Acres of Skin

May 15, 1998
Relying on prisoners' firsthand reports, Hornblum (urban studies, Temple Univ.) has written a thorough account of the questionable medical experimentation carried out in Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison from the mid-1940s to 1974. Research on everything from cosmetics to chemical warfare agents was conducted there, often with minimal or no record keeping. Such research raises serious ethical issues. Throughout, Hornblum asks whether prisoners can give informed consent, particularly when the potential consequences of the research are not fully explained. Although most of the book centers on Holmesburg, Hornblum does cite other prisons across the country where similar practices took place before they received widespread condemnation in the 1970s. What is shocking about this is that it did not happen in the distant past but in our own generation, with the doctors involved still in practice. Frighteningly, Hornblum reveals that at the Nuremberg trials Nazi doctors cited American prison practices as a defense for their nefarious medical experiments in the camps. Essential for students of medical ethics.--Eric D. Albright, Duke Medical Ctr. Lib., Durham, NC

May 1, 1998
Thanks in good part to the Freedom of Information Act (and many interviews, too), Hornblum tells the story of medical experiments, ended in 1974, on prisoners in a Philadelphia prison. Most of the experiments involved the effects of chemicals on the skin (hence the title), but they also included military trials, stopped in 1966, of LSD and other mind-altering drugs. Dermatologist Albert M. Kligman and those prison administrators who knew about the experiments always claimed that no prisoners were coerced, informed consent was required, and any prisoner could withdraw from any experiment at any time. Hornblum punches holes in each of those statements. He compares some of the experiments with those of Nazi doctors during World War II, showing how, in one case, a Nazi physician apparently saved his life by describing some of the U.S. prison experiments to the judges in the Nuremberg trials. A low-keyed but devastating picture of U.S. medical experimentation and the men, educational institutions, and drug companies that carried it out. ((Reviewed May 1, 1998))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1998, American Library Association.)