IN THE ANNALS of white-collar crime, the ethics of medical experimentation on prisoners has been a contested issue since the early 20th century, when the anti-vivisectionist movement began protesting human subject experimentation, and in particular, experimentation on those populations deemed vulnerable[Page 634] to manipulation or coercion, such as prisoners, children, and the mentally ill. The central concern underlying the movement's protest was whether these populations could offer voluntary consent to experiments, consent having been an ethical principle long accepted by most doctors as a requirement for human experimentation. Although much experimentation on prison populations has been regulated out of existence since then, the ethical question the anti-vivisectionists posed remains a contested issue.

Through the first half of the century, experimentation on prisoners was somewhat belittled by ...