Lana Ponting Sues Over CIA's MK-Ultra Experiments on Teenagers

Sat Nov 15 2025 05:48:51 GMT+0200 (Eastern European Standard Time)

At the age of 16, Lana Ponting became an unwitting participant in CIA's mind control experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute. Now, she is suing for justice.

Lana Ponting, who was subjected to CIA mind control experiments at the age of 16, is suing the Royal Victoria Hospital and McGill University as a part of a class-action lawsuit for victims of the CIA's MK-Ultra program. Her experience involved coercive treatments, including psychedelic drug administration, which led to lifelong psychological impacts. The ruling to proceed with the lawsuit comes after decades of silence and emerging evidence surrounding MK-Ultra's unethical methodologies.

The first thing Lana Ponting remembers about the Allan Memorial Institute, a former psychiatric hospital in Montreal, Canada, is the smell - almost medicinal.

I didn't like the look of the place. It didn't look like a hospital to me, she told the BBC from her home in Manitoba.

That hospital – once the home of a Scottish shipping magnate – would be her home for a month in April 1958, after a judge ordered the then-16-year-old to undergo treatment for disobedient behaviour.

It was there that Ms Ponting became one of thousands of people experimented on as part of the CIA's top-secret research into mind control. Now, she is one of two named plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit for Canadian victims of the experiments. On Thursday, a judge denied the Royal Victoria Hospital's appeal, paving the way for the lawsuit to proceed.

According to her medical files, which she obtained only recently, Ms Ponting had been running away from home and hanging out with friends her parents disapproved of after a difficult move with her family from Ottawa to Montreal.

I was an ordinary teenager, she recalled. But the judge sent her to the Allan.

Once there, she became an unwitting participant in covert CIA experiments known as MK-Ultra. The Cold War project tested the effects of psychedelic drugs like LSD, electroshock treatments, and brainwashing techniques on human beings without their consent.

Over 100 institutions – hospitals, prisons, and schools – in the US and Canada were involved. At the Allan, McGill University researcher Dr Ewen Cameron drugged patients and made them listen to recordings, sometimes thousands of times, in a process he called exploring.

Dr Cameron would make Ms Ponting listen to the same tape recording hundreds of times.

It ran over and over again, you're a good girl, you're a bad girl, Ms Ponting recalled.

The technique was a form of psychic driving, which manipulated the minds of patients.

Medical records show Ms Ponting was given LSD, as well as drugs like sodium amytal, a barbiturate, desoxyn, a stimulant, and nitrous gas, a sedative known as laughing gas.

By April 30th, the patient had explorations… she had become quite tense and extremely violent when given the Nitrous Oxide, throwing herself half out of bed and starting to scream, Dr Cameron wrote in one of her medical files.

For decades, Ms Ponting said she felt something was wrong with her, but she did not learn of the details of her own involvement in the experiments until somewhat recently.

She says she had little memory of what happened at the Allan, or in the years that followed. Now, she is hoping this lawsuit will provide closure.

While the Royal Victoria Hospital and McGill University have declined to comment as the case is ongoing, the government previously referenced a settlement from 1992 when compensating other victims, asserting no liability.

Every time I see a picture of Dr Cameron, it makes me so angry, Ms Ponting expresses her thoughts on her past experiences.