Unit 731: Firsthand Accounts of Japan's Wartime Human Experimentation Program

by Hal Gold

The contents outlined above appeared in an abstract in the medical journal. A medical doctor or researcher reading the manner in which the disease develops, and particularly the fever characteristics, should be able to recognize the subjects not as monkeys but humans. Most obvious is the account of body temperature: the “monkeys” recorded temperatures of up to 40.2 degrees Celsius. Even the sickest monkey’s body temperature will never reach that point. Rather, the fever reported was in the range of where it would be for very sick human beings. Moreover, as Professor Tsuneishi points out, the test subjects used in this research were listed simply as “monkeys.” Failure to identify the species of an animal in an experiment lowers the value of the paper reporting its results.