1950: Two-hundred female prisoners infected with viral hepatitis

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.

US Army and State Department funded a crash program to develop new drugs against malaria. The largest single CMR malaria experiment involved 800 prisoners at federal penitentiary in Atlanta, New Jersey State Reformatory and Illinois State Penitentiary. A series of experiments were conducted at Stateville Penitentiary by medical researchers from…

Dr. Chester Southam injected live cancer cells into 22 elderly patients at Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn. After being rebuffed by his institution, Sloan-Kettering, he convinced Dr. Emanuel Mandel at Jewish Chronic Disease. He sought to learn whether people who were debilitated by cancer could reject cancer cells. None…

1973: The Final Report of Tuskegee Syphilis Study concluded: “Society can no longer afford to leave the balancing of individual rights against scientific progress to the scientific community.”

The “Monster Experiment” was conceived by and conducted under the supervision of Dr. Wendell Johnson, one of the nation’s most prominent speech pathologists. The experiment induced stuttering in twenty-two children living at the Iowa Soldiers’ Orphans’ Home in Davenport. It was designed to test Dr. Johnson’s theory about the cause…

Sixty-four California prisoners were paralyzed with succinylcholine, a neuromuscular agent that restricts breathing. Succinylcholine has since been used in lethal injection protocols. When five prisoners in the California experiment refused to participate as subjects in the experiment, researchers were given “permission” to inject the recalcitrant prisoners against their will. (Harriet…