. NMT02-T0120
Volume II · Page 120
Q. Be that as it may, nobody died. That is a fact, isn't it?
A. If anyone did die, the publications say nothing about it. There were deaths only among the monkeys and guinea pigs that are mentioned in the publication. If human beings died, there is no mention in the publication. It is generally known that if there are serious accidents in such experiments as this, they are only most reluctantly made public.
Q. Now, Professor, I have no wish to limit you but, as I understand it, you have explained these things in considerable detail during the four days in which you have already testified. If you can give a short answer to my question that is all I want. If I want any further explanation I'll ask you for it. Now, what is the normal death rate in beri-beri?
A. That depends on the medical care given. If the care is good. the mortality is zero, and if they have no medical care at all, then a lot of them die.
Q. Sixty to eighty percent would probably die if they were not treated. Is that right?
A. Beri-beri lasts for many, many months before a person dies, and usually one does not die of beri-beri in sixty days — that would be a severe case.
Q. How many people did Strong use in his beri-beri experiments? Is twenty-nine all you know about?
A. So far as I know from the literature, the number was twenty-nine.
Q. Well, it says in the literature that he used only twenty-nine. Is that right?
A. So far as I know, yes.
Q. And one of those died?
A. According to what the literature says, one of them died.
Q. What is the mortality in typhus?
A. That varies enormously. It depends on the epidemic. In some epidemics the mortality is five percent. In general, you count on a mortality of twenty percent. In the Serb-Albanian epidemic in 1915, there was a mortality of seventy percent, but that mortality rate is so extraordinarily high that it is generally assumed that probably, in reality, there were more cases of typhus than were actually reported.
Q. Well, we could take roughly five to thirty percent as the mortality. Is that right?
A. Yes. That is what the textbooks generally say.
Q. What was the mortality in the Buchenwald experiments, Professor? A. In the controlled cases in the experiments that I knew of, the mortality rate was thirty percent.
