Ex-prisoners seek reparations

The group of ex-prison inmates who allege that they were unwitting subjects of damaging medical experiments conducted by a University-affiliated physician 30 years ago testified in front of a state House of Representatives committee this week and have continued to hold campus protests to bring publicity to their cause. The group of about 100 former prisoners is accusing the University of causing them long-term health problems due to consensual experiments conducted on them while they were inmates in the 1960s at Northeast Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison. The experiments were performed by Penn Dermatology Professor Emeritus Albert Kligman. On Monday, they participated in a hearing at City Hall before a subcommittee of the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee examining the general issue of Pennsylvania's prison conditions. And last week, the mostly-male group protested in front of the University Trustees' meeting at the Faculty Club. Several weeks ago, the group also protested outside the White Dog Cafe, where University President Judith Rodin was giving a talk on the need for public discourse. The Experimentation Survivors' Group, as the former inmates call themselves, wants follow-up treatment paid for by Penn and additional compensation for their pain and suffering. University officials say that the prisoners legally consented to the tests, were paid for their participation and have not proven that the experiments caused any lasting harm. Chief Health System Counsel Thomas Tammany said that the ex-prisoners' attorneys informed him of their claims and demands at a meeting in December. He said he is reviewing the information and expects to give them a response within the next few weeks. And Medical School Senior Vice Dean Richard Tannen said that while the lawyers are still talking, the Health System has offered free consultations to anyone who thinks his current ailments are a result of the experiments. However, Tannen said only two people have come forward for their evaluations, and their complaints -- both dermatologic -- were what he considers minor. "The issues they came forward with were not what I consider major health issues," he said. But Gloria Gilman, the ex-prisoners' lawyer, compared her clients' plight to that of the workers in Nazi concentration camps. "It was slave labor that benefitted the University of Pennsylvania," she said, adding that the University should not be able to keep the profits from the experiment, which helped lead to the discovery, among other things, of the popular anti-wrinkle and anti-acne drug Retin-A. "All we are asking for is the University to sit down and talk," she said. In the meantime, the ex-prisoners are trying to make their story known. During last week's University Trustee meetings, the prisoners held signs saying things like "U Penn? little Auschwitz?" Former prisoner Leodus Jones, chairperson of the Experimentation Survivors' Group, asked, "if we made such a contribution, why don't you contribute to our rehabilitation?" And in the Public Hearing on Prisons in front of the subcommittee on Crime and Corrections at City Hall this past Monday, six members of the group told their stories before approximately 100 people, Gilman said. Joseph Smith, who was in and out of Holmesburg Prison from 1956 to 1965, described for the committee his participation in five different experiments and said they all still have lingering effects. "Now I want to know what happened to me in those tests," he said, according to a written transcript of his testimony. "I want the University of Pennsylvania and others to know that they shouldn't have done what they did." The hearing also included discussion of current conditions in state jail facilities, Gilman said, and served a dual purpose for the ex-prisoners. Besides "bringing out the facts," she said, the hearing suggested investigation into the options the state has and possible resolutions. "The state could consider penalizing the appropriations allocated to the University of Pennsylvania for their failure to reconcile with these survivors," Gilman said. The Holmesburg experiments, conducted from 1951 to 1974, tested products like toothpaste, shampoo, skin creams, liquid diets and foot powders. The story recently got widespread publicity from the publication of Acres of Skin, a book about the experiments written by Temple University Urban Studies Professor Allen Hornblum, prompting the ex-prisoners to form a group and begin to seek compensation.

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