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Comment by castle-bravo | Hacker News Reader

> Nazi scientists were among the first to explore LSD’s psychopharmaceutical potential

I'm gonna need a source for this. My understanding is that Swiss chemist Albert Hoffmann discovered the psychedelic effect of LSD in April 1943 [1], and I think it very unlikely that the Nazis could have incorporated it into their purported mind-control experiments before the end of the war.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_LSD#.22Bicycle_Day....

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According to Operation Paperclip [1] part of the motivation for the US investigating weaponized LSD was the fear the Nazis were investigating it. But I'm not sure Nazi use was documented to the extent it was in the US, with the CIA's MK-ULTRA program experimenting on unknowing citizens by dosing them with LSD [2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Operation-Paperclip-Intelligence-Prog... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra#Drugs

If I understand correctly, saying that Nazi scientists were experimenting with LSD is technically true, but very misleading. The "scientists" (read: professional torturers) were /former/ Nazis working for the CIA /after/ the end of the war. This source [1] states that a paper-clipped Nazi scientist brought LSD to the attention of the CIA in 1948 (though its credibility is suspect because it suggests that a CIA operative died die to LSD poisoning, a highly improbable occurrence).

[1] http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/11/what-cold-w...

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