Throughout history, prisoners have been frequent participants in scientific, medical and social

human subject research Human subject research is systematic, scientific investigation that can be either interventional (a "trial") or observational (no "test article") and involves human beings as research subjects, commonly known as test subjects. Human subject r ...

. Some of the research involving prisoners has been exploitative and cruel. Many of the modern protections for human subjects evolved in response to the abuses in prisoner research. Research involving prisoners is still conducted today, but prisoners are now one of the most highly protected groups of human subjects

Requirements of research involving prisoners

According to the Common Rule (45 CFR 46), prisoners may only be included in human subjects research when the research involves no more than a minimal risk of harm.

Prisoner consent

Prisoners cannot consent. Their status as imprisoned human subjects becomes even more ethically problematic when investigators offer incentives such as parole, phone calls, or objects that are normally unavailable to prisoners.

Historical abuses

Ancient history

Herophilos Herophilos (; ; 335–280 BC), sometimes Latinised Herophilus, was a Greek physician regarded as one of the earliest anatomists. Born in Chalcedon, he spent the majority of his life in Alexandria. He was the first scientist to systematically p ...

Chalcedon Chalcedon (; ; sometimes transliterated as ) was an ancient maritime town of Bithynia, in Asia Minor, Turkey. It was located almost directly opposite Byzantium, south of Scutari (modern Üsküdar) and it is now a district of the city of Ist ...

was reputed by Celcus, among others, to have vivisected prisoners received from the

Ptolemaic Ptolemaic is the adjective formed from the name Ptolemy, and may refer to: Pertaining to the Ptolemaic dynasty *Ptolemaic dynasty, the Macedonian Greek dynasty that ruled Egypt founded in 305 BC by Ptolemy I Soter *Ptolemaic Kingdom Pertaining t ...

kings.

Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

Unit 731 , short for Manchu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment and the Ishii Unit, was a covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentat ...

, located near

Harbin Harbin, ; zh, , s=哈尔滨, t=哈爾濱, p=Hā'ěrbīn; IPA: . is the capital of Heilongjiang, China. It is the largest city of Heilongjiang, as well as being the city with the second-largest urban area, urban population (after Shenyang, Lia ...

(

Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially known as the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of Great Manchuria thereafter, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Northeast China that existed from 1932 until its dissolution in 1945. It was ostens ...

), experimented with prisoner

vivisection Vivisection () is surgery conducted for experimental purposes on a living organism, typically animals with a central nervous system, to view living internal structure. The word is, more broadly, used as a pejorative catch-all term for Animal test ...

, dismemberment and induced epidemics on a very large scale from 1935 to 1945 during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War was fought between the Republic of China (1912–1949), Republic of China and the Empire of Japan between 1937 and 1945, following a period of war localized to Manchuria that started in 1931. It is considered part ...

. With the expansion of the

Empire of Japan The Empire of Japan, also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was the Japanese nation state that existed from the Meiji Restoration on January 3, 1868, until the Constitution of Japan took effect on May 3, 1947. From Japan–Kor ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, many other units were implemented in conquered cities such as

Nanking Nanjing or Nanking is the capital of Jiangsu, a province in East China. The city, which is located in the southwestern corner of the province, has 11 districts, an administrative area of , and a population of 9,423,400. Situated in the Yan ...

( Unit 1644),

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

( Unit 1855),

Guangzhou Guangzhou, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Canton or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, southern China. Located on the Pearl River about nor ...

(

Unit 8604 Unit Nami 8604 (), officially the South China Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department (), was a disease research unit under the South China Area Army of the Imperial Japanese Army. This unit extensively and secretly researched biolo ...

) and

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

( Unit 9420). After the war,

Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers The Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (), or SCAP, was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the United States-led Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. It issued SCAP Directives (alias SCAPIN, SCAP Index Number) ...

Douglas MacArthur Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American general who served as a top commander during World War II and the Korean War, achieving the rank of General of the Army (United States), General of the Army. He served with dis ...

gave immunity in the name of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

to all members of the units in exchange for the results of a fraction of the conducted experiments, so that in post-war

Shirō Ishii Surgeon General was a Japanese microbiologist and Military medicine, army medical officer, who served as the director of Unit 731, a biological warfare unit of the Imperial Japanese Army. Ishii led the development and application of biological ...

and others continued to hold honoured positions. The

blocked

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

access to this information. However, some unit members were judged by the

Soviets The Soviet people () were the citizens and nationals of the Soviet Union. This demonym was presented in the ideology of the country as the "new historical unity of peoples of different nationalities" (). Nationality policy in the Soviet Union ...

during the

Khabarovsk War Crime Trials The Khabarovsk war crimes trials were the Soviet hearings of twelve Japanese Kwantung Army officers and medical staff charged with the manufacture and use of biological weapons, and human experimentation, during World War II. The war crimes tri ...

. The effects were lasting and China is still working to counteract the effects of buried pathogen caches.

United States

Project MKUltra MKUltra was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used during interrogations to weaken individuals and force confes ...

was a CIA-run human experiment program from 1953–1973 where volunteers, prisoners and unwitting subjects were administered

hallucinogenic drugs Hallucinogens, also known as psychedelics, entheogens, or historically as psychotomimetics, are a large and diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, moo ...

in an attempt to develop incapacitating substances and chemical mind control agents, in an operation run by

Sidney Gottlieb Sidney Gottlieb (August 3, 1918March 7, 1999) was an American chemist and spymaster who headed the Central Intelligence Agency's 1950s and 1960s assassination attempts and mind-control program, known as Project MKUltra. Early years and educat ...

. Numerous experiments were done on prisoners throughout the US. Many prisoners eventually filed lawsuits and these actions brought about many more investigations and suits against doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies. Experiments included high-risk cancer treatments, the application of strong skin creams, new cosmetics, dioxin and high doses of LSD. Many incidents were documented in government reports, ACLU findings and various books including ''

Acres of Skin ''Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison'' is a 1998 book by Allen Hornblum. The book documents clinical non-therapeutic Research Involving Prisoners, medical experiments on prison inmates at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia from ...

'' by Allen Hornblum. The Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study is one of many examples. '' The Plutonium Files'', for which

Eileen Welsome Eileen Welsome (born March 12, 1951) is an American journalist and author. She received a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting in 1994 while a reporter for '' The Albuquerque Tribune'' for a 3-part story titled "The Plutonium Experiment" publish ...

won a Pulitzer Prize, documents the early human tests of the toxicity of plutonium and uranium on people. American oncologist

Chester M. Southam Chester Milton Southam (October 4, 1919 – April 15, 2002) was an immunologist and oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Cornell University Medical College; he went to Thomas Jefferson University in 1971 and worked there until ...

injected

HeLa HeLa () is an immortalized cell line used in scientific research. It is the oldest human cell line and one of the most commonly used. HeLa cells are durable and prolific, allowing for extensive applications in scientific study. The line is ...

cells into

Ohio State Penitentiary The Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) is a 502-inmate capacity supermax Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction prison in Youngstown, Ohio, United States. Throughout the last two centuries, there have been two institutions with the n ...

inmates without informed consent in order to see if people could become immune to cancer.

Germany and German-occupied territory

The

Herero and Namaqua Genocide Herero may refer to: * Herero people, a people belonging to the Bantu group, with about 240,000 members alive today * Herero language, a language of the Bantu family (Niger-Congo group) * Herero and Nama genocide * Herero chat, a species of bi ...

in present-day

Namibia Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country on the west coast of Southern Africa. Its borders include the Atlantic Ocean to the west, Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south; in the no ...

, in Southern Africa, resulted in a large number of prisoners in concentration camps. These prisoners were used as medical test subjects by German agents.Germans return skulls to Namibia
27 Sept 2011, Times Live (South Africa) During the second

World War A world war is an international War, conflict that involves most or all of the world's major powers. Conventionally, the term is reserved for two major international conflicts that occurred during the first half of the 20th century, World War I ...

Nazi human experimentation Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on prisoners by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps mainly between 1942 and 1945. There were 15,754 documented victims, of various nationalities and age groups, although the t ...

occurred in

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

with particular bias towards euthanasia. At the war's conclusion, 23

Nazi Nazism (), formally named National Socialism (NS; , ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian socio-political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Germany. During H ...

doctors and scientists were

tried In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal, wh ...

for the

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification (jurisprudence), justification or valid excuse (legal), excuse committed with the necessary Intention (criminal law), intention as defined by the law in a specific jurisd ...

concentration camp A concentration camp is a prison or other facility used for the internment of political prisoners or politically targeted demographics, such as members of national or ethnic minority groups, on the grounds of national security, or for exploitati ...

inmates who were used as research subjects. Of the 23 professionals tried at

Nuremberg Nuremberg (, ; ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the Franconia#Towns and cities, largest city in Franconia, the List of cities in Bavaria by population, second-largest city in the States of Germany, German state of Bav ...

, 15 were convicted. Seven of them were condemned to death by

hanging Hanging is killing a person by suspending them from the neck with a noose or ligature strangulation, ligature. Hanging has been a standard method of capital punishment since the Middle Ages, and has been the primary execution method in numerou ...

and eight received prison sentences from 10 years to life. Eight professionals were acquitted. (Mitscherlich 1992) The result of these proceedings was the

Nuremberg Code The Nuremberg Code () is a set of research ethics, ethical research principles for human experimentation created by the court in ''Doctors' trial, U.S. v Brandt'', one of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials that were held after the World War II, Seco ...

. It includes the following guidelines, among others, for researchers: : Informed consent is essential. : Research should be based on prior animal work. : The risks should be justified by the anticipated benefits. : Research must be conducted by qualified scientists. : Physical and mental suffering must be avoided. : Research in which death or disabling injury is expected should not be conducted.

References

{{Reflist prisoners Prisoner abuse