Justice  /  Retrieval

Holmesburg Prison's Medical Experiments Are Philadelphia's 'Lasting Shame'

For over 20 years, Dr. Albert Kligman experimented on incarcerated men at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison. Those who profited have yet to redress the harm.

A crowd of students, professors, and community members gathered in a packed room at St. Joseph’s University on April 26 to hear about “Philadelphia’s lasting shame” from the people who are still living under the pain of it. That shame—the horrific medical experiments conducted by dermatologist Dr. Albert Kligman in Pennsylvania’s Holmesburg Prison for more than 20 years beginning in the 1950s—has received renewed attention in recent years. Yet, much remains to be done to fully redress the experiments’ harm and reckon with their legacy.

Featured on the panel were Irvin Moore, Herbert Rice, and Lavone Miller, all of whom survived the experiments. The panel also included Adrianne Jones-Alston, the daughter of a Holmesburg experiment participant, and Allen Hornblum, a writer and historian who was among the first to extensively research and expose the experiments.  

Before sharing his experience during the April 26 panel, Irvin Moore declared slowly and assuredly, “This is the truth.” The assertion is important because, for decades, the story of Holmesburg went ignored in the medical halls that benefited from the experiments’ scientific findings, and until recently, went unacknowledged by the city of Philadelphia and some of its most powerful institutions.  

Dr. Kligman may not be a household name today, but the products he developed are staples in the skincare and pharmaceutical industries. Perhaps the most well-known of these is the increasingly popular tretinoin, or Retin-A, a topical medication for acne that is also remarkably effective as an anti-aging treatment. But Kligman’s discoveries came on the backs of scores of incarcerated men—an overwhelming number of whom were Black—detained in Philadelphia’s now-shuttered Holmesburg Prison. Kligman’s development of Retin-A was directly made possible by the tests conducted on men imprisoned at Holmesburg. These men—and the family members to whom they returned upon their release–have maintained over decades that Dr. Kligman’s experimentation was tortuous, unethical, and that it forever changed their lives. 

Amidst national conversations about reparations, attention has turned to Holmesburg and those who survived Kligman’s experiments. The St. Joseph’s panel is a part of this new reckoning and served as a space where survivors laid out renewed demands for institutions that allowed for and benefited from Kligman’s experiments, including the University of Pennsylvania. Survivors are also demanding that these institutions meaningfully acknowledge the harm they caused and reconsider whether the scientific community should celebrate Kligman. The enduring harm of the Holmesburg experiments helps us understand why ethical standards for medical experimentation in prisons and jails have shifted, while also triggering larger questions about the risks and benefits of continuing to allow clinical trials in the prison system.