Prisoners

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 the scientific community in the United States. Despite that, several infamous exceptions have been documented. In 1906, Dr. Richard Strong experimented on a group of Philippine prisoners, exposing them to the cholera virus and, mistakenly, to the bubonic plague, when a bottle of the plague serum was accidentally substituted for the cholera serum. Thirteen prisoners died as a result. Strong, later a professor at Harvard University, continued his experiments with the Philippine prisoners six years later, when he exposed a group of subjects to beriberi. More prisoners died from these experiments. In payment for their participation, prisoners were offered supplies of cigars and cigarettes.

In Mississippi, in 1915, Dr. Joseph Goldberger attempted to discern the cause of pellagra, a disease of unknown origins that caused disfigurement and often death in its victims. The cause of pellagra was in doubt, but Goldberger thought it originated from a lack of adequate protein in the diet. In order to prove this, Goldberger created the necessary dietary conditions among a group of convicts at Rankin Farm prison by feeding the subjects a diet comprised strictly of starch. The subjects soon began to experience the traditional symptoms of pellagra, including dizziness, pain, and skin lesions. The men, some of whom became severely ill, received pardons for their participation in the experiment.

Following the advent of World War II, however, prison populations began to be seen by scientists as legitimate, and even especially valuable, subjects for medical experimentation. Generally, the populations were relatively healthy, unlike patients in hospitals, and willing in many cases to volunteer for dangerous and even lethal experiments in exchange for small amounts of money or for letters written on their behalf to parole boards. Prisoners also had, for scientists, the advantage of being easily regulated.

Experiments ranging from injections of animal blood to exposure to dengue fever and gonorrhoea were performed on “volunteer” prison populations. In a famous case in Illinois, over 400 inmates of Stateville Penitentiary were infected with malaria. Prisoners were bitten by infected mosquitoes and experienced all of the symptoms of malaria, including vomiting, unconsciousness, and fever. Often more lethal, however, were the countless untested medicines given to the prisoners.