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Did You Know sentence

...that dermatological products and chemical weapons used by the U.S. Army were tested on inmates at Holmesburg Prison?

Holmesburg Prison

Holmesburg Prison seen from the air.

Origins of the experiments

Experimental research at Holmesburg Prison was run by Dr. Albert Kligman. After finishing medical school, he was interested in human fungal infections and published multiple papers on the topic after finishing medical school. His research at Holmesburg Prison began after the prison took an interest in his work. In the 1950s, an outbreak of athlete’s foot plagued the inmates, and in trying to find a treatment for the widespread problem, the prison pharmacist discovered one of Kligman’s articles. The pharmacist contacted Kligman, asking him to visit the prison, a request to which he agreed. At the time, Kligman was a University of Pennsylvania Medical School professor of dermatology and was designing an experiment researching fingernail fungal infections. In addition to using hospital patients as test subjects for the experiment, he planned on experimenting on prison inmates who “for a modest fee provide us with ideal opportunities”.

In an interview, Kligman recounted being amazed by the prison’s potential for research. He is famously quoted as saying: “All I saw before me were acres of skin. It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time”. The controlled conditions of the prison appealed to him, as having the inmates’ diet and lifestyle standardized would minimize disruptions to his medical research. After this first visit, Kligman determined he would begin conducting his experiments at Holmesburg. “I began to go to the prison regularly, although I had no authorization. It was years before the authorities knew that I was conducting various studies on prisoner volunteers. Things were simpler then. Informed consent was unheard of. No one asked me what I was doing. It was a wonderful time.” He then obtained permission to conduct the dermatological experiments from the superintendent of the prison, who agreed with Kligman that the experiments could benefit the medical realm and the prison. However, there were no formal contracts between the prison/city and the University of Pennsylvania.

Types of experiments

A range of experiments were conducted on the inmates at Holmesburg. While the experiments started off with a focus on dermatological research – Kligman’s specialty – experiments were also carried out to test commercial pharmaceutical products and biochemical substances. Dermatological experiments included:

• A study examining the ways a person’s feet could be infected with ringworm. “Enormous quantities of fungi” were administered to inmates, after which they wore boots for a week. (1957)
• A study where prisoners were infected with skin viruses, such as herpes simplex and wart virus. (1958)
• Studies infecting prisoners with long ultraviolet rays and different species of bacteria, such as candida albicans. (1965-1971)

Biochemical experiments included a study testing the poisonous substance in Agent Orange: dioxin. The Dow Chemical company called for these experiments, and compensated Kligman with $10,000 for his work. The dosages of dioxin which inmates were exposed to was 468 times greater than those detailed in the company protocol. (1965-1966)

The United States Army contracted Kligman to test the effects of certain mind-altering drugs, with these experiments conducted in trailers on the prison grounds. Subjects from this set of experiments say they weren’t aware what drugs they were given due to the lack of consent forms. The drugs produced a variety of lasting effects, such as temporary paralysis, and sudden long-term violent behavior, with half of the subjects reporting to have experienced hallucinations for days. Many prisoners stayed away from the Army experiments due to rumors that they involved LSD and resulted in participants going crazy.

Inmates who participated in the experiments received monetary compensation which varied depending on the type of study they were involved in. The pay was an attractive point to many of the inmates. One inmate named Al Zabala recalled: “I soon heard about the U of P [University of Pennsylvania] studies and the good pay they offered. They had all kinds of tests -- foot powder tests, eye drop tests, face creams, underarm deodorant, toothpaste, liquid diets, and more. It was easy money. You could make $10 to $300 a test depending on how long it lasted.” In addition to acting as the subjects of experiments, inmates worked a range of roles within the experiments, for example as laboratory technicians. Zabala was one such assistant technician; he was paid $40-50 per month and was able to choose which tests he wanted to take part in.

Throughout the experiments, prisoners experienced reported experiencing excruciating pain and scary symptoms. One prisoner named Edward Anthony recalls signing up for a Johnson & Johnson study that was testing if a bubble bath product was harmful to someone with open wounds. He reports having developed blisters, then “fine little red bumps all over my face, arms, legs, head” with some of them “white and filled with pus”. Even after quitting the test early, his back continued to feel like it “was on fire”. In addition to the immediate effects of the drugs, the surviving prisoners experience a range of long-term health effects, including skin problems, cancers, undetermined illnesses.

FDA investigations

Kligman became a target for investigation by the FDA in 1965 since his research program was so large: he was studying a high “number of investigational new drugs” and was contracted by 33 different companies. In July of 1966, the FDA banned Kligman from conducting drug testing at Holmesburg Prison, due to discrepancies in record keeping, and not following the conditions set out by the FDA for the testing of investigative drugs. However, Kligman’s ability to conduct experiments was reinstated less than a month after the initial ban. Experimentation at Holmesburg Prison was forcibly ended by the prison’s board of trustees after the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee’s health subcommittee hearing on human experimentation in 1974.

Repercussions of the experiments

The Holmesburg Prison experiments conducted by Dr. Kligman led to many questions about the ethics behind using prison inmates for medical research. There were issues of informed consent since the prisoners weren’t made aware of exactly what substances were being tested on them at the time.

As the public became more aware of the testing that occurred within Holmesburg Prison, ex-prisoners started realizing they had a right to sue those in charge of the experiments. In the 1980s, ex-prisoners who had participated in the dioxin experiments filed lawsuits against Dow Chemical. Other groups such as Johnson & Johnson, Kligman and his company, and the University of Pennsylvania, faced a class-action lawsuit filed by 298 ex-prisoners in the year 2000.

Experiments have been run on prison inmates throughout the second half of the 20th century, similar to those run by Dr. Kligman at Holmesburg Prison. As a result of the questioning of these experiments, testing on prisoners was limited by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1976. Their report restricted experimentation on inmates to “non-intrusive, low-risk, individually beneficial research”.