1950: Two-hundred female prisoners infected with viral hepatitis

From the 1950s through the 70s Holmesburg Prison became the “supermarket” or “kmart” for human medical experiments conducted by Dr. Albert Kligman, a University of Pennsylvania dermatologist. Under his direction hundreds of painful experiments were conducted involving nearly 1,000 inmates. He recalled his first visit to the prison: “All I…

1976: National Urban League held a conference on Human Experimentation, announcing: “We don’t want to kill science but we don’t want science to kill, mangle and abuse us.”

1954: Polio vaccine was tested on one million children aged six to nine. In April 1955 the vaccine was deemed “safe and effective” by NIH; the vaccine was hailed as a medical triumph of the 20th century.

In July, 1961, Merck and Parke-Davis recalled their Salk vaccines — without mentioning the cancer risk. NIH officials concealed the SV40 cancer risk and never recalled the rest of the polio vaccine supply. Even after they knew that the vaccine was infected, they continued to expose millions of Americans to…

Syphilis experiments in Guatemala were funded by the US Public Health Service (PHS) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to the Pan American Sanitary Bureau (later renamed Pan Am Health Org.) The US team of researchers in Guatemala was led by John Charles Cutler, MD of the PHS who…

1963–1973: “Reproductive radiation experiments” were conducted on 64 prison inmates by Dr. C. Alvin Paulsen (University of Washington) under a private contract with the Atomic Energy Commission (now the Energy Department). Read more * Radiation experiments.