth.

"I've seen dental records of this. Every tooth was black," said Swedish journalist Thomas Kanger, who has written about the children. "I'm talking about every tooth damaged and it went on for years."

An epidemic of cavities

In Sweden in the 1930s, studies found even 3-year-old children had cavities in 83% of their teeth. Such extensive decay wasn't unusual; dental care was very poor in most countries.

Treatment was basically non-existent and rotting teeth were typically pulled. Toothlessness was so prevalent in the United States that the military restricted recruits for World War I and World War II to men who had six intact opposing teeth.

It sounds curious now, but in the early 20th century dentists were divided on the cause of dental decay. Was it due to an underlying disease? Was it due to overall diet? Or was it due just to sweets?

Clues pointed to the role of sweets: Orphans in childrens' homes too poor to provide sweets had fewer cavities than the general population; dental decay among conscripts declined during sugar rationing in WWI.

Facing a national epidemic of tooth repair too expensive to undertake, the Swedish government decided to focus on prevention, and commissioned a study on the role of diet and sweets. It was funded by the sugar industry.

A mental institution

The perfect place to perform such a study, they decided, was the Vipeholm Mental Institution, a large facility just outside Lund, Sweden. In 1935 it had been turned into a home for people with severe intellectual and developmental disabilities.

"These 'idiots,' which was a medical classification at the time, were gathered from smaller wards all over the country," Kanger explained. "In the beginning they had 650 people and it grew up to over a thousand."

In medical terms at the time, an "idiot" was a person with an IQ below 25, who functioned at the level of a normal toddler. An "imbecile" had a IQ of between 26 and 50, whose intelligence was about that of a child of seven. "Morons" functioned at about the intellectual level of a child of 12.

These "children" typically ranged in age from 15 to 70, Kanger said. Average life expectancy was low.

"There were big, big halls where they actually were just running around, with no activities at all at the start," Kanger said. "They were bathed in cold water if they were too troublesome. Some of them lay in beds all the time.

"In the beginning, it was actually a terrible place for most people. It became better over the years, with more therapies," he said.

Hugo Fröderberg was the only physician for the hospital until 1942. He kept copious notes on each of the patients and he had his own zero to six ranking for the mental capacities of each, Kanger said.

"He rated the zero group as 'biologically lower standing than most animal species,' considering them vegetables," Kanger said. "He thought groups one to three may have a certain spiritual life, but were otherwise 'unimaginable.' "

Two-thirds of Vipeholm's patients during WWII were from these four lowest groups, Kanger said.

Those at mental levels equivalent to elementary or pre-teen children were allowed to work at jobs "no other people would like to undertake" such as laundry, cleaning and growing a garden, Kanger said.

It was these patients, who could chew and feed themselves, who were typically recruited for the dental study.

"The lower functioning groups just swallowed their food," Kanger said. "I can see in the journals they were not subjected to the cavity tests, because they had to chew the toffees. That was the whole point of it."

Oh my goodness! What kind of animals live in that country?

ecdanc said:

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mcgruff10 said:

mrussel1 said:

Geez, that's like low grade Mengele right there. 

Definitely crazy stuff. (side note, yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.  You know Mengele escaped and lived until 1977?!)

Made me think of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, which incidentally were ongoing in the 1940s