Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison DVD

Thanks in good part to the Freedom of Information Act (and many interviews, too), Hornblum tells the story of medical experiments, ended in 1974, on prisoners in a Philadelphia prison.

Most of the experiments involved the effects of chemicals on the skin (hence the title), but they also included military trials, stopped in 1966, of LSD and other mind-altering drugs.

Dermatologist Albert M. Kligman and those prison administrators who knew about the experiments always claimed that no prisoners were coerced, informed consent was required, and any prisoner could withdraw from any experiment at any time. Hornblum punches holes in each of those statements.

He compares some of the experiments with those of Nazi doctors during World War II, showing how, in one case, a Nazi physician apparently saved his life by describing some of the U.S. prison experiments to the judges in the Nuremberg trials.

A low-keyed but devastating picture of U.S. medical experimentation and the men, educational institutions, and drug companies that carried it out.

Run Time: 43 minutes

The video is slightly blurry but viewable.
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