“Where Are We Going To Do These Things Now?” The slow demise of inmate experimentation

The era of medical testing of Philadelphia prisoners had ended. But Solomon McBride, the longtime administrator of the human experimentation program run under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania by Dr. Albert Kligman at Holmesburg Prison, found the termination of the once-thriving unit hard to accept. McBride was an ardent champion of the unit’s work. “We weren’t killing anybody,” he argued emotionally to reporters covering the closure. “We haven’t hurt anybody in the two decades we were there.”1