The 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning, also known as Le Pain Maudit, was a mass poisoning on 15 August 1951, in the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit in southern France. More than 250 people were involved, including 50 people interned in asylums and 7 deaths. A foodborne illness was suspected, and among these it was originally believed to be a case of “cursed bread”.

A majority of (possibly naive) academic sources accept naturally occurring ergot poisoning as the cause of the epidemic, while a few theorize other causes such as poisoning by mercury, mycotoxins, or nitrogen trichloride.

Cf.:
U.S. General Accounting Office Report

The U.S. General Accounting Office issued a report on September 28, 1994, which stated that between 1940 and 1974, DOD and other national security agencies studied thousands of human subjects in tests and experiments involving hazardous substances.
Citation from the study:

… Working with the CIA, the Department of Defense gave hallucinogenic drugs to thousands of “volunteer” soldiers in the 1950s and 1960s. In addition to LSD, the Army also tested quinuclidinyl benzilate, a hallucinogen code-named BZ. (Note 37) Many of these tests were conducted under the so-called MKULTRA program, established to counter perceived Soviet and Chinese advances in brainwashing techniques. Between 1953 and 1964, the program consisted of 149 projects involving drug testing and other studies on unwitting human subjects…

Background

During the Vichy government, the supply of grains from field to mill to bakery was directed by the government’s grain control board, the Office National Interprofessionnel des Céréales (ONIC), and later the Union Meuniere. Essentially, this created a government monopoly on the sale of flour, allowing the government a measure of control over wartime supply shortages. This also meant that flour would be purchased directly from ONIC, and delivered to the baker for a set price, without the baker being able to have any control on quality. Following the end of the second world war, this system was relaxed, allowing for bakers to have some choice over their flour supply. ONIC retained its monopoly on inter-departmental exportation and importation. By this system, millers in departments with more supply than demand could sell the excess to ONIC. In practice, this meant that the higher-quality flour would be delivered to local bakers and lower-quality flour would be exported to other departments. Thus, departments with net flour deficits, like the Gard department in which Pont-Saint-Esprit was located, would be supplied with lower-quality flour from other departments via ONIC, with the bakers having virtually no choice of the provenance or quality of their flour.[8]: 224-225
Previous sanitary events

In the weeks preceding the outbreak, several villages near Pont-Saint-Esprit reported outbreaks of food poisoning via bread. These outbreaks were all linked to bakeries that made their bread with most if not all of their flour supplied by the mill of Maurice Maillet, in Saint-Martin-la-Riviere. The symptoms reported were milder than those reported in Pont-Saint-Esprit.

At Issirac, at least 20 people reported cutaneous eruptions, diarrhea, vomiting and headaches. Similar symptoms were reported in Laval-Saint-Roman. Multiple families were reported sick in Goudargues and Lamotte-du-Rhone.

In Connaux, the town’s baker received reports from his clients that they believed his bread was causing violent diarrhea. He reported that his family, as well as himself, were all suffering from the same afflictions. The baker was quick to blame his flour, which he described as “bad, forming a sticky dough with acid fermentation” and which made gray and sticky bread.

In Saint-Genies-de-Comolas, the town’s mayor was alerted by one of the town’s two bakers that he received flour that was gray and full of worms. The mayor banned making bread with that flour, and referred the situation to the region’s prefect, as well as to the driver that delivered the flour.

The delivery driver, Jean Bousquet, sent the prefect a copy of a remark made to his employer, the miller’s union in Nimes, on 9 August. The note said that “almost every baker of Centre de Bagnols/Cèze has complained of the quality of the flour provided by Mr. Maillet”. Following the incident at Connaux, Bousquet requested immediate written instructions from his employer regarding the situation. On the 13th of August, he requested that samples be taken to determine if the flour was contaminated. During this period, 42 bakers complained of the flour delivered by Bousquet.
Mass poisoning

On 16 August 1951, the local offices of the town’s two doctors filled with patients reporting similar food poisoning symptoms; nausea, vomiting, cold chills, heat waves. These symptoms eventually worsened, with added hallucinatory crises and convulsions. The situation in the town deteriorated in the following days. On the night of 24 August, a man believed himself to be an aeroplane and died by jumping from a second-story window, and an 11-year-old boy tried to strangle his mother. One of the town’s two doctors would name the night nuit d’apocalypse; apocalyptic night.
Epidemiological investigation

Doctors Vieu and Gabbai investigated the epidemiology of the disease. On 19 August, they came to the conclusion that bread was to blame; all patients interrogated had purchased their bread at the Briand bakery in Pont-Saint-Esprit. In a family from a neighboring village four of whose nine members fell ill, all members who ate bread from the Briand bakery fell ill, whereas none of the others who ate bread from another bakery did. Another family shared a loaf of Briand’s bread among five of its seven members, the others preferring biscottes, with only the five falling ill.

On the morning of the 20th, the health service, the prefecture, the prosecutor of the Republic and the police were notified. Roch Briand was interrogated, and the sickness in the town was blamed on his bread.
Criminal investigation

The police investigation would eventually center on the second of three batches of bread made at Briand’s bakery on the day of 16 August. The flour composition of each batch varied, as having run out of flour during the preparation of the second batch, Briand had borrowed flour from two other local bakers, Jaussent and Fallavet. Briand’s assistant stated that when he picked up flour from Jaussent, the baker was out ill, and that he took the flour from his assistant instead.

Both Briand and his assistant agreed that the first batch was constituted of the previous day’s flour mixed with flour borrowed from Jaussent. They disagreed on the second and third batches. Whereas Briand stated that the second was made with Jaussent’s flour and the third with Fallavet’s flour, the assistant stated that both latter batches were made with a mix of the two.

The investigation led police to interrogate many of the town’s residents, who gave inconsistent ratings of Briand’s tainted batch. Some reported that the taste was perfectly normal, while others reported chemical smells (one described an odor of gasoline, another of bleach). Some reported that the bread looked normal, while others stated that its appearance was grayish.
Inquiry

On the 23rd of August, a judge of inquiry opened a formal investigation, and tasked commissaire Georges Sigaud with finding the cause of the mass poisoning event.

The tainted bread made by Briand was made with only four ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. All of the ingredients but the flour could be easily discounted as sources of the illness. The water used to make the bread was from a municipal source, the same that also supplied the rest of the village. Both the salt and the yeast used by Briand were sourced from the same suppliers as all other bakers in the region, and subsequent testing of the supplies found no toxicity.

The investigation of the provenance of the flour led Sigaud to the UM-Gard flour distribution centre, in Bagnols-sur-Cèze. The chief of the distribution network, Jean Bousquet, stated that since the end of July, the vast majority of the flour supplying the region was from two mills; one in Châtillon-sur-Indre, and the other being the mill of Maurice Maillet in Saint-Martin-la-Rivière, the latter of which was the subject of numerous complaints about the quality of its flour.

Maurice Maillet

In an interrogation that lasted multiple hours, Maurice Maillet denied mixing rye (which is highly susceptible to ergot) into his flour, opting instead to cut his product with 2% of bean flour. This was unusual, given that owing to a shortage of wheat, ONIC had mandated that rye flour be mixed in. However, in the Vienne department, rye of good quality was often more expensive than wheat, and accordingly, bean flour was authorised by ONIC as a replacement.[8]: 459

Despite this, it came to light that the supply of grains to be milled for export was sometimes mixed with grains milled in an informal agreement called échangisme. Under this type of agreement, often practiced at the time, a farmer would bring a baker grain he grew himself in exchange for bread that would later be made with his grain. The baker would bring the grain to the miller, who would mill it. The miller and baker would each take a cut for sale.

During the interrogation, Maillet admitted that he had made a deal with a baker, Guy Bruère, who had brought in bags to be milled. Since this was near the end of the season, the bags were filled with leftover grain that sometimes contained a high proportion of rye. The rye was not the only problem with the flour, as the miller also noted the presence of weevils, mites and dust. The baker was concerned that he would lose business should he refuse the grain on the basis of quality. Despite the miller having noticed the low quality of the grains, he agreed to exchange the grain for a lower quantity of flour already milled from grain marked for export. Given that the quantity of lower-quality grain was much lower than that of the grain for export, the miller thought that it would be possible to mix it all without reducing the overall quality of the flour.

Arrests and trial

On August 31, around 14:30, Sigaud addressed the media, announcing the arrests of Maillet and Bruère for involuntary manslaughter and involuntary injuries arising from their negligence in trading improper flour. Further arrests were made in the following days: an employee of Maillet, André Bertrand, was arrested, but released on bail as he was the head of a family of nine whose wife was about to give birth. The owners of the bakery at which Bruère was employed, Clothaire and Denise Audidier, were also arrested for infractions of fiscal legislation and of legislation governing wheat and flour.[8]: 471
Scientific publishing

Shortly after the incident, in September 1951, Dr. Gabbai and colleagues published a paper in the British Medical Journal declaring that “the outbreak of poisoning” was produced by ergot fungus.[10] The victims appeared to have one common connection. They had eaten bread from the bakery of Roch Briand, who was subsequently blamed for having used flour made from contaminated rye. Animals who had eaten the bread were also found to have perished.[10] According to reports at the time, the flour had been contaminated by the fungus Claviceps purpurea (ergot), which produces alkaloids that are structurally similar to the hallucinogenic drug lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD).

Other theories

Later investigations suggested mercury poisoning due to the use of Panogen or other fungicides to treat grain and seeds.

This type of contamination was considered owing to the presence of fluorescent stains on the outside of some used empty flour bags returned to the distributor. Panogen was sold containing a red colorant as a safety measure, to ensure that seeds coated with it would be used only for planting. Subsequent scientific tests showed that this coloring would not penetrate flour bags but that the active ingredient could do so. This would allow contamination of the flour, but it would appear to be limited to the bags. Further testing showed that if bread were to be baked using Panogen-contaminated flour, the rising of the bread could be partially or totally inhibited, depending on the concentration. This hypothesis was considered thoroughly in a French civil trial arising from the accident, with the contamination mechanism being a train wagon carrying flour that could have previously carried concentrated cylinders of Panogen intended for agricultural uses.[8] It was later discovered that pre-treating the seeds in Panogen could lead to mercury accumulation in the plants growing from those seeds. For this reason, Panogen, made by a Swedish company, was banned in Sweden in 1966. A revised version of the ban, in 1970, would prohibit the exportation of Panogen, leading to its removal from the market.

In 1982, a French researcher suggested Aspergillus fumigatus, a toxic fungus produced in grain silos, as a potential culprit.[13]

Historian Steven Kaplan’s 2008 book, Le Pain Maudit states that the poisoning might have been caused by nitrogen trichloride used to artificially (and illegally) bleach flour.

In his 2009 book, A Terrible Mistake, author and investigative journalist Hank P. Albarelli Jr claims that the Special Operations Division of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) tested the use of LSD on the population of Pont-Saint-Esprit as part of its MKNAOMI biological warfare program, in a field test called “Project SPAN”. According to Albarelli, this is based on CIA documents held in the US National Archives and a document supplied to the 1975 Rockefeller Commission that investigated CIA activities. Albarelli’s view was reported widely after the book’s publication, including by The Daily Telegraph, France 24 and BBC News. The attribution of the poisoning to the CIA in Albarelli’s book has been roundly criticized.[19] Historian Steven Kaplan, author of an earlier book about the events, said that this would be “clinically incoherent: LSD takes effects in just a few hours, whereas the inhabitants showed symptoms only after 36 hours or more. Furthermore, LSD does not cause the digestive ailments or the vegetative effects described by the townspeople.”

Source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1951_Pont-Saint-Esprit_mass_poisoning

Operation Sea-Spray was a 1950 U.S. Navy secret biological warfare experiment in which Serratia marcescens and Bacillus globigii bacteria were sprayed over the San Francisco Bay Area in California, in order to determine how vulnerable a city like San Francisco may be to a bioweapon attack.

Starting on September 20, 1950 and continuing until September 27, the U.S. Navy released the two types of bacteria from a ship off the shore of San Francisco, believing them to be harmless to humans. Based on results from monitoring equipment at 43 locations around the city, the Army determined that San Francisco had received enough of a dose for nearly all of the city’s 800,000 residents to inhale at least 5,000 of the particles.

Senate subcommittee hearings

In 1977, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research held a series of hearings at which the U.S. Army disclosed the existence of the tests. Army officials noted the pneumonia outbreak in their testimony but said any link to their experiments was totally coincidental. The Army pointed out that no other hospitals reported similar outbreaks and all 11 victims had urinary-tract infections following medical procedures, suggesting that the source of their infections lay inside the hospital.
Lawsuit

In 1981, Nevin’s surviving family members filed suit against the federal government, alleging negligence and responsibility for the death of Edward J. Nevin, as well as financial and emotional harm caused to Mr. Nevin’s wife from the medical costs.

The lower court ruled against them primarily because the bacteria used in the test was unproven to be responsible for Mr. Nevin’s death. The Nevin family appealed the suit all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to overturn lower court judgments.

Similar biological warfare tests

In the Senate subcommittee hearings in 1977, the Army revealed:

Between 1949 and 1969, open-air tests of biological agents were conducted 239 times. In 80 of those experiments, the Army said it used live bacteria that its researchers at the time thought were harmless. In the others, it used inert chemicals to simulate bacteria.
In the 1950s, army researchers dispersed Serratia on Panama City and Key West Florida with no known illnesses resulting.
In the 1950s, army researchers dispersed zinc cadmium sulfide (now a known cancer-causing agent) over Minnesota and other Midwestern states to see how far they would spread in the atmosphere. The particles were detected more than 1,000 miles away in New York state.
Bacillus globigii, never shown to be harmful to people, was released in San Francisco, New York, Washington, D.C., and along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, among other places.
In New York, military researchers in 1966 spread Bacillus subtilis variant Niger, also believed to be harmless, in the subway system by dropping lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto tracks in stations in midtown Manhattan. The bacteria were carried for miles throughout the subway system. Army officials concluded in a January 1968 report that: “Similar covert attacks with a pathogenic disease-causing agent during peak traffic periods could be expected to expose large numbers of people to infection and subsequent illness or death.”
In a May 1965 secret release of Bacillus globigii at Washington’s National Airport and its Greyhound Lines bus terminal, more than 130 passengers were exposed to the bacteria traveling to 39 cities in seven states in the two weeks following the mock attack.

Source: Wikipeadia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray

Further References

Bentley, Michelle. “The US has a history of testing biological weapons on the public – were infected ticks used too?”. The Conversation. URL: theconversation.com/the-us-has-a-history-of-testing-biological-weapons-on-the-public-were-infected-ticks-used-too-120638

David Rockefeller addressed a Trilateral Commission meeting in 1991 with these words:

We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine, and other great publications, whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years.

(Kent 2005, p. 66)

Kent, Deirdre. 2005. Healthy Money Healthy Planet: Developing Sustainability Through New
Money Systems. Nelson, New Zealand: Craig Potton

See also

N° 2065 – Enregistré à la Présidence de l’Assemblée nationale le 26 juin 2014.

PROPOSITION DE LOI MODIFIÉE PAR LE SÉNAT,
relative à la sobriété, à la transparence, à l’information  et à la concertation en matière d’exposition aux ondes électromagnétiques,

www.assemblee-nationale.fr/14/propositions/pion2065.asp

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has confirmed that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields can be carcinogenic to humans (Group 2B). Wireless phone use has been linked to an increased risk for brain cancer. The National Agency Health Safety of Food, Environment and Labour (ANSES) has also recommended to limit exposure of the population to radiofrequencies – especially from mobile phones – and especially for children and heavy users.

What is even more worrying is that exposure to such radiations isn’t limited to Wi-Fi but every other gadget that you and your child love so much – cell phones, cordless phones, wireless laptops, routers, electronic devices…even electrical wiring, smart meters and phone towers! Taking a strong, proactive step to minimise damage, the French National Assembly in January 29, 2015 passed a national law to reduce exposure to wireless radiation and electromagnetic fields. While Wi-Fi and wireless devices have been completely banned in nurseries and daycare centres, their use has also been severely restricted in schools for children up to 11 years.

Source: ehtrust.org/france-new-national-law-bans-wifi-nursery-school/

In fact, after this disturbing finding, even India has started taking emergency steps. The Rajasthan High Court, for instance, has directed telecom service providers to remove towers that are near schools, hospitals and play grounds. Such actions are, as PRIARTEM, France’s association for the regulation of mobile phone base stations, points out – “A first step in the legal recognition of the need to regulate the development of mobile phone communications and all wireless applications. This legislative effort must be an encouragement to go further in protecting people.”

Source: https://www.powerwatch.org.uk/

www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2010/illustrated-information/

So far, most of the possible practical applications for graphene exist only in our fantasies. A great deal of interest has been spurred by graphene’s conducting ability. Thus graphene transistors are predicted to be substantially faster than those made out of silicon today. Maybe we are on the verge of yet another miniaturization of electronics that will lead to computers becoming even more efficient in the future.

Graphene

Since graphene is practically transparent (up to nearly 98%) whilst being able to conduct electricity, it would be suitable for the production of transparent touch screens, light panels and maybe solar cells. Also plastics could be made into electronic conductors if only 1% of graphene were mixed into them. Likewise, by mixing in just a fraction of a per mille of graphene, the heat resistance of plastics would increase by 30˚ C while at the same time making them more mechanically robust. This resilience could be utilised in new super strong materials, which are also thin, elastic and lightweight.

The perfect structure of graphene also makes it suitable for the production of extremely sensitive sensors that could register pollution at molecular level.

World Affairs: The Journal of International Issues
Vol. 8, No. 2 (2004), pp. 35-52
URL: www.jstor.org/stable/48504791

Review: Re-Education in Post-War Germany
Reviewed Work: Neuordnung oder Restauration? Das Demokratiekonzept der amerikanischen Besatzungsmacht und die politsche Sozialisation der Westdeutschen: Wirtschaftsordnung. Schulstruktur. Politsche Bildung by Jutta-B. Lange-Quassowski
Review by: Konrad Jaraush
History of Education Quarterly
Vol. 22, No. 3, Special Issue: Educational Policy and Reform in Modern Germany (Autumn, 1982), pp. 387-390 (4 pages)
Published By: Cambridge University Press
History of Education Quarterly
doi.org/10.2307/367777
www.jstor.org/stable/367777

Inoculation theory
“McGuire’s (Papageorgis & McGuire, 1961, 1961a; 1961b) original conceptualization
of inoculation theory proposed that individuals can be inoculated against counter-
attitudinal attacks in a manner similar to immunization against viral attacks.
Just as preemptive immunization shots protect people from future exposure to viruses,
McGuire posited that preemptive messages could protect attitudes from subsequent
exposure to counterattitudinal persuasive messages. Inoculation treatments contain
two essential message features: threat and refutational preemption (Compton & Pfau,
2005; Szabo & Pfau, 2002). Threat is the motivational component of an inoculation.
It forewarns of a persuasive attack, highlighting the vulnerability of an individual’s
current attitudes, and thereby motivates resistance. The refutational preemption
component contains specific content that can be used to bolster attitudes against
an impending attack (Pfau et al., 1997). The purpose of the refutational component
is twofold: It provides individuals with arguments or evidence that can be used to
counter persuasive attacks, and it also allows individuals to practice defending their
beliefs through counterarguing (Compton & Pfau, 2005; Insko, 1967; Wyer, 1974).
Research reveals inoculation to be an effective strategy for conferring resistance
to persuasion. … Conspiracy theories present an interesting challenge for inoculation scholars
because they defy the rational, logical, and reasoned approach exemplified by
inoculation interventions. Conspiratorial arguments often employ circular reasoning,
repetition of unproven premises, nonfalsifiable premises, and a host of other logical
flaws (Miller, 2002). Persuasion is not a purely rational process, however, and dual-
process theories (e.g., Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) apply the metaphor of two separate
routes to persuasion: A central route, based on careful processing of the evidence;
and a peripheral route, based on some mental shortcut instead of careful evaluation
of arguments and evidence. These theories propose that both motivation and ability
to process persuasive messages are necessary for central route processing to occur.
Watching a film is a more passive process than reading, which should reduce the
ability to counterargue or process many of the empirical claims presented (Compton
& Pfau, 2005).”

Abstract

This investigation examined the boundaries of inoculation theory by examining how inoculation can be applied to conspiracy theory propaganda as well as inoculation itself (called metainoculation). A 3-phase experiment with 312 participants compared 3 main groups: no-treatment control, inoculation, and metainoculation. Research questions explored how inoculation and metainoculation effects differ based on the argument structure of inoculation messages (fact- vs. logic-based). The attack message was a 40-minute chapter from the 9/11 Truth conspiracy theory film, Loose Change: Final Cut. The results indicated that both the inoculation treatments induced more resistance than the control message, with the fact-based treatment being the most effective. The results also revealed that metainoculation treatments reduced the efficacy of the inoculation treatments.

“…people who value social conformity… support the government when it wants to increase its control over social behavior and punish nonconformity…valuing social conformity increases the motivation for placing restrictions on behavior…the desire for social freedom is now subservient to the enforcement of social norms and rules. Thus, groups will be targeted for repression to the extent that they challenge social conformity…
~ Stanley Feldman, Enforcing Social Conformity: A Theory of Authoritarianism

Abstract

Fifty years after the publication of The Authoritarian Personality, the empirical literature on authoritarianism continues to grow even though there is no widely accepted theory to account for the phenomenon. The absence of a secure theoretical grounding severely limits our understanding of authoritarianism. This paper offers a new conceptualization in which authoritarian predispositions originate in the conflict between the values of social conformity and personal autonomy. Prejudice and intolerance should be observed among those who value social conformity and perceive a threat to social cohesion. These hypotheses were tested with a sample of undergraduate students; the questionnaire included new measures of the dimension of social conformity–autonomy as well as items from Altemeyer’s RWA (right–wing authoritarianism) scale.

“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.”
~ Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

, 24(1), 41–74.
Plain numerical DOI: 10.1111/0162-895X.00316
DOI URL
directSciHub download

, 185, 111251.
Plain numerical DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2021.111251
DOI URL
directSciHub download