The following piece originally appeared in the March 1996 issue of Spectrum as "Promises Betrayed: One Whitecoat's Experience," a companion piece to "Adventists and Biological Warfare."

In 1963, Arthur R. Torres, now senior pastor of the Sligo Seventh-day Adventist church, was a medical student at the University of Mexico in Mexico City, unaware that he had committed a felony by leaving the country without receiving permission from the draft board. Upon learning of his status, he voluntarily returned and, along with other Adventist draftees claiming 1-A-status, was stationed at Fort Sam Houston, Texas. There he was introduced to Project Whitecoat—an alternative form of service with advantages both practical and idealistic. However, the experiences would belie much of the promised advantages.

An assignment stateside is the first practical advantage Torres cites. It guaranteed that one would not be sent to Vietnam or even to field service in Europe. The project offered very good duty—working in a laboratory. Moreover, one would be near the world church headquarters and Columbia Union College, and enjoy abundant dating opportunities.

Torres recalls that a General Conference representative who accompanied Col. Crozier of Fort Detrick in a recruiting trip to Fort Sam Houston also employed an idealistic appeal in very strongly encouraging participation in the program. He depicted Project Whitecoat as "a wonderful opportunity to serve the Adventist Church and your country." Additionally, church representatives conveyed the sense that those selected to participate constituted a kind of Adventist elite. The project was primarily carried out by soldiers who were members of the Adventist Church in good and regular standing. The Adventist chaplain at Fort Sam Houston screened out Adventist applicants known to be smoking, drinking, or not keeping the Sabbath. "It became a badge of honor to be selected," observes Torres.

Volunteers were assured, says Torres, that the project served only to help develop defense against biological warfare "What they didn’t tell us," he adds, "is that we would also be supporting the cultivation of all sorts of toxins—anthrax and other viral and bacterial strains." Torres explains that toxins milked from organisms in the research conducted in the Project Whitecoat section of Fort Detrick were transferred to another section of the fort, beyond a fence, called the "hot area," for use in chemical warfare. Torres himself frequently carried anthrax to the hot area in an extremely secure container, a task for which "top secret" clearance was required. "We were told," he reports, "that this toxin is so virulent that just two or three ounces could destroy a city of 100,000 if it got into the water supply." He questioned his commanding officer, Col. Martha Ward, but continued to receive assurances that their project was for defensive purposes only. "And yet," he observes, "all the time I was carrying this toxin over to the hot area"—the side of Fort Detrick dedicated to chemical warfare.

"My difficulty with the whole thing," says Torres, "is that I went in really thinking that I was going to be helping God and country, that I was going to be a human subject in a voluntary medical, experimental project that was going to yield information to the United States that would help defend us in the event that some mad person started a biological war with us. So I said, ’Yes, this is something I as a Christian can support, because this is healing.’" That Project Whitecoat resources would be used to create a toxin of such virulence and massive destructive capability represents, for him, a betrayal of the spiritual values that in part prompted him to volunteer.

Not only were participants not fully informed about the true purposes of their work, but Torres also believes "informed consent" concerning the impact of the experiments on the health of volunteers was not achieved. "In one particular area," he says, "I believe that seven out of the 10 died within five years after they got out of the service." Others, he says, have had long-term difficulties such as kidney and liver problems. He acknowledges that the cause-to-effect relationship between Project Whitecoat and these deaths and illnesses has never been established, but adds that the relationship seems "more than coincidental."

The implications of Project Whitecoat for the relationship between church and state also trouble Torres. "It was obvious that the Adventist Church and the United States Army were in partnership trying to find volunteers," he says. That partnership sought volunteers for a project which, though frequently billed as a humanitarian endeavor, apparently supported, at least indirectly, development of chemical weaponry with horrifying destructive capacity.

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