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Andrew Bickford, Review of “Chemical Heroes: Pharmacological Supersoldiers in the US Military”, Social Forces, Volume 100, Issue 1, September 2021, Page e11, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab028
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Extract
The end of conscription in the US in 1973 ended the supply of cannon fodder and made it more difficult and far more expensive to replace each soldier injured or killed in combat. That, in turn, focused the Pentagon leadership’s minds on the task of making its existing soldiers ever more invulnerable to enemy attack. Stealth planes, which cost multiples of more visible aircraft, are more useful for protecting pilots from death or capture than in actually winning battles. The Pentagon armors soldiers for battle in ways that protect them from being shot or blown up even though that makes it almost impossible to interact with the local populations whose hearts and minds they are supposed to win.
Chemical Heroes describes decades of efforts by the US military to go beyond armoring soldiers from external attack by remaking soldiers’ bodies in ways that let them remain in combat for ever longer periods of time in increasingly hostile environments, and if injured return to battle more quickly. The Pentagon version of better living through chemistry envisions enhancing soldiers’ will to fight and endure hardships by developing “biomedical technologies [as] antidotes to natural cowardice” (p. 12).
