History of The Nerd: Real Life Mad Scientist

The mad scientist is a major staple of any geek genre. From Cobra Commander to Dr. Doom, if you are planning to take over the world you better get your ass a PhD. Thankfully, our scientists only use their massive, bulging, heads for the betterment of man kind or to create smarter weapons to keep our dangerous levels of over population to manageable rates. Thank God mad scientists only exist in the pages of funny books and in cheap SyFy original movies. Or do they? Of course there are real mad scientists or this week’s History of the Nerd would be really disappointing. It still might, but you won’t know for sure unless you read on about the “Three Real Life Mad Scientists.”

3) Dr. Sidney Gottlieb: Uncle Sam Wants You to Turn on, Tune in and Drop Out.

Dr. Gottlieb was a stuttering, club footed man so naturally he was a speech therapist and loved to “cut a rug” on the dance floor. He also headed the awesomely codenamed “Project MKULTRA”, a clandestine umbrella operation that ran from the early 1950’s to the early 1970’s and was created by the CIA. MKULTRA was mostly interested in chemical and psychological warfare so naturally they wanted to get their hands on some LSD and dose people until they tripped major balls. Most of the experiments were on the up an up with willing test subjects and the actual scientific method, but let’s face it those were boring and sometimes you just want to cut loose and have some fun – on the public.

Dr. Gottlieb (being only one man) couldn’t possibly have fucked up as many people as he needed for his studies by himself. Like any self-respecting mad scientist he had henchmen to get the job done. Enter Gottlieb’s goons: George Hunter White, an ex-army officer who supposedly killed a Chinese spy in Calcutta and Ike Feldman, ironically a narcotics agent who posed as a pimp.

At first, White and his wife would hold parties and serve up LSD martinis to their unsuspecting guests. As the guest experience either took a magical trip on a boat on a river or the people just, horrifyingly, lost their minds, White made notes on the effects of the drug. This sounds pretty much like a few raves i went to in the 90’s. The project grew out of the White’s apartment and moved to a CIA safe house which they called “The Pad”.  This was when Ike Feldman joined the psychedelic party. Feldman, who was recruited by White, went undercover as a pimp and gathered up prostitutes. They paid these prostitutes to bring their “Johns” up to “The Pad” and secretly dosed their drinks with LSD. Again, as people tripped balls White observed, but this time behind a two-way mirror, making notes and drinking martinis like the 50’s man he was.

By the end of their run, they had secretly dosed hookers, soldiers, doctors, sailors and mental patients. They were ruining lives, relegating many to mental institutions and had killed at least one person who had the ultimate bad trip.

2) Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov: An Army of Ape Man Atrocities.

That’s right, Ape Men! An army of them, crushing the world in their fist with superhuman strength! Yes, a dream only men dare to dream in Stalin Russia. Ivanov perfected artificial insemination at the turn of the century (not the last one, the one before, the one that really mattered) and of course the natural evolution of that technology is to wonder who or what you could stick it into and in what kind of combination. He went on to put strange sperm where it shouldn’t belong to create a whole slew of hybrid animals that spat in the eye of God because he never intended them to exist in the world. Some of these animals were Zeedonks (zebras and donkeys), Zubrons (wistents and cows), a hybrid of an antelope and cow, mouse and rat, mouse and guinea pig, guinea pig and rabbit, and many others – way too many to have funny names for.

Zeedonks and guinea-rabbits sound perfectly cute, but things got decidedly uncute in 1910 when he gave a presentation to the World Congress of Zoologists in Gaz where he went into detail about creating a human-ape abomination. This idea, like a gun in a play, would inevitably have to go off. In February 28, 1927, Ivanov fired off a few human rounds into the vaginas of a couple of chimps. While at an experimental primate station in Kindia, French Guinea, he inseminated at least three female chimpanzees, but promised that he didn’t do it “the old fashioned” way.

When Ivanov returned to the Soviet Union later that year he was still heavy for some hot, hybrid action. In 1929 he eventually got the support of the Society of Materialist Biologists and Stalin who wanted his invincible army of Ape Men. Ivanov planned to perform his experiments in Sukhumi. This time, however, he would round up five human women and a turkey baster full of warm ape spunk. Unfortunately, before he would go around giving the ‘ol in and out to his subjects the only post pubescent male ape remaining at Sukhumi died before they could milk it. Before he could get a new chimp stud there was a political shake up in 1930 and what would you know, Ivanov was arrested. He was sentenced to five years of exile to Alma Ata. He worked at the Kazakh Veterinary-Zoologist Institute there until he died of a stroke on March 20, 1932. The Ape Men never marterialized.

1) Vladimir Demikhov: How much is that doggie in the window with the puppy
sewn to his head?

Again with the Stalin era scientists! Vladimir was actually a pioneer in transplant technology. His crazy-ass experiments actually led to uncountable scores of lives being saved because of his work. This doesn’t mean that he didn’t do some questionable shit, though. His main victims, err, test subjects were dogs. In 1946 he performed the first heart transplant in a dog – Rover survived for five months. In 1947 he carried out the first animal lung transplant, also dog, and in 1952 he conducted the first coronary bypass, on a dog. They all pretty much died from the experiments, but what was up with all the dogs? Nobody really knows, but I’m guessing revenge for some childhood trauma or maybe he’s just a cat person.

Demikhov finally had a dream, a dream of making everyone instantly throw up. One night in 1954 he went about realizing that dream. The experiment involved not one, but two dogs. One fully grown dog that would probably fetch you your slippers when you got home and the other an adorable, cute and cuddly puppy. He somehow managed to stitch the head and upper body of the cute puppy to the neck of the kind and loyal, larger, older dog. He connected their blood vessels and windpipes keeping both animals alive. The puppy could still lap up milk from a plate, but the liquid would just horrifically run out of its unconnected throat.

Demikhov may have added to the advances of medical sciences in the end. We do take for granted the idea of transplants. You may have to wait on a list, but the procedure could save your life. A two-headed dog however – that’s just fucked up.

The following is a video of the Demikhov’s two headed dog. Please do not press play unless you want to get totally freaked out, or if you’re a real sick bastard, aroused.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbFZTUwu8I0

 Next week on History or the Nerd, real life mad scientist: to be continued.