"Without any excuse, we formally express our sincere apologies to those who suffered such inhuman and horrific abuse. We are also sorry that it took too long to hear these words." October 6, Philadelphia, USA Governor Jim Kenny has publicly apologized for unethical medical experiments on black inmates at the city's Holmesburg prison in the last century.
From 1951 to 1974, the city of Philadelphia allowed University of Pennsylvania researcher Dr. Albert Kligman to select about 300 black inmates at the local Holmsburg Prison for dermatological, biochemical and drug experiments.
In order to make the bodies of these black prisoners more suitable for the conditions required for the experiment, Kligman and his team deliberately exposed these black prisoners to viruses, fungi, asbestos and chemicals, including the colorless, odorless and highly toxic dioxin Britain. Kligman's human experiments left these black prisoners with serious health problems for the rest of their lives.
prison shady
In 1951, there was an outbreak of beriberi at Holmsberg Prison. Kligman, then a professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, was invited to Holmesburg Prison to treat inmates with beriberi.
Holmsburg Prison, Philadelphia
When Kligman visited Holmsberg prison for the first time, his mind was not focused on treating beriberi, but saw an "opportunity" that could take his career to the next level. "All I saw in front of me was skin. It was like a farmer seeing fertile land for the first time." Kligman recalled his first entry into Holmsberg Prison.
In his view, prison inmates are ideal subjects for his research on skin diseases—these black prisoners are a low-risk and abundant experimental group. In order to be able to successfully enter the Holmsberg Prison for experiments, Kligman opened a pharmacy in the prison.
At Holmsberg Prison, at least 75 percent of the inmates ended up in human experiments.
Under the guise of running a pharmacy, Kligman was able to regularly visit prisons and secretly carry out his human experiments. He has revealed that the US authorities did not become aware that he was conducting human experiments at Holmsberg Prison until many years after the experiments began.
In 1951, when Kligman first began to conduct human experiments in Holmesburg Prison, the number of black prisoners in Holmesburg Prison accounted for only 20% of the prison's inmates; by around 1955, black prisoners accounted for almost 50 percent of the population; by the end of Kligman's experiment in 1974, black inmates made up nearly 85 percent of Holmsburg's population.
kligman
According to media statistics, at least 75% of the prisoners in Holmsberg Prison were eventually used for human experiments. Holmesburg Prison allegedly tested more than 250 different compounds on the bodies of black inmates between 1951 and 1974.
Hornbloom, who worked in literacy education at the prison and later published a book exposing the shady experiments, once witnessed black prisoners being smeared with dioxin by researchers without their knowledge. Perhaps those black prisoners don’t know that during the Vietnam War, in order to defeat the Vietnamese, the U.S. military dropped about 20 million gallons of Agent Orange containing dioxin throughout Vietnam, which directly caused 400,000 Vietnamese deaths and 2 million Vietnamese suffer from cancer and other diseases.
In addition, Hornblum also saw that after using Kligman's experimental potion, some black prisoners became in a trance, often forgot their names, and couldn't tell the direction when they walked. Those living black prisoners today still suffer from the lifelong side effects of the experiment, including scars, rashes, pustules, massive swelling of hands and feet, and mental illness.
40 Years of Viral Scams
In fact, the scandal at Holmsberg Prison is just the tip of the iceberg of the American medical profession's mutilation of black bodies.
The notorious Tuskegee syphilis experiment is a typical case of American medical racism. The trial, officially called the Tuskegee Untreated Syphilis Experiment in Black Men, was conducted in collaboration between the U.S. Public Health Service and Tuskegee University. This experiment started in 1932 and lasted until 1972, a full 40 years.
Under the deception and temptation of the U.S. Public Health Service, more than 600 black people became the "guinea pigs" of this experiment. Throughout, the subjects who had syphilis were not told that they had syphilis—they were told that they had sepsis, and that the experiment was being done to treat their sepsis.
In 1932, at the beginning of the experiment, syphilis was still incurable, but by 1947, penicillin was verified by the medical community as an effective treatment for syphilis. However, the researchers of the experiment deliberately did not give effective treatment to these syphilis patients so that the experiment could continue as originally planned. During the 40 years of this experiment, a total of 128 experiment participants died of syphilis and related complications, of which 40 wives were infected and 19 children acquired congenital syphilis.
Doctors draw blood from test subjects in Tuskegee syphilis experiment
Why black?
In human experiments, whether it is the black prisoners in Holmesburg Prison or the black sharecroppers in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, they all have common attributes, that is, poverty and illiteracy. The poor have no resources and no more choices. Human experiments can bring them more money and choices.
It is said that according to the regulations of the Philadelphia prison at the time, unless a heinous crime was committed, if prisoners can pay 10% of the set bail, they can hope to end their sentence early.
At the time, most of the black inmates in Holmsburg were unconvicted. They hope to be released on bail while awaiting trial by paying enough bond, or save enough money to pay their lawyers.
In one experiment, prisoners were often given a stipend of around $30 to $50 and even as high as $800. Faced with high bail and legal fees, this money is simply the dawn of their freedom for black people behind bars. Therefore, rather than saying that these black prisoners dedicate themselves to human experiments for money, it is better to say that they are for freedom. However, how far can the freedom gained by mutilating the body go?
The U.S. Public Health Service had a bigger “pie” for the blacks who participated in the Tuskegee syphilis experiment than Kligman did. The U.S. Public Health Service promises that those who participate in this experiment will enjoy free health care services provided by the government in the future, as well as benefits such as meals and funeral insurance.
Access to free health care services was a blessing in disguise for many black Americans at the time. At the same time, in order to induce more blacks to participate in this experiment, the U.S. Public Health Service not only deliberately chose to cooperate with Tuskegee University, a historically black university, to complete this experiment, but also set the destination of the experiment in Alabama Macon County—Because the area is a gathering place for black sharecroppers, and it is very poor.
In fact, behind the temptation of black people to participate in human experiments, there is deep-rooted medical racism. Although the United States abolished black slavery after the Civil War, the concept of racial discrimination has never been eradicated, but has been deeply rooted in the bone marrow of white people, and medical racism is even worse.
African-American inmates who underwent human experiments at Holmsberg Prison
In one experiment, prisoners were often given a stipend of around $30 to $50 and even as high as $800.
Many white Americans have always considered themselves superior to blacks, and their science and medicine are more than happy to reinforce this hierarchy. Apologizing for the black experiment, Philadelphia Mayor Kenny said: "While this happened decades ago, we know that the historical impact and trauma of this medical racist practice persists today, poisoning generations of people. "
In the pseudo-medical concepts of those white people, they believe that black people have simple minds, developed genitals, and insatiable sexual desires, which are the culprits in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. For a long time, the U.S. Public Health Service considered the Tuskegee syphilis experiment a "natural study" rather than an experiment.
Therefore, in the eyes of the U.S. Public Health Service at that time, this medical experiment was an opportunity to benefit those black people, and it was definitely not racial oppression.
Under the notion of medical racism, those experts argue that blacks have thicker skin than whites, can tolerate pain better, and require less pain management, making them better candidates for human experimentation. It was under this deformed medical concept that the "father of gynecology" Marion Sims performed as many as 30 operations on an African-American woman without anesthesia in the 1840s. In the end, he died of surgical infection.
Also, without anesthesia, Marion Sims inserted a shoemaker's awl into the skulls of black children in order to study the cause of tetanus in children.
"Apologize" is always late
Although the experiment was stopped, the process of accountability was long and complicated.
In 1998, Hornblum, who had witnessed the human experiments in Holmsberg Prison, published the book "Acres of Skin: Human Experiments in Holmsberg Prison", which exposed Kligman's dehumanization in detail. human experiments. That same year, prisoners who had been experimented on gathered near the University of Pennsylvania and the College of Physicians in Philadelphia to protest the award of medical honors to Kligman.
In 2000, nearly 300 prisoners collectively filed a lawsuit against the people and institutions that had led or sponsored the experiment (including Kligman, the University of Pennsylvania, the Government of Philadelphia, Dow Chemical, Johnson & Johnson, and Ivy Research Laboratories), demanding compensation and Apologize. However, the court dismissed the case on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired. The experiment scandal did not usher in real accountability until after the "Floyd's death" incident broke out.
In 2018, in Central Park, New York, the statue of Marion Sims, the "father of gynecology", was removed
In the wave of protests of "Black Lives Matter", old cases caused by racial discrimination in the past have also been rediscovered. Cities across the United States have begun a series of reflections and apologies for historically racist policies or misconduct.
In 2021, the University of Pennsylvania formally apologized to the victims of the Holmsberg prison human experiments and revoked Kligman's relevant honors at the school. Immediately afterwards, on October 6 this year, the Philadelphia government also formally apologized for the incident.
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was stopped 40 years after it started. In 1972, Peter Buxton, an employee of the U.S. Public Health Service, broke the story of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to the media. Associated Press reporter Jean Heller officially exposed the matter in July 1972, which immediately aroused public outrage and the experiment was forced to end.
In 1973, the U.S. Congress held hearings on the experiment. The following year, survivors of the experiment, as well as the heirs of the deceased, received a $10 million out-of-court settlement. The U.S. government also promises that the survivors of the experiment are immediately entitled to free medical care, and their families can also enjoy certain free services.
In 1997, after 65 years, those black people finally waited for an apology from the President of the United States. Then-President Clinton apologized and said: "These experiments should not have happened, but they happened. What the United States government has done is shameful. For our African American citizens, I once again implemented such a test for the federal government." Sorry for the obvious racist experiment."
Under the anti-racism movement, in 2018, the New York City government was forced to remove the statue of Marion Sims standing in Central Park. At that time, Matthew Washington, deputy mayor of Manhattan, New York, commented: "It is obviously inappropriate and unacceptable to call Sims a hero.
" From the apologies of President Clinton and the mayor of Philadelphia and the removal of the statue of Sims to the death of the black Freud, white Americans seem to be repeating the vicious circle of "crime-apology-crime" towards blacks.
On August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. shouted "I have a dream" at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Now it seems that he still needs to do this dream for a long time.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
