Harold Alexander R. Abramson (November 27, 1899 – September 29, 1980) was an American physician ( clinical

allergist An allergist is a physician specially trained to manage and treat allergies, asthma and the other allergic diseases. They may also be called immunologists. Becoming an allergist Becoming an allergist/immunologist requires completion of at lea ...

), remembered as an early advocate of therapeutic LSD. He played a significant role in the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

MKULTRA Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used in interrogations to weak ...

program to investigate the possible applications for LSD.

Biography

Abramson graduated from Columbia College in 1919, receiving an

M.D. Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a professional degree. ...

from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1923. As a medical student, he was awarded the Meyerhof Prize in 1921."Harold A. Abramson Reprints , Archives and Special Collections."
library-archives.cumc.columbia.edu. He specialized in allergy medicine. In the 1920s and 1930s, Abramson traveled widely, and was affiliated with laboratories at Johns Hopkins and Harvard, as well as the

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry The Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society (FHI) is a science research institute located at the heart of the academic district of Dahlem, in Berlin, Germany. The original Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry and Electrochem ...

in Berlin. He also began long affiliations with laboratories at Mount Sinai Hospital and Cold Spring Harbor. Returning to P&S, he became Assistant Professor of Physiology from 1935 to 1942 and joined the staff at Mount Sinai Hospital in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

in 1941, cultivating an interest in

asthma Asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease of the airways of the lungs. It is characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and easily triggered bronchospasms. Symptoms include episodes of wheezing, co ...

and

pulmonary disease Respiratory diseases, or lung diseases, are pathological conditions affecting the organs and tissues that make gas exchange difficult in air-breathing animals. They include conditions of the respiratory tract including the trachea, bronchi, bron ...

, and where he was the first ever to use

aerosolized Aerosolization is the process or act of converting some physical substance into the form of particles small and light enough to be carried on the air i.e. into an aerosol. Aerosolization refers to a process of intentionally oxidatively converting a ...

penicillin. In 1942 the Long Island Biological Laboratories research project, headed by Harold Abramson, was established in part with funds from the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation and support from the War Department. Abramson was then a Major in the Technical Division, Chemical Warfare service of the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

.Unsworth, John M. (1994)
"LSD, Mind Control, and the Internet: A Chronology."
rchived fro

Handout with "Information Theory, Postmodernism, and Mind Control (or, What LSD, Mass Media, and the Internet Have in Common)," presented at the 1994 Conference of the Society for Literature and Science, New Orleans, LA, November, 1994. He was on military leave from 1943 to August 1946, and during this period he earned the United States Army’s Legion of Merit "for vital contributions to the Chemical Warfare Service and thus to the war effort" for work involving aerosol penicillin. He returned to P&S in September 1946, and became Assistant Clinical Professor of Physiology from 1948-57. During the 1950s, Abramson was involved in LSD research conducted at Mount Sinai and funded by the CIA, and he appears in the Church Commission’s investigation of CIA practices. His later career was spent at Mount Sinai Hospital and other hospitals in the New York area, finally leaving Mount Sinai Hospital in 1959. While at Mount Sinai Hospital in 1953, Abramson proposed an $85,000 study to the CIA on the effects of LSD on unwitting hospital patients. This was the same year that the MKULTRA program was established. Funding for the project was funneled through the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. Abramson was an

attending physician In the United States and Canada, an attending physician (also known as a staff physician or supervising physician) is a physician (usually an M.D. or D.O.) who has completed residency and practices medicine in a clinic or hospital, in the spec ...

in connection with the alleged LSD-induced suicide of

Frank Olson Frank Rudolph Emmanuel Olson (July 17, 1910 – November 28, 1953) was an American bacteriologist, biological warfare scientist, and an employee of the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories (USBWL) who worked at Camp Detrick (now ...

, a

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

biological warfare Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. ...

scientist who was surreptitiously given LSD as part of the CIA's

psychotropic drug A psychoactive drug, psychopharmaceutical, psychoactive agent or psychotropic drug is a chemical substance, that changes functions of the nervous system, and results in alterations in perception, mood, consciousness, cognition or behavior. Th ...

research, although the Olson family contests the circumstances of his death. Beginning in 1954, Abramson published a series of articles on the effects of LSD on

Siamese fighting fish The Siamese fighting fish (''Betta splendens''), commonly known as the betta, is a freshwater fish native to Southeast Asia, namely Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. It is one of 73 species of the genus '' Bet ...

. He is said to be the person who influenced many members of the

Cybernetics Group Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...

to turn to LSD, including

Frank Fremont-Smith Frank Fremont-Smith (3 March 1895– 27 February 1974) was an American administrator, executive with the Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation, president of British General Rees's World Federation of Mental Health, known together with Lawrence K. Frank as ...

, head of the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation. (The Cybernetics Group, originally named The Conference on Feedback Mechanisms in Biology and the Social Sciences, was started in 1946). He was also an organizer of the six international LSD conferences, the first being held in 1959. On October 31, 1965, he delivered a speech titled "LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism" at the Sixth Emil A. Gutheil Memorial Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy in New York. Abramson edited the proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism, published in 1967 as ''The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism''. The conference took place at the South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, New York, May 8–10, 1965. Together with M. Murray Peshkin, he founded the ''Journal of Asthma Research'', and remained its editor for seventeen years until his death. He also worked as director of research at South Oaks Psychiatric Hospital in

Amityville Amityville () is a village near the Town of Babylon in Suffolk County, on the South Shore of Long Island, in New York. The population was 9,523 at the 2010 census. History Huntington settlers first visited the Amityville area in 1653 due ...

, New York, and a consulting research psychiatrist at State Hospital in Central Islip. Abramson died on September 29, 1980.

In popular culture

''WORMWO0D'' (2017)

Abramson was portrayed by

Bob Balaban Robert Elmer Balaban (born August 16, 1945) is an American actor, author, comedian, director and producer. He was one of the producers nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture for ''Gosford Park'' (2001), in which he also appeared. Balab ...

in WORMWO0D, the 2017 six-part docudrama miniseries directed by

Errol Morris Errol Mark Morris (born February 5, 1948) is an American film director known for documentaries that interrogate the epistemology of its subjects. In 2003, his documentary film '' The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamar ...

.N'Duka, Amanda (Aug. 28, 2017)
"'Wormwood' Trailer: Peter Sarsgaard (aka Michael Ryan) Stars in Netflix Series from Errol Morris."
''

Deadline Hollywood ''Deadline Hollywood'', commonly known as ''Deadline'' and also referred to as ''Deadline.com'', is an online news site founded as the news blog ''Deadline Hollywood Daily'' by Nikki Finke in 2006. The site is updated several times a day, wit ...

''.

Selected works

Reports
"Preliminary Data on LSD Aerosols."
(1958). *
Reprinted
i
''Chemical Warfare Secrets Almost Forgotten: A Personal Story of Medical Testing of Army Volunteers with Incapacitating Chemical Agents During the Cold War (1955-1975)''
by

James S. Ketchum James Sanford Ketchum (November 1, 1931 – May 27, 2019) was a psychiatrist and U.S. Army Medical Corps officer who worked for almost a decade (1960–1969) on the U.S. military’s top secret psychochemical warfare program at the Edgewood Arsenal ...

. Foreword by Alexander Shulgin,

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

Santa Rosa, California: ChemBooks (2006), pp. 331–333. . . Books
''Electrokinetic Phenomena and their Application to Biology and Medicine''.
American Chemical Society Monograph Series. New York: Chemical Catalog Co. (1934).
''The Patient Speaks: Mother Story Verbatim in Psychoanalysis of Allergic Illness.''
Foreword by

. Preface by M. Murray Peshkin. New York:

Vantage Press Vantage Press was a self-publishing company based in the United States. The company was founded in 1949 and ceased operations in late 2012. Vantage was the largest vanity press in the United States. By 1956, they were publishing hundreds of title ...

(1956). . Mead, Margaret (1959)
Review of ''The Patient Speaks'' by Harold A. Abramson.
''

Psychoanalytic Review The National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis (NPAP) is an institution established in New York City by Theodore Reik in 1948, in response to the controversy over lay analysis and the question of the training of psychoanalysts in the ...

'', vol. 46B, no. 2. pp. 126-127. Archived fro
the original.
"This is an exceedingly valuable book by a physician who combines a thorough knowledge of natural science methods with a genuine respect for the intangible and often incommunicable processes of psychotherapy." Books (as editor) * ''The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy''. New York: Josiah Macy, Jr. Foundation (1960)
Introduction
by

. * ''The Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism.'' Introduction by

. Indianapolis, Indiana:

Bobbs-Merrill The Bobbs-Merrill Company was a book publisher located in Indianapolis, Indiana. Company history The company began in 1850 October 3 when Samuel Merrill bought an Indianapolis bookstore and entered the publishing business. After his death in 1 ...

(1967). ::"Proceedings of the Second International Conference on the Use of LSD in Psychotherapy and Alcoholism, at the South Oaks Hospital, in Amityville, New York, May 8–10, 1965." Book contributions * "Use of LSD as an Adjuvant to Psychotherapy: Fact and Fiction." In
''LSD - A Total Study''
by D. V. Siva Sankar. Westbury, New York: PJD Publications (1975), pp. 687–700. .

References

External links

The Vault: Harold Abramson
at fbi.gov {{DEFAULTSORT:Abramson, Harold 1899 births 1980 deaths American psychiatrists Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons alumni Place of birth missing Place of death missing Project MKUltra Columbia College (New York) alumni Human subject research in the United States