History Forum / General / General Topics / July 2008

The second world war

By the summer of 1942, American prisoners in state penal systems had embarked on a series
of dangerous medical experiments, including injections of blood from beef cattle as a new
source of plasma, atropine studies, and experiments with sleeping sickness, sandfly fever,
and dengue fever.14 15 Federal prisoners were recruited to participate in medical
experiments that ran the gamut from exposure to gonorrhoea and malaria to induction of gas
gangrene.16

One of the more widely publicised prison experiments during the war years, and one that
was mentioned prominently at the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial, was the series of malaria
studies at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois. Over 400 prisoners were involved in this
two year study investigating treatment and purported cure of malaria. One popular account
of the experiment was Nathan Leopold's book, Life Plus 99 Years. An enthusiastic
participant in the dangerous study, Leopold was one of the famous killers in the 1924
Leopold and Loeb case. He proudly proclaimed that even though the inmates had to contend
with periodic mosquito bites, raging fevers, nausea, vomiting, blackouts, endless untested
medicinal potions, and occasional relapses, "no one squawked. They all took it like men."
17 The highly publicised Stateville Prison malaria experiments received much public
praise. An editorial in one newspaper proudly wrote that "these one-time enemies to
society appreciate to the fullest extent just how completely this is everybody's war."18

The war years had become the transforming moment for human experimentation in America and
particularly for penal institutions as a site of such scientific endeavors. What had once
been a small, underfunded, unsophisticated cottage industry had blossomed into a well
financed, broad clinical research programme investigating avant garde procedures, cures,
and treatments. Human experimentation had been legitimised and prisoners had become the
guinea pigs of choice for scores of inspired researchers. Public opposition to such
medical initiatives was scant. The overriding goal was to win the war in Europe and Asia;
everything else was secondary, including research ethics and the issue of consent.
Millions of American fighters were risking life and limb daily; at the very least,
lawbreakers could contribute to the war effort with similar commitment. And they did. One
close observer described it as "another shining light in the galaxy of wartime
achievement" by imprisoned Americans.19

Curiously, once the war was over, there was no decline of medical experimentation in
prisons. Battlefield victories were replaced by medical triumphs as the focus of
governmental concern, and prisoners were once again the subjects of choice for research.
The eradication of disease had become the enemy, and postwar budgetary priorities
supported this societal mission. For example, in the last year of the war, the National
Institute of Health received about $700 000, which had climbed to $36 million by 1955, and
over 10 times that just 10 years later. In 1970, $1.5 billion was awarded to some 11 000
grant applicants, nearly a third of them performing experimentation.20 Called "the gilded
age of research" by Professor David Rothman, this new era of laissez-faire attitudes in
the laboratory ushered in a frenzy for research on prisoners that lasted for over a
quarter century.20 Rothman argues that a "utilitarian ethic" was able to dominate the
field of human experimentation because "the benefits seemed so much greater than the
costs" and because "there were no groups or individuals prominently opposing such an ethic."21

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