TRIBUNE
Article reserved for subscribers
American essayist Allen M. Hornblum looks back on the history of the largest human experimentation factory in the United States, where medical tests were carried out on prisoners from the 1950s to the 1970s. Among the survivors, some ask for a financial compensation.
Herbert Rice has finally decided to tell his story. After decades of silence and self-effacement, he fervently campaigns for justice. “We were used as guinea pigs,” he says. They never told us what they injected us with, what they smeared on our backs or what they made us drink. They lied and took advantage of us. They made millions on our backs, they all got rich. All we got out of it was a few pieces, dirty scars and nightmares. They owe us compensation, and not just a little.”
The indignation of this 78-year-old African-American man is palpable. He freely admits having “never said anything in fifty-five years, out of shame”. But he is “angry now”, and is finally speaking out. Let’s go back fifty years. Herbert Rice, a young man prone to making bad decisions, makes his way through life with petty burglaries. His arrest leads him behind bars, in the heart of one of the strangest prison establishments in the country. Holmesburg is Philadelphia’s oldest and most questionable prison. Quite discreetly, in 1951 it became the largest human experimentation factory in the United States.
Nothing will equal it, until the end of the 20th century, in terms of the number of scientific protocols, people subjected to experiments and years of operation.
For more than twenty years, anyone who has to cross the
2023-06-30 13:49:00
#United #States #fight #guinea #pig #prisoners #Holmesburg #obtain #compensation
