John Lilly

Dr. John Lilly was a scientist at the National Institutes of Health outside Washington who conducted experimental studies in an effort to "map" the body functions controlled from various locations in the brain. In 1953, Lilly devised a method of pounding up to 600 tiny sections of hypodermic tubing into the skulls of monkeys, through which he could insert electrodes "into the brain to any desired distance and at any desired location from the cortex down to the bottom of the skull." Using electric stimulation, he discovered precise centers that caused pain, fear, anxiety, and anger. He also found separate parts of the brain that controlled erection, ejaculation, and orgasm in male monkeys. A monkey given access to a switch operating a correctly planted electrode would reward itself with nearly continuous orgasms, at least once every three minutes, for up to 16 hours a day.¹

Intelligence Interest

As Lilly refined his brain maps, officials of the CIA and other agencies descended upon him requesting a briefing. Lilly had a phobia against secrecy and agreed only on the condition that the briefing and his work remain unclassified and open to outsiders. The intelligence officials submitted reluctantly, knowing that Lilly's openness would ruin the spy value of anything they learned and could reveal their identities and interests to enemy agents. They considered Lilly annoying, uncooperative, and possibly suspicious.¹

Soon Lilly began having trouble attending meetings and conferences with colleagues. As part of their cooperation with intelligence agencies, most of his colleagues had agreed to have their projects classified SECRET. Lilly's security clearance was withdrawn for review, tangled up, and misplaced, which he took as pressure to cooperate with the CIA. His imagination needed no stimulation to conjure pictures of CIA agents on deadly missions with remote-controlled electrodes strategically implanted in their brains. He decided to withdraw from that field of research, concluding that the physical intrusion of electrodes did too much brain damage.¹

Sensory Deprivation

In 1954, Lilly began trying to isolate the operations of the brain, free of outside stimulation, through Sensory Deprivation. He worked in an office next to Dr. Maitland Baldwin, who the following year agreed to perform terminal sensory deprivation experiments for ARTICHOKE's Morse Allen but never told Lilly he was working in the field. While Baldwin experimented with his deprivation "box," Lilly invented a special "tank." Subjects floated in body-temperature water wearing a face mask that provided air but cut off sight and sound. Inevitably, intelligence officials swooped down again, interested in the tank as an interrogation tool: could involuntary subjects be placed in it and broken down to the point where their belief systems or personalities could be altered?¹

It was central to Lilly's ethic that he himself be the first subject of any experiment. He concluded that it was impossible to work at NIH without compromising his principles and quit in 1958. Contrary to most expectations, Lilly found sensory deprivation to be a profoundly integrating experience. He pushed himself into the complete unknown by injecting pure Sandoz LSD into his thigh before climbing into the tank. When the counterculture sprang up, Lilly became a cult figure with his unique approach to scientific inquiry, though he was considered an outcast by many in the professional research community.¹

Dolphins and Later Life

Lilly became widely known through the popular film The Day of the Dolphin, based on his work with dolphins after leaving NIH. Actor George C. Scott portrayed a scientist who, like Lilly, loved dolphins, did pioneering experiments on their intelligence, and tried to communicate with them. In the movie, Scott became dismayed when the government turned his breakthrough to the service of war. In real life, Lilly was similarly dismayed when Navy and CIA scientists trained dolphins for special warfare in the waters off Vietnam, in a program called "swimmer nullification" where dolphins attacked enemy frogmen with compressed-air needles.¹