Being infested with body lice (Pediculus humanis corporis) is not only unpleasant, but also potentially deadly, since lice are carriers of typhus. During World War II, medical authorities feared that the spread of lice among civilian refugees might cause a widespread typhus epidemic, leading to millions of deaths (as had happened in World War I). In an attempt to prevent this, in 1942 the Rockefeller Foundation, in collaboration with the federal government, funded the creation of a Louse Lab whose purpose was to study the biology of the louse and to find an effective means of preventing infestation. The Lab, located in New York City, was headed by Davis, a public health researcher, and Wheeler, an entomologist.
The first task for the Louse Lab was to obtain a supply of lice. They achieved this by collecting lice off a patient in the alcoholic ward of Bellevue Hospital. Then they kept the lice alive by allowing them to feed on the arms of medical students (who had volunteered for the job). In this way, the lab soon had a colony of thousands of lice. They determined that the lice were free of disease since the med students didn't get sick.
Next they had to find human hosts willing to serve as experimental subjects. For this they initially turned to homeless people, aka Bowery Bums, living in the surrounding city, whom they paid $7 each in return for agreeing first to be infected by the Louse Lab's lice and next to test experimental anti-louse powders. Unfortunately, the homeless people proved to be uncooperative subjects who often didn't follow the instructions given to them. Frustrated, Davis and Wheeler began to search for other, more reliable subjects.
Soon they identified conscientious objectors (COs) as potential guinea pigs. The Selective Training and Service Act of 1940 allowed young men with religious objections to fighting to serve their country in alternative, nonviolent ways. They were put to work domestically at jobs such as building roads and dams, harvesting timber, or fighting forest fires. In 1942, prompted by the example of the British government, it occurred to U.S. officials that these young men were also a potential pool of experimental subjects for research, and they began to be made available to scientists for this purpose.
In theory the COs were always given a choice about whether or not to serve as guinea pigs. However, controversy lingers about how voluntary their choice really was since their options were limited (be a guinea pig for science, or do back-breaking manual labor). But for their part, the COs were often quite eager to volunteer for experiments. Sensitive to accusations that they were cowardly and unpatriotic, the experiments offered these young men a chance to do something that seemed more heroic than manual labor.
Eventually COs participated in a wide variety of experiments (perhaps the most famous of these was the Great Starvation Experiment conducted in Minnesota), but Davis and Wheeler (with their lice) were the first researchers to use American COs as experimental subjects.
