GovernmentExecutive.com

Return to Article: HHS weighs relaxing restrictions on inmate testing

• 13591
  

  Oh, very good, the instant someone's accused of a crime, they cease to be a human being. And obviously any attempt to protect anyone's civil liberties is un-American. Hey, why don't we just round up everyone who disagrees with you and use them for medical experiments. It worked so well in Germany in the 1940's.

  This madness has been the cause of countless atrocities throughout history, from slavery to the Holocaust, to 9/11, and onward. What it boils down to is, "Those other people aren't really people. You can do whatever you want to them." When you forget or deny the humanity of other human beings, you start to lose your own. This is how one person can brutally kill another for no reason at all. This is how the murder of countless innocents is justified. This is the monster we are supposed to be fighting, and the monster too many want us to become.

  That said, I'm troubled about use of prisoners in such studies due to the compulsory nature of prison and the frequently disturbed mental state of the inmates (whether preexisting or due to the prison experience itself).

  GovExec.com reader Posted November 28, 2005 2:37 PM
• 13581
  

  Social sciences research emphasizes the use of the scientific method and standards of evidence in the study of humanity. Prisoners are not humanity. Humanity is the human qualities or characteristics, especially those considered desirable in the human race; mankind; the quality of being humane; kind, merciful, sympathetic. Therefore prisoners are not fit to be part of a social-science research.

  Additionally, one main criticism of social sciences is that they are compromised more frequently by politics, since results from social science may threaten certain centers of power in a society, particularly ones which fund the research institutions. Further, complexity exacerbates the problems, since observed social data may be the result of factors which are hard to evaluate in isolation. This will only be compounded by including the already societal burdensome prisoners.

  Prisoners do not have rights; that is why they are in prison, they gave up those rights to violate decent human beings. If you have to concede one right to prisoners, it is not being paid to test dandruff shampoo.

  If the ACLU is involved it is automatic that it can not be good for the whole of society. Prisoners do not deserve a better lifestyle and the Appalachian or southern poor or better access to programs to improve their lives. Let us give this nation's poor free college and free medical before we give it to prisoners.

  Opening this window to prisoners is opening Pandora's Box, opening the door for more lawsuits and more cost to taxpayers. Let the pharmaceutical companies experiment on their own family members and ACLU card-carrying members instead of prisoners. Do we want the courts further packed with taxpayer paid lawyers representing prisoners who want to be released from prison because they have a skin coloration or rash considered to be cruel and unusual punishment?

  GovExec.com reader Posted November 28, 2005 9:32 AM
• 13567
  

  Very good story. I asked to speak and was refused. I have published more peer-reviewed literature on the effects of this research on prisoners than anyone on the committee. The committee members are obviously ethically conflicted. There are plenty of citizens who can speak to the issues of prisoner use. Being a researcher who wants to benefit from the results of the panel decision gives you no expertise to speak to this issue. Being a prisoner, or ex-exploited prisoner, gives you plenty of expertise. There are plenty of these. Many spoke out against this use during the ACHRE hearings on the radiation experiments. They have no representation here.

  David Egilman M.D., M.P.H.
  degilman@egilman.com

  GovExec.com reader Posted November 24, 2005 10:28 PM