Throughout history, prisoners have been frequent participants in scientific, medical and social human subject research. 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 can

consent Consent occurs when one person voluntarily agrees to the proposal or desires of another. It is a term of common speech, with specific definitions as used in such fields as the law, medicine, research, and sexual relationships. Consent as und ...

, although their consent cannot be said to be completely voluntary due to their compromised and dependent status. 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 (; grc-gre, Ἡρόφιλος; 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 sci ...

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

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

Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...

Unit 731 , short for Manshu Detachment 731 and also known as the Kamo Detachment and Ishii Unit, was a covert Biological warfare, biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in unethical h ...

, located near

Harbin Harbin (; mnc, , v=Halbin; ) is a sub-provincial city and the provincial capital and the largest city of Heilongjiang province, People's Republic of China, as well as the second largest city by urban population after Shenyang and largest c ...

(

Manchukuo Manchukuo, officially the State of Manchuria prior to 1934 and the Empire of (Great) Manchuria after 1934, was a puppet state of the Empire of Japan in Manchuria from 1932 until 1945. It was founded as a republic in 1932 after the Japanese ...

), 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 experiment ...

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

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific T ...

. With the expansion of the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II 1947 constitution and subsequent form ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

, many other units were implemented in conquered cities such as

Nanking Nanjing (; , Mandarin pronunciation: ), alternately romanized as Nanking, is the capital of Jiangsu province of the People's Republic of China. It is a sub-provincial city, a megacity, and the second largest city in the East China region. T ...

( Unit 1644),

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the Capital city, capital of the China, People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's Li ...

(

Unit 1855 Unit 1855 was a unit for human experimentation that belonged to the central Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the North China Army of the Imperial Japanese Army, stationed in Beijing between 1938 and 1945. Unit 1855 was es ...

Guangzhou Guangzhou (, ; ; or ; ), also known as Canton () and Chinese postal romanization, alternatively romanized as Kwongchow or Kwangchow, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Guangdong Provinces of China, province in South China, sou ...

(

Unit 8604 Unit 8604 (), also known as Detachment 8604, Detachment Nami or Detachment Nami 8604, was the Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department unit of the Japanese Southern China Area Army. It secretly researched biological warfare and other ...

) and

Singapore Singapore (), officially the Republic of Singapore, is a sovereign island country and city-state in maritime Southeast Asia. It lies about one degree of latitude () north of the equator, off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, bor ...

(

Unit 9420 Unit Oka 9420 was the central Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group of the Imperial Japanese Army. Formed in 1942 to support the Japanese Southern Army, Unit 9420 consisted of two units; ...

). After the war,

Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers 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) to the Japanese government, aiming to suppress its "milit ...

Douglas MacArthur Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was ...

gave immunity in the name of the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

to all members of the units in exchange for a tiny part of the results, so that in post-war

Shiro Ishii Shiro, Shirō, Shirow or Shirou may refer to: People * Amakusa Shirō (1621–1638), leader of the Shimabara Rebellion * Ken Shiro (born 1992), Japanese boxer * Shiro Azumi, Japanese football player 1923–1925 * Shiro Ichinoseki (born 1944), ...

and others continued to hold honoured positions. The

blocked

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

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

Soviets Soviet people ( rus, сове́тский наро́д, r=sovyétsky naród), or citizens of the USSR ( rus, гра́ждане СССР, grázhdanye SSSR), was an umbrella demonym for the population of the Soviet Union. Nationality policy in ...

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 Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used in interrogations to weak ...

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

hallucinogenic drugs Hallucinogens are a large, diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categorized ...

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

Sidney Gottlieb Sidney Gottlieb (August 3, 1918 – March 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 ...

. 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 medical experiments on prison inmates at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia from 1951 to 1974, conducted und ...

'' by

Allen Hornblum Allen M. Hornblum is an author, journalist and a former criminal justice official and political organizer based in Philadelphia, US. He has written eight non-fiction books running the gamut from organized crime and Soviet espionage to medica ...

. The

Stateville Penitentiary Malaria Study The Stateville Penitentiary malaria study was a controlled but ethically questionable study of the effects of malaria on prisoners of Stateville Penitentiary near Joliet, Illinois, in the 1940s, conducted by the Department of Medicine at the Univer ...

is one of many examples. ''

The Plutonium Files ''The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War'' is a 1999 book by Eileen Welsome. It is a history of United States government-engineered radiation experiments on unwitting Americans, based on the Pulitzer Prize–wi ...

'', 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" published ...

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

HeLa HeLa (; also Hela or hela) is an immortalized cell line used in scientific research. It is the oldest and most commonly used human cell line. The line is derived from cervical cancer cells taken on February 8, 1951, named after Henrietta ...

cells into Ohio State Penitentiary 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 The Herero and Namaqua genocide or the Herero and Nama genocide was a campaign of ethnic extermination and collective punishment waged by the German Empire against the Herero (Ovaherero) and the Nama in German South West Africa (now Namibia). I ...

in present-day

Namibia Namibia (, ), officially the Republic of Namibia, is a country in Southern Africa. Its western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Zambia and Angola to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and ea ...

, 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 conflict which involves all or most 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 WarI (1914 ...

Nazi human experimentation Nazi human experimentation was a series of medical experiments on large numbers of prisoners, including children, by Nazi Germany in its concentration camps in the early to mid 1940s, during World War II and the Holocaust. Chief target po ...

occurred in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...

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

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

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, ...

for the

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...

concentration camp Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simpl ...

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

Nuremberg Nuremberg ( ; german: link=no, Nürnberg ; in the local East Franconian dialect: ''Nämberch'' ) is the second-largest city of the German state of Bavaria after its capital Munich, and its 518,370 (2019) inhabitants make it the 14th-largest ...

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

hanging Hanging is the suspension of a person by a noose or ligature around the neck.Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. Hanging as method of execution is unknown, as method of suicide from 1325. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' states that hanging ...

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 (german: Nürnberger Kodex) is a set of ethical research principles for human experimentation created by the court in '' U.S. v Brandt'', one of the Subsequent Nuremberg trials that were held after the Second World War. Tho ...

. 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

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