I came into the military in 1969. I was an army chaplain for just a little short of 24 years. There were hundreds, if not thousands of "cooperators," they liked to call themselves -- noncombatants who served with the medical corps. A lot of the Vietnam medics did not carry a weapon, and many of the Adventist guys who were drafted chose to go into the medical services as noncombatants. That would be the primary place where most of them went.There's an ethic within the Seventh-day Adventist Church that is typified by several things. One is the story of the Good Samaritan. Another is [a verse in the Epistle of] James, at the end of the fourth chapter -- if you know to do good and don't do it, that is wrong. Seventh-day Adventist personnel say we have something to offer; we want to do those things that are positive for humanity. We want not to have to kill. So how do you do good in a situation? The medical field is one in which the Adventist Church has been active for many, many years, and there seemed to be a natural fit, so when the military came to the church and said, "We are drafting a bunch of your guys; most of them are going into the medics; most of them are noncombatants. There is this ethos and ethic; it seems like a good test group to use," that is how the church was approached by the military. It was a military program; Operation Whitecoat was not conceived by the Adventist Church.
There's another piece, too. Seventh-day Adventists observe Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. When you're in the military it's seven days a week, 24 hours a day. So when this opportunity opened up, if you have a test group that's primarily from one religious grouping, then obviously you shut down some of the stuff. [But] on Friday and Saturday night, you don't have to do that, because most of the people you're working with don't want to be available unless it's an emergency. That never was a question with the Whitecoats. Sabbaths were free; they were making a contribution to humanity; they were in a nonkilling situation; it seemed to be and, I think, was a very good fit for the both the military to find a test group and for Seventh-day Adventist young men who were willing to serve their country in a way that didn't conflict with their conscientious beliefs.
[Participating in a military program today] would have to be looked at very carefully. It's not something that one would just jump at. In fact, about halfway through the Whitecoat protocols there were questions raised again, as there were initially: "Are you sure that this is not somehow going to turn into an offensive thing? We are saying that our ethic is not to take life, and yet we are volunteering to be in studies that ultimately do that." So it was studied very carefully at the first as it began, and it was studied about halfway through again because people were saying, "Are you really sure?" It was studied out, and it was felt that yes, it was in fact defensive, not offensive, and some of the people on that second look and first look were pretty tough cookies; they weren't just going to be sold a line by anybody. Would Adventist members participate in something like this again? I think we would have to look at it like we did at first, to be sure that it really fit the ethical framework in which we believe we are called to live.
What one does with data -- that's an ethical decision. The data gatherer has to decide what it is. ... If I misuse it, that's my judgment call. If the Seventh-day Adventist Church leadership felt there was any clear evidence that this material the Whitecoats were involved with was being used offensively, I think the church would have counseled its men against going into it. Could some of that data be used ultimately in another way? I can't answer that other than to say data is data, and how people use that data is their responsibility. To the best of the knowledge of the people who looked at it, it was a defensive program, and I am sure the questions will never be solved. There will be some who will always feel as though it was the wrong thing to be involved. I guess that's one's choice.
One of the interesting things about Whitecoat project materials [is that] virtually all of it was published in scientific journals, pretty much contemporaneous with some of the studies. There were only a very few things that were not put out pretty early. One of those had to do with one of the early orbiter shots around the moon. The guys who participated in that went into a space capsule; they were both pilots before they came into Whitecoat. They were learning how to run all these gears and gizmos. Then they were given something that approximated a bad case of the flu and put back in this thing to see if in fact they could still function. And they were told, "You can't talk about this." This was before the shot took place. A couple of months later, sure enough, it was our first shot around the moon. ... Subsequent to that, they were free to talk about it. But other than that, most of the things, to my knowledge, were fairly open to scientific investigation and scrutiny.
I've met a lot of the guys who have said, "We didn't know for sure; we thought that this could cost my life." But if you are a soldier, and you are defending your country and you are defending freedom, you have to be willing to take a risk. They didn't enter into it blindly or stupidly; but they are very proud. You see these guys wearing the medallions, one of them given by USAMRIID [United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases] -- it's not a medal you wear on your uniform, but it's a recognition -- and one the church produced for them. You'd think they were Congressional Medals of Honor. These men were proud to be a part of this and pleased to do it; many of them would say, "I would do it again in a heartbeat."
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