John Pic, Jr and radiological experiments

[Greg Parker]

This is excerpted from a manuscript I'll probably never finish

Lee Oswald was a couple of months short of his thirteenth birthday when he and his mother trekked to New York City and moved in with Lee’s half-brother, John Pic, Jr. It was August, 1952.

Pic, at the time, was in the Port Security Unit of the Coast Guard. Immediately prior to that, he had a four month stint (January to April, 1952), at the US Naval Training Station, Bainbridge, Maryland. His testimony before the Warren Commission does not reveal what he did there. However, The Commission on Streptococcal and Staphylococcal Diseases which ran from 1941 to 1973 may hold the key. The Commission was set up as part of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board (AFEB).

In 1952, the Director of the Commission was Charles A Rammelkamp, a specialist in streptococcal and other autoimmune diseases.

Rammelkamp’s contributions to WWII in fact, came about because of outbreaks of autoimmune diseases in various military bases. He was thus recruited to work for the Commission on Acute Respiratory Diseases at Fort Bragg, NC.

Such outbreaks continued after the war, but acute poststreptococcal received little attention from the Commission until an epidemic occurred at Bainbridge Naval Training Center, Maryland, in 1951 and 1952. Rammelkamp investigated this epidemic, which confirmed in his mind that certain types of group A streptococci were nephritogenic - that is— they caused kidney inflammation.

If the US was interested in producing agents it could use in biological warfare, it was equally interested in protecting itself from the very same agents. Indeed, from a very early stage of the Cold War, the lines between defensive and offensive actions were already becoming blurred. The research conducted by Rammelkamp and the commissions he was involved with, certainly had military use one way or the other, as autoimmune diseases are common results of biological weapons.

Which brings us back to John Pic Jr, who, as shown, was stationed at the Bainbridge Naval Training Center during the epidemic. It comes as no surprise then to learn that from September, 1953 until April, 1954, Pic was stationed at the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Va.

The Department of Defense Report on it's Search for Human Radiation Experiment Records tells us that the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth was involved from an undetermined date until 1960 in evaluating the effect of parabromdylamine maleate on the thyroidal uptake of radiation in untreated hyperthyroid euthyroid patients; from an undetermined date until 1959 it was involved in comparing precordial isotope-dilution cardiac output values with those obtained by the Fick method and; from an undetermined date until 1960 it was involved in the study of tendon reflexes as a diagnostic aid in myxedematous patients. In the first two areas of experimentation, various doses of radiation were administered orally or intravenously so that the effects on various organs could be studied. In the latter experiments, a fifteen microcurie source of 1-131, shielded with lead, was attached to the foot of the patient, and a sodium iodide thallium activated crystal was connected to a ratemeter so that readings could be taken. It should be stressed here that myxedematous patients are those who, through iodine deficiencies relating to the thyroid, have stunted growth and cretinism. There can be no doubt that this group of patients could not have given informed consent.

John Pic Jr, it seems, was being trained in particular areas of medicine dealing with chemical, biological and radiological warfare.

On the 1st of February, 1956, Pic joined the USAF. In October 1958, he received orders to join APO 323, Tachikawa, Japan where he was a lab technician. The USAF hospital in Tachikawa took casualties from all the Asian skirmishes of the era, including Korea.

In August 1962 he was transferred to Wilford Hall Air Force Hospital, Lackland Air Force Base as Non-Commissioned Officer in Charge of the Special Procedures Branch, Department of Pathology. Willford Hall, like Portsmouth Naval Hospital, also came up in the DoD Report on Human Radiation Experiments. Although the records of what went on at Wilford Hall are unclear in precise details, it seems to have revolved around cancer and thyroid experiments. The Pathology Department of any hospital conducting such experiments would necessarily have a major involvement.

In a related post, I'll show how he discussed these top secret experiments with a Russian national.

greg