50 years after Philadelphia halted prison medical testing, families seek reparations

50 years after Philadelphia halted prison medical testing, families seek reparations  By  MARYCLAIRE DALE October 23, 2024

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Fifty years ago, Philadelphia prison officials ended a medical testing program that had allowed an Ivy League researcher to conduct human testing on incarcerated people, many of them Black, for decades. Now, survivors of the program and their descendants want reparations.

Thousands of people at Holmesburg Prison were exposed to painful skin tests, anesthesia-free surgery, harmful radiation and mind-altering drugs for research on everything from hair dye, detergent and other household goods to chemical warfare agents and dioxins. In exchange, they might receive $1-a-day in pocket change they used to buy commissary items or try to make bail.

“We were fertile ground for them people,” said Herbert Rice, a retired city worker from Philadelphia who said he has had lifelong psychiatric problems after taking an unknown drug at Holmesburg in the late 1960s that caused him to hallucinate. “It was just like dangling a carrot in front of a rabbit.”

The city and the University of Pennsylvania have issued formal apologies in recent years. Lawsuits have been mostly unsuccessful, except for a few small settlements. On Wednesday, families at a Penn law school event are set to seek reparations from the school and pharmaceutical companies that they say benefited from the Cold War-era research.
A University of Pennsylvania spokesperson said the school had no comment on the push for reparations.

The testing was led by Albert M. Kligman, a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist with research ties to the Army, the CIA and the pharmaceutical industry, according to author Allen Hornblum, who ran an adult literacy program at Holmesburg in the 1970s and saw the effects firsthand.

Medical testing in prisons was pervasive in the 1960s, with radiation studies conducted on people incarcerated in Washington and Oregon, cancer studies in Ohio and flash burn studies in Virginia, Hornblum said.

Human testing was also conducted on children in institutions, hospital patients and other vulnerable populations in much of the 20th century. The tide turned in the early 1970s, when outrage over the Tuskegee Syphilis Study — in which the U.S. government let Black men go untreated for syphilis to study the disease’s impact — sparked an evolution in medical ethics, Hornblum said. Kligman defended his work until his death in 2010....
In a 1966 interview with The Philadelphia Inquirer, Kligman described his first visit to Holmesburg with excitement, saying, “All I saw before me were acres of skin.”....

https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-prison-experiments-black-reparations-ff8a08483fb13d1b949d938d7ae29656# 

Ritual Abuse Newsletter - January 2014, Ritual Abuse Conferences 2014, Intentionally false reports of child maltreatment in US was 1.07%

January 2014 Child Abuse and Ritual Abuse Newsletter
http://ritualabuse.us/2014/01/issue-114-january-2014/

It contains information on child abuse, ritual abuse, clergy abuse, mind control, human experimentation and other topics.


A conference to help survivors of severe child abuse (ritual abuse) and torture will be held on August 15  - 17, 2014, between 8 - 5 PM Saturday and Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel near Bradley International Airport, 16 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, CT 06096 (between Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA).  This conference will help educate survivors of this abuse and their helpers.  Pre-registration is preferred.  For information write  S.M.A.R.T., P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295  E-mail: smartnews@aol.com, conference information is at:  http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

Ritual Abuse And Extreme Abuse Clinician’s Conference August 15, 2014 - A one day conference preceding our regular conference will be open to licensed practitioners in related fields to discuss issues in working with clients suffering from ritual abuse and extreme abuse symptoms.  Students studying in related fields and retired licensed practitioners may write smartnews@aol.com by e-mail for more information. Internet conference information is available at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ritual-abuse-and-extreme-abuse-clinicians-conference-2014/


Child Maltreatment 2012: False and Substantiated Rates by State
The estimate of intentionally false reports of child maltreatment for the entire United States was 1.07%
http://www.leadershipcouncil.org/1/res/2012%20substantiation.html

Mind-control survivors claim US Government tortures children

Mind-control survivors claim US Government tortures children
Judy Byington November 25, 2013

....According to survivors, MKULTRA human experimentation involves using children as sex slaves, exposing them to radiation, drugs, hypnosis, plus mental and physical abuse including dislocating joints; food, water and sensory deprivation, electroshock and implantation of electronic devices to further access victims throughout their lives.

Congress supposedly shut down the program in 1964, though many survivors responding to the 2007 Extreme Abuse Surveys might disagree. http://extreme-abuse-survey.net

....These quotes from those who grew up subjected to extreme abuse paid for on our taxpayer dollar can be viewed in a 2013 petition, Request for a Congressional investigation, CIA mind-control of children. You are invited to sign the petition at: http://www.change.org/petitions/request-congressional-investigation-cia-mind-control-of-children
 
http://www.examiner.com/article/mind-control-survivors-claim-us-government-tortures-children
 

Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval, Guatemalan syphilis victims lose hope in legal battle against US, Milford’s newest Living Treasure is a military hero and a knight

                  

- Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval
- Guatemalan syphilis victims lose hope in legal battle against US
- Milford’s newest Living Treasure is a military hero and a knight

Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval
Jul 07, 2013 Corey G. Johnson

Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews.

From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners.

The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men’s prison.

Former inmates and prisoner advocates maintain that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future....

California still grapples with an ugly past: Under compulsory sterilization laws here and in 31 other states, minority groups, the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill and criminals were singled out as inferior and sterilized to prevent them from spreading their genes.

It was known as eugenics.

Between 1909 and 1964, about 20,000 women and men in California were stripped of the ability to reproduce – making the state the nation’s most prolific sterilizer. Historians say Nazi Germany sought the advice of the state’s eugenics leaders in the 1930s....
http://cironline.org/reports/female-inmates-sterilized-california-prisons-without-approval-4917

Guatemalan syphilis victims lose hope in legal battle against US
Thousands of Guatemalans were intentionally infected with STDs in the 1940s by US public health researchers. An appeal on their case against the US government was dismissed this week.

By Romina Ruiz-Goriena, Contributor  June 14, 2013

As a nine-year-old child, Marta recalled seeing her name on a list to go to the doctor’s office. An orphan, she had been living in the National Education Center since the age of six.

Before long, she would be prodded and poked every week for a year, receiving shots in her hip and shoulder, and having blood drawn.

“My mother tells us that she would ask over and over again, 'why are you doing this if I am not even sick?'" says Luis Estuardo Vasquez Orellana, one of Marta Lidia Orellana Guerra’s five children. His mother, who is still alive today, also underwent unnecessary back surgery and was left to rest hanging upside down on and off in post-surgery recovery for months.

It was 1946, and Ms. Orellana was one of thousands of Guatemalans who were unwittingly subjected to secret human experiments led by US doctors.

The experiments were brought to light by a US researcher in 2009, and a legal battle on behalf of victims and their families ensued. But now, nearly three years after beginning the legal battle in US courts, attorneys representing an estimated 5,000 Guatemalan victims used as guinea pigs and infected with sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940s by US public health researchers withdrew their appeal earlier this week, virtually ending the case against the US government.....

The dismissal comes a year after a US District Court ruled the United States was protected under two immunity laws, the Federal Tort Claims Act and the International Organization Immunities Act.

“We pulled out rather than prolong litigation,” says Christian Levesque, an attorney with DC-based Conrad & Scherer LLP who is working on the case. “At this time it is more appropriate to pursue political redress.” Pursuing justice for these victims in the US could include reparations through lobbying Congress.

The alleged victims include soldiers, inmates, sex workers, mental health patients, and schoolchildren. Of these, some 1,300 were deliberately infected with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0614/Guatemalan-syphilis-victims-lose-hope-in-legal-battle-against-US

Milford’s newest Living Treasure is a military hero and a knight
By Milford Mirror Staff on July 10, 2013
....Before all this, military life absorbed Muth. He volunteered to become a “victim” of government experiments on brainwashing techniques, both physical and chemical.

These experiments were authorized by the Department of Defense, orchestrated by Army Intelligence, funded by the CIA and conducted by the Army Chemical Corps, according to documents. The programs and experiments were so risky that several of the 7,800 men who were test subjects died.

According to online documentation, the research programs at issue concentrated at the Army’s facilities at the Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Md., allegedly tested more than 400 different chemical and biological substances during five decades in locations throughout the U.S. and abroad, and involved an estimated 100,000 active duty military personnel.

“I was one of the fortunate ones who was able to lead a normal life, raise normal children and enjoy my career and family, although I have permanent physical disabilities that are attributable to my military career,” Muth said, though he declined to specify or elaborate on those disabilities.

Muth received an honorable discharge from the Army in 1959. The experiments were so secret, however, that it wasn’t until the spring of 2004, some 45 years later, that a former high-ranking government official who participated in administration of these experiments acknowledged his contributions....

A Government Accounting Office report in 1994, which the Mirror obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, acknowledged that during Word War II and the Cold War era, the Department of Defense and other national security agencies conducted or sponsored extensive radiological, chemical and biological research programs. Part of the report states:

“The effects of the tests and experiments are often difficult to determine. Although some participants suffered immediate acute injuries and some died, in other cases adverse health problems were not discovered until many years later — often 20 to 30 years or longer.”

The Edgewood vets have in recent years sued the government and expect to go to trial in October....
http://www.milfordmirror.com/7709/milfords-newest-living-treasure-is-a-military-hero-and-a-knight/

Unethical U.S. medical experiments done in Guatemala in the 1940s

Panel reveals new details of 1940's experiment
By MIKE STOBBE - AP Medical Writer AP 8/30/11 ATLANTA (AP)

A presidential panel on Monday disclosed shocking new details of U.S. medical experiments done in Guatemala in the 1940s, including a decision to re-infect a dying woman in a syphilis study.

The Guatemala experiments are already considered one of the darker episodes of medical research in U.S. history, but panel members say the new information indicates that the researchers were unusually unethical, even when placed into the historical context of a different era.

"The researchers put their own medical advancement first and human decency a far second," said Anita Allen, a member of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues.

From 1946-48, the U.S. Public Health Service and the Pan American Sanitary Bureau worked with several Guatemalan government agencies to do medical research — paid for by the U.S. government — that involved deliberately exposing people to sexually transmitted diseases.

The researchers apparently were trying to see if penicillin, then relatively new, could prevent infections in the 1,300 people exposed to syphilis, gonorrhea or chancroid. Those infected included soldiers, prostitutes, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis.

The commission revealed Monday that only about 700 of those infected received some sort of treatment. Also, 83 people died, although it's not clear if the deaths were directly due to the experiments.

The research came up with no useful medical information, according to some experts. It was hidden for decades but came to light last year, after a Wellesley College medical historian discovered records among the papers of Dr. John Cutler, who led the experiments.

President Barack Obama called Guatemala's president, Alvaro Colom, to apologize. He also ordered his bioethics commission to review the Guatemala experiments. That work is nearly done. Though the final report is not due until next month, commission members discussed some of the findings at a meeting Monday in Washington.

They revealed that some of the experiments were more shocking than was previously known....

During that time, other researchers were also using people as human guinea pigs, in some cases infecting them with illnesses. Studies weren't as regulated then, and the planning-on-the-fly feel of Cutler's work was not unique, some experts have noted....

http://news.yahoo.com/panel-reveals-details-1940s-experiment-012040543.html

North American Truth and Reconciliation Commission

North American Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The NATRC seeks Truth and Reconciliation over historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government. http://natrcoalition.org/

The United States Truth and Reconciliation Commission (US TRC)

The United States Truth and Reconciliation Commission (US TRC)
seeks Truth and Reconciliation over historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government.

Definitions of Trauma & Dissociation, Trafficking & Torture, Extreme Abuse & Ritual Abuse and Mind Control http://unitedstatestrc.com/faq/

The New United States Truth and Reconciliation Coalition (US TRC)

August 24, 2010

We are pleased to announce our new human rights organization, the United States Truth and Reconciliation Coalition (US TRC).

Using the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as our model, we will focus on increasing public awareness of historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government.

At this time, the US TRC consists of three volunteer groups:

Our coalition currently consists of sixteen members who contribute a rich blend of experience, knowledge, determination, and inspiration. They have backgrounds in advocacy, mediation, psychology, social work, and the raising of children.
Our large discussion group provides the coalition with practical support, ideas, feedback, and news.
Our update group distributes coalition news to advocacy and human rights organizations and coalitions and to other concerned groups and citizens through email, websites, media announcements, and social networking.
To learn more about the US TRC, to join one of our volunteer groups, or to learn of other ways that you can support our efforts, please Email us at ustrc@comcast.net.
Thank you.
http://unitedstatestrc.com/

syphilis and human experimentation, Hell Minus One ritual abuse confessions

http://ritualabuse.us

Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present January 19, 2007
Medical scholar Harriet Washington joins us to talk about her new book, "Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present." The book reveals the hidden underbelly of scientific research and the roots of the African American health deficit. It also examines less well-known abuses and looks at unethical practices and mistreatment of blacks that are still taking place in the medical establishment today....HARRIET WASHINGTON: ...Tuskegee is, you know, the icon of abusive experimentation of black people, but it's true, many people still don't know what happened, and there are a lot of misconceptions floating about, as well....What happened was that about 400 black men in Macon County, Alabama, with syphilis-who had been diagnosed with syphilis, at least-were studied over a period of forty years by the United States Public Health Service. There were 200 men who were not infected who were held as a control group, also black men. Over the course of forty years, these men were duped into thinking that they were in a treatment program. But they weren't. They were given pain pills, which, as it transpired, were simply aspirin. They were given spinal taps, which, as it transpired, were not for the good of their health or to monitor their health, but rather to ensure a supply of sera for the development of a syphilis test. So they were used over forty years, even after the advent of penicillin. When penicillin was recognized as a cure, it was withheld from these men.
JUAN GONZALEZ: And this was between-what was the forty-year span?
HARRIET WASHINGTON: 1932 to 1972.
AMY GOODMAN: How many people knew about this at the time? How did it stop?
HARRIET WASHINGTON: Hundreds of people knew about it, because there were regular reports in the medical journals, and it was actually presented at an American Medical Association meeting in 1965. There were also numerous meetings of governmental agencies, where they periodically would ask, "Should we continue the experiment or not?" And the decision was always, "Yes, we should continue the experiment." It's worth noting that the surgeon general, Thomas Parran, had taken on syphilis eradication as his mission, and yet when penicillin was devised and he had the cure, he made the decision to continue the experiment, because he said they represent an opportunity that will never come again.
AMY GOODMAN: What happened to the untreated men?
HARRIET WASHINGTON: The untreated men, as you can well imagine, many of them died horrible deaths. http://www.democracynow.org/2007/1/19/medical_apartheid_the_dark_history_of


President Clinton's public apology to U.S. survivors of human experimentation - The following is a portion of a speech given on 10/3/95 by President William C. Clinton concerning Executive Order 12975 - Protection of Human Research Subjects and Creation of National Bioethics Advisory Commission: "Thousands of government-sponsored experiments did take place at hospitals, universities, and military bases around our nation. Some were unethical, not only by today's standards, but by the standards of the time in which they were conducted. They failed both the test of our national values, and the test of humanity. The United States of America offers a sincere apology to those of our citizens who were subjected to these experiments, to their families, and to their communities. When the government does wrong, we have a moral responsibility to admit it." http://naffoundation.org/Pres%20Clinton%27s%20Apology.htm

describes abuse
Anne's Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and her Journey to Freedom - When Anne A Johnson Davis was just three years old, her mother and stepfather began to physically, sexually and mentally abuse her—in the name of Satan. Until she ran away from home at 17, her parents and other cult members subjected her to satanic ritual abuse, a criminally inhumane and bizarre form of devil worship. In the middle of the night, Anne would be drugged and forced to endure hours of ritualistic torture as a symbolic sacrifice. The horrors Anne experienced, the astounding miracles that helped her to survive, and the heal-or-die choices she made as an adult to triumph over her tragic past, are revealed in her new book Hell Minus One: My Story of Deliverance From Satanic Ritual Abuse and My Journey to Freedom. http://hellminus1.com/