The sixth department of clinical research and testing of the Signal scientific center is the only department in which there are doctors and nurses. Among the staff there are specialists in the treatment of emergency conditions, including those with experience in evacuating victims of highly toxic substances.
The investigation says that this department could test poisonous substances on people or, at a minimum, observe victims of poisons and test antidotes and protective equipment on them.
Employees of the department studied the liquidators of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, those wounded in the war in Chechnya, and engaged in military field therapy. Interestingly, several department specialists study sleep and snoring, including among military personnel. The information and analysis department is likely to monitor the status of employees who work with toxins.
In the investigation, the research center is called a full-cycle enterprise. There they can synthesize small amounts of toxic substances, test whether they are easy to detect, improve them, test them on animals and perhaps even humans, accompany victims of poisons, and even edit genes to develop resistance to different types of exposure, the Project reports.
However, if with “Signal” this is just an assumption, then at the Research Testing Institute of Military Medicine of the Ministry of Defense, tests on humans are definitely being carried out, the investigation says.
The head of the institute, Sergei Chepur, personally spoke about one study. At the conference “Current Issues of Defense and Security” in April 2023, he reported that artillery ammunition was tested on volunteers to determine the type and power of the projectile needed “to destroy or incapacitate enemy personnel.” At the training ground, volunteers who took refuge in fortifications were fired at by artillery from different distances, and then their physical indicators were measured.
During the tests, volunteers developed problems with blood pressure, including critical ones, changes in the vascular and nervous systems began, and depression of sensory and logical functions began. “In the future, this will make it possible to use ammunition to suppress enemy personnel with a guaranteed infliction of damage not lower than the average level of severity,” says the conference materials cited in the investigation.
Judging by the topics of scientific work of the employees of the Institute of Military Medicine, they are engaged in developments in various near-military topics: chemistry, ammunition, medicine – from drug addiction to military psychology. The chief poison specialist there is Chepur himself, and his expertise ranges from mustard gas and insecticides to the venoms of the toadstool and snakes. He co-authors almost all institute works on toxicology. In 201, the institute published a review of foreign antidotes to organophosphates, perhaps trying to understand whether future victims of assassination attempts could be cured abroad, journalists say.
