Minnesota Starvation Experiment - Participant Volunteers

Participant Volunteers

An essential ingredient for the successful execution of the Minnesota Starvation Experiment was the availability of a sufficient number of healthy volunteers willing to subject themselves to the year-long invasion of privacy, nutritional deprivation and physical and mental hardship necessary to complete the study. From the outset, the experiment was planned in cooperation with the Civilian Public Service and the Selective Service System, with the intention of using volunteers selected from the ranks of conscientious objectors already inducted into public wartime service. Keys obtained approval from the War Department to select participants from the CPS.

In early 1944, a recruitment brochure was drafted and distributed within the network of CPS work camps throughout the United States. Over 400 men volunteered to participate in the study as an alternative to military service; of these, about 100 were selected for detailed examination. Drs. Taylor, Brožek, and Henschel from the Minnesota Laboratory of Physiological Hygiene traveled to the various CPS units to interview the potential candidates and administer physical and psychological tests to the volunteers. 36 men were ultimately selected who demonstrated evidence of the required mental and physical health, the ability to get along reasonably well within a group while enduring deprivation and hardship, and sufficient commitment to the relief and rehabilitation objectives of the investigation to complete the study. The subjects were all white males, with ages ranging from 22 to 33 years old. Of the 36 volunteer subjects, 25 were members of the Historic Peace Churches (Mennonites, Church of the Brethren and Quakers).

The 36 CPS participants in the Minnesota Starvation Experiment were: William Anderson, Harold Blickenstaff, Wendell Burrous, Edward Cowles, George Ebeling, Carlyle Frederick, Jasper Garner, Lester Glick, James Graham, Earl Heckman, Roscoe Hinkle, Max Kampelman, Sam Legg, Phillip Liljengren, Howard Lutz, Robert McCullagh, William McReynolds, Dan Miller, L. Wesley Miller, Richard Mundy, Daniel Peacock, James Plaugher, Woodrow Rainwater, Donald Sanders, Cedric (Henry) Scholberg, Charles Smith, William Stanton, Raymond Summers, Marshall Sutton, Kenneth Tuttle, Robert Villwock, William Wallace, Franklin Watkins, W. Earl Weygandt, Robert Wiloughby and Gerald Wilsnack.