U. involved in chemical tests on prisoners

and Jeremy Kahn University researchers were deeply involved in the secret testing of chemical warfare agents on human subjects throughout the 1950s and 1960s, a growing mountain of documents declassified over the past 25 years reveals. Many of these experiments were conducted by University-affiliated researchers on inmates in a Philadelphia prison who did not have full knowledge of the long-term health effects from exposure to the chemicals -- some of which are now known carcinogens. And these tests -- many involving the application of "blistering agents" which created acute acnelike skin conditions -- were conducted at the same time University researchers were forging ahead in the development of skin care products such as the anti-acne, anti-wrinkle drug Retin-A. University Professor Led Human Chemical Experiments The inventor of Retin-A, Emeritus Professor of Dermatology Albert Kligman conducted more government-sponsored chemical warfare experiments on humans than any other University researcher, a review of government documents indicates. Working at the University from 1951 to 1972, Kligman conducted scores of experiments on inmates in Northeast Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison. Many of these experiments were conducted under the auspices of Ivy Research Laboratories, one of four research groups he founded in the mid-1960s. The research groups obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars in government and pharmaceutical industry contracts to test various chemicals on human subjects. Kligman did not return repeated phone calls placed to his home and office over the course of the past three weeks. "I like to do ground-breaking research," he said in a 1989 interview. The Dioxin Experiments Kligman performed some of the first experiments on possible ill-effects from exposure to the chemical dioxin in 1964 while under contract from Dow Chemical and the U.S. Department of Defense. Dow was seeking to determine whether dioxin exposure might have been responsible for an outbreak of chloracne -- a severe, acnelike skin disease -- among workers at a plant in Michigan which used dioxin in the manufacture of a variety of herbicides. Although Kligman acknowledges testing dioxin on prisoners at Holmesburg during 1964, he claims the records of the experiments have been destroyed. But Vernon Rowe, a former Dow worker to whom Kligman reported in the 1960s, suggested in testimony before an Environmental Protection Agency hearing in January 1981 that Kligman had exceeded dosage guidelines -- by a factor of nearly 500 times -- set by Dow and the University. Rowe testified that Dow had authorized Kligman to apply a dose of 0.2 micrograms of dioxin to the backs of 60 Holmesburg prisoners and to gradually increase the dosage to 16 micrograms. Dow believed this exposure range approximated that sustained by its Michigan plant workers. The prisoners in Kligman's dioxin study all signed consent forms, but some were later to claim in lawsuits that they were told there would be no long-term negative health effects from the experiments. In addition, prisoners who participated in the Kligman experiments would receive credits redeemable for items at the prison commissary and were told that the prison would view their actions in a favorable light, perhaps counting toward good behavior if they came up for parole. Kligman was said to have initially followed Dow's exposure guidelines for the study, but with few results. "I am grieved so little has been learned," Rowe quoted Kligman as writing him. Later, Rowe claimed in his testimony, Kligman -- without authorization from anyone at Dow -- applied 7,500 micrograms of the chemical to the skin of 10 prisoners. He said this was 468 times beyond Dow's authorized maximum exposure level. Eight of the 10 prisoners who received this dose developed cases of chloracne which lasted for over seven months. "We followed the specific protocol set down by you," Kligman allegedly wrote in his report to Rowe. "Unfortunately, not a single subject developed acne nor was there any evidence of toxicity. This encouraged me to proceed more vigorously." Since the late 1970s, research has linked dioxin to cancer, fetal deaths and birth defects. It is also a major component in Agent Orange, the defoliant used extensively by the U.S. Army in Vietnam, which has allegedly caused cancer and skin diseases in thousands of veterans. Former Holmesburg inmate James Walker, of West Philadelphia, sued Kligman and the University in 1979 alleging that he had developed lupus, a rare skin disease, after having participated in Kligman's dioxin experiments. Two years later, five more former Holmesburg prisoners filed a $6 million suit against Kligman, the University, the state of Pennsylvania and the federal government, claiming they all had suffered from outbreaks of acute rashes since participating in the dioxin study. Both suits were later settled. Kligman Banned From Human Experiments In 1966, Kligman became the first researcher in the history of the Food and Drug Administration to be banned from testing drugs on human subjects. According to an August 1966 Time magazine article, the FDA had decided that Kligman's work was sloppy and that his notes were often inconsistent. Kligman attributed his poor record keeping to the fact that he often used prisoners to monitor the experiments as well as the subjects in them. The FDA later restored Kligman's right to experiment on humans. But the FDA ban did not stop Kligman from further experimentation on human subjects with chemical agents. At about the same time the FDA was deciding that Kligman's experiments were poorly conducted, the University signed a $386,486 contract to test chemical warfare agents for the U.S. Army, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. To this day, the contract is one of the largest ever awarded for the testing of chemical warfare agents on human subjects. More Prisoners as Subjects Under this contract and several others between the Army and the University, researchers began a barrage of tests -- many conducted simultaneously -- using Holmesburg inmates as human subjects. One such program, conducted by Kligman, sought "to learn how the skin protects itself against chronic assault from toxic chemicals, the so-called hardening process," according to Kligman's 1967 report to the scientists at the Army's Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories in Maryland. The Army believed the study could have both offensive and defensive military applications. Kligman and his assistants worked with a variety of blister-producing chemicals, applying to prisoner's foreheads and backs, at times even immersing a subject's limbs in caustic solutions, according to a declassified 1967 report obtained from the Department of Energy. "An inescapable conclusion from all our studies is that solid hardening is obtainable only if the skin passes through a very intense inflammatory phase with swelling, redness, scaling and crusting," Kligman wrote in the report. "Once hardened, the immersions may continue indefinitely without noticeable effect." Kligman suggested in his report to the Edgewood Arsenal that the Army might consider using turpentine as a skin hardener, except that almost half of the prisoners exposed to the chemical -- often used in paint thinners -- contracted allergies. "These reactions may be quite severe when an entire forearm is involved," he wrote. Kligman reported some success in hardening subjects' skin against such chemical warfare agents as sodium lauryl sulfate and chlorinated phenol, managing to "harden" 12 inmates to both toxins for an entire year. But Kligman wrote the Army in 1967 that he was having trouble hardening prisoner's to other substances. Experiments Hospitalize Inmates All three prisoners exposed to pure ethylene glycol monomethyl ether, a highly toxic gas, "exhibited psychotic reactions (hallucinations, disorientation, stupor) within two weeks and had to be hospitalized," Kligman reported to Edgewood. Kligman concluded that no skin hardening process could prevent the psychological effects a chemical agent might have and that "hardening is short-lived, and requires continuing exposures for its peak maintenance." Kligman also reported that the study had ended prematurely when inmates "complained bitterly." "After weeks of apparently peak inflammation, the skin exhibited no willingness to become hardened and the willingness of the subjects to go on diminished to zero," Kligman wrote in a letter to Army researchers at Edgewood. The names of the subjects in the declassified report are blacked out, ostensibly to protect their identities. But the lack of knowledge about the fate of the subjects in the experiments -- or even which subjects were involved in which tests -- makes tracking any long-term health effects from the studies difficult. Kligman and other University researchers performed no long-term follow-ups on the subjects. In 1967, Kligman was also conducting research at Holmesburg for the Army under the auspices of Ivy Research Laboratories. According to a 1975 report of the Inspector General of the Army, during the late 1960s and early 1970s, "Ivy Research [Laboratories] used at least 94 inmates to test choking agents, nerve agents, blister agents, vomiting agents, incapacitating agents, and toxins." The report also stated that Ivy Research was banned from Holmesburg Prison after its tests were blamed for causing a 1972 prison riot. There are even allegations that Ivy Research was conducting radiation experiments on inmates at the time of Kligman's skin hardening tests. Allegations of Human Radiation Experiments In 1990, Edward Farrington, a former Holmesburg prisoner, filed a $6 million law suit against the University and other defendants claiming that he developed leukemia as a result of University-conducted research at Holmesburg in 1967. In his handwritten suit, Farrington alleged that radioactive material was injected at seven points along his arms and back that were marked with permanent tattoos. He alleged University researchers checked these points with a Geiger counter for several weeks. Farrington claimed that workers from the University "enticed" him into participating in the radiation study by assuring him there would be no lasting effects. He alleged that officials from the University and the prison lied about the risks of the experiment. Farrington also wrote in the suit that he could not recall what department of the University oversaw the alleged experiment, and that he could not remember the names of any of the workers, except that one was called "McBride." University lawyers initially denied any knowledge of alleged radiation research and later stated in a court filing that an investigation at the University had failed to verify Farrington's account of a University-conducted radiation experiment. In 1992, the University paid Farrington an undisclosed sum "in order to avoid the costs of litigation and to buy peace," according to former Associate General Counsel Neil Hamburg. Hamburg said at the time that the University continued to deny Farrington's allegations and that no admission of guilt was made in the settlement. In court documents, the University acknowledged that a person named McBride worked for the University in 1967, while firmly denying he had any involvement in the kinds of experiments Farrington alleged the University performed. Solomon McBride, a former University professor, was medical administrator for Kligman's Ivy Research group in 1967, at the height of its Army-contracted chemical warfare experiments, according to the 1975 Army Inspector General's report. McBride left the University and founded McWill Research Laboratories in Atlanta in 1985. He did not return several phone calls placed to his home last week. Farrington, who has been in and out of prison for a variety of crimes over the past two decades, has moved out of the Philadelphia area and also could not be reached for comment. One month before Farrington settled his suit against the University, the University reached a compromise in a two-year court battle with Johnson & Johnson and Kligman over the rights to sell the popular acne medication Retin-A as an anti-wrinkle cream. Under contract with Johnson & Johnson, Kligman developed and patented Retina-A in 1967 -- at the height of his chemical warfare experimentation with the University and Ivy Research. It is still unclear what relation, if any, Kligman's research at Holmesburg had in the development of Retina-A or in the University's development of other skin care products.

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