Allen M. Hornblum | |
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Occupation | Author |
Language | English |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Penn State University Villanova University Temple University |
Genre | Non-fiction, history, bioethics |
Notable works | Acres of Skin The Invisible Harry Gold |
Website | |
www |
Allen M. Hornblum is an author, journalist and a former criminal justice official and political organizer based in Philadelphia, US. [1] He has written eight non-fiction books running the gamut from organized crime and Soviet espionage to medical ethics and sports. His first book, Acres of Skin , published in 1998, detailed unethical human medical experiments at Holmesburg Prison. The publication of Acres of Skin attracted considerable international media interest. [2] Subsequently, Hornblum wrote Sentenced to Science, a book about the experience of an African American inmate in Holmesburg prison. [3]
Hornblum's third book on medical ethics, Against Their Will, co-authored with Judith Newman and Gregory Dober was released in 2013. [1] Hornblum's latest book publication is American Colossus: Big Bill Tilden and the Creation of Modern Tennis (University of Nebraska Press, Spring, 2018). [4]
Hornblum graduated Penn State University and earned graduate degrees from Villanova [5] and Temple Universities [6]
After completing his master's degree from Villanova University, Hornblum went to Holmesburg prison to direct an adult literacy program in 1971. There, he noticed scores of inmates with arms covered in gauze pads and adhesive tape. He later learned that medical experiments had been conducted on the inmates for the last 20 years. [5] Hornblum spent 10 years as a literacy instructor and sat on the board of the Pennsylvania Prison Society. [5] He was appointed to the Philadelphia Board of Prison Trustees in 1986. [7] While serving as a prison trustee, he actively participated in a proposal to allow prisoners the right to have condoms. [8] However, the proposal was voted down, requiring Mayor Wilson Goode to declare the policy himself. [9] Hornblum also served as the executive director of the Americans for Democratic Action. [10] As executive director of Americans for Democratic Action, Hornblum led or participated in a number of issue and electoral campaigns that ran the gamut from US Senate and City Council races to reproductive rights and right-to-know environmental campaigns. [11] Hornblum was appointed to the Pennsylvania Crime Commission in 1988. Designed to investigate organized crime and public corruption in the commonwealth, Hornblum was a member when the Commission investigated the criminal connections of Pa. Attorney General Ernie Preate. [12] That investigation eventually led to Preate's conviction and imprisonment. [13]
In 1990, he was appointed chief of staff of the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office. [7] Hornblum directed a number of efforts to improve and upgrade the office such as initiating a campaign to improve the dire conditions of the 7th floor cell room in City Hall. [14] He resigned from the Sheriff's Office in 1994 to research and write a book about the history of the Holmesburg medical experiments. [15] The book was released under the title Acres of Skin in 1998. [5]
He has also been lecturer of history and Urban Studies at Temple University. [16] Hornblum has lectured on his research and books at the British Medical Association, the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and numerous universities, including Columbia, Brown, Princeton, [17] Penn State, and St. Joseph's. [18] [ unreliable source? ] [16]
Hornblum has continued to write and lecture on medical and prison issues. He illuminated that the University of Pennsylvania continued to honor Dr. Kligman with professorships and lectureships despite his use of institutionalized children and prisoners as test subjects. [19]
He and Greg Dober wrote a paper on the true origins of the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study. They documented that former Surgeon General Thomas Parran was the actual creative spark behind the idea of a non-treatment study on impoverished African American sharecroppers with syphilis. [20]
Through the efforts of Hornblum and others, Penn finally issued an apology for the decades-long misuse of prisoners by famous dermatologist, Dr. Albert M. Kligman. [21] Officials at the school said they would end all departmental honors in his name. [22]
Shortly thereafter, he and a small coalition of committed activists pressured the City of Philadelphia to issue their own apology for allowing the imprisoned to be used as raw material for medical research. Mayor Jim Kenney issued the apology in 2022. [23] The Inmate Justice Coalition then pressed the College of Physicians for a similar statement shortly thereafter. [24]
The campaign continues to educate the public about this sad chapter in Philadelphia history and currently exploring the question of reparations for the survivors of the prison experiments. Hornblum's efforts have been recognized by many in the media, both domestic and foreign, and he has been featured in numerous electronic and print articles. [25] [26]
In 1998, Hornblum published a book titled Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison. The book documents clinical non-therapeutic medical experiments on prison inmates at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia from 1951 to 1974, conducted under the direction of dermatologist Albert Kligman. These abuses terminated with the scandal surrounding the Tuskegee syphilis experiment and the mind control experiments of the CIA. [27] Hornblum is most critical of Kligman, who ran the experiments for two decades. [28] [29] Hornblum, along with George Holmes, also produced a documentary film about the Holmesburg Medical Research Program entitled, Acres of Skin – The Documentary. [30]
Confessions of a Second Story Man: Junior Kripplebauer and the K&A Gang is the second book by Hornblum. The book tells the story of the K&A Gang, an Irish crime group that was in existence from the early 1950s to the late 1970s in Philadelphia. [31] [32]
Sentenced to Science: One Black Man's Story of Imprisonment in America was released in 2007. It is a personal narrative of Edward (Yusef) Anthony's time at Holmesburg. [33] The book discusses the experiments conducted on Anthony and how the experiments affected his life afterwards. [3]
In 2011, Hornblum released The Invisible Harry Gold: The Man Who Gave the Soviets the Atom Bomb, a book about the life of Harry Gold, an American spy in the Soviet underground. In the mid-1940s, Gold took atomic secrets from Klaus Fuchs and gave them to the Soviet Union. Hornblum, in his book, addresses the attacks made upon Gold's character by Rosenberg supporters over the years. [34] Hornblum spent eight years researching and writing the book and interviewed over 50 people as well as obtained recordings of jail house interviews with Gold conducted by his legal team. [35]
The book was published by the Yale University Press [34] and received positive reviews from the critics. [10] [35] [36]
While researching Acres of Skin about medical experiments on inmates in Holmesburg Prison, Hornblum came across documentation about similar experiments conducted on children and infants. He started researching about such experiments in 2008. [37] In 2013, he released Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America co-authored with Judith Newman and Gregory Dober. The book provides multiple examples of medical experiments performed on developmentally delayed and physically disabled children at multiple institutions across the US. [38] It was published by Palgrave Macmillan. [1]
Bill Tilden was one of America's greatest athletes during the "Golden Age of Sports." The first American-born player to win the Wimbledon title and the world's most dominant tennis player during the first half of the 20th century, Tilden was also a prolific author – writing over two dozen fiction and non-fiction books, and hundreds of newspaper articles – as well as a performer on stage and screen. Despite his fame and many achievements, however, he was convicted late in life on a morals charge, served time in prison, and his celebrity and lifestyle much reduced. [39]
Hornblum's latest book concerns the gruesome murder of prison inmates who took part in a prison strike in Philadelphia in 1938. He is currently writing a screenplay detailing the cooking alive of prison strike supporters. [40]
Tretinoin, also known as all-trans retinoic acid (ATRA), is a medication used for the treatment of acne and acute promyelocytic leukemia. For acne, it is applied to the skin as a cream, gel or ointment. For leukemia, it is taken by mouth for up to three months. Topical tretinoin is also the most extensively investigated retinoid therapy for photoaging.
Chloracne is an acne-like eruption of blackheads, cysts, and pustules associated with exposure to certain halogenated aromatic compounds, such as chlorinated dioxins and dibenzofurans. The lesions are most frequently found on the cheeks, behind the ears, in the armpits and groin region.
Amy Gutmann is an American academic and diplomat who has served as the United States Ambassador to Germany since 2022. She was previously the president of the University of Pennsylvania from 2004 to 2022, the longest-serving president in the history of the University of Pennsylvania. Gutmann resigned as president on February 8, 2022, following her confirmation by the Senate as ambassador after 18 years at the University.
Elias Victor Seixas Jr. is an American former tennis player.
Holmesburg began as a Village within Lower Dublin Township, Pennsylvania. It is now a neighborhood in the Northeast section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Holmesburg was named in Honor of Surveyor General of Pennsylvania Thomas Holme, who was a cartographer.
The Federal Correctional Complex, Terre Haute is a United States federal prison complex for male inmates in Indiana; much of the complex grounds is in Terre Haute, though portions are in unincorporated Vigo County. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice, and consists of two facilities:
EA-3167 is a potent and long-lasting anticholinergic deliriant drug, related to the chemical warfare agent 3-quinuclidinyl benzilate (QNB). It was developed under contract to Edgewood Arsenal during the 1960s as part of the US military chemical weapons program, in an attempt to develop non-lethal incapacitating agents. EA-3167 has identical effects to QNB, but is even more potent and longer-lasting, with an effective dose when administered by injection of as little as 2.5 μg/kg, and a duration of 120–240 hours. However unlike QNB, EA-3167 was never weaponized or manufactured in bulk.
Throughout history, prisoners have been frequent participants in scientific, medical and social human subject research. Some of the research involving prisoners has been exploitative and cruel. Many of the modern protections for human subjects evolved in response to the abuses in prisoner research. Research involving prisoners is still conducted today, but prisoners are now one of the most highly protected groups of human subjects
Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison is a 1998 book by Allen Hornblum. The book documents clinical non-therapeutic medical experiments on prison inmates at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia from 1951 to 1974, conducted under the direction of dermatologist Albert Kligman. The title of the book is a reference to Kligman's reaction on seeing hundreds of prisoners when he entered the prison: "All I saw before me were acres of skin" ... "It was like a farmer seeing a fertile field for the first time".
Numerous experiments which are performed on human test subjects in the United States are considered unethical, because they are performed without the knowledge or informed consent of the test subjects. Such tests have been performed throughout American history, but some of them are ongoing. The experiments include the exposure of humans to many chemical and biological weapons, human radiation experiments, injections of toxic and radioactive chemicals, surgical experiments, interrogation and torture experiments, tests which involve mind-altering substances, and a wide variety of other experiments. Many of these tests are performed on children, the sick, and mentally disabled individuals, often under the guise of "medical treatment". In many of the studies, a large portion of the subjects were poor, racial minorities, or prisoners.
Albert Montgomery Kligman was an American dermatologist who co-invented Retin-A, the acne medication, with James Fulton in 1969. Kligman performed human experiments on inmates at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. Scandal followed years later. The experiments intentionally exposed humans to pathogens and dioxin, and later became a textbook example of unethical experimenting on humans. He and others involved were sued for alleged injuries, but the lawsuit was dismissed due to the statute of limitations expiring.
Prison healthcare is the medical specialty in which healthcare providers care for people in prisons and jails. Prison healthcare is a relatively new specialty that developed alongside the adaption of prisons into modern disciplinary institutions. Enclosed prison populations are particularly vulnerable to infectious diseases, including arthritis, asthma, hypertension, cervical cancer, hepatitis, tuberculosis, AIDS, and HIV, and mental health issues, such as Depression, mania, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. These conditions link prison healthcare to issues of public health, preventive healthcare, and hygiene. Prisoner dependency on provided healthcare raises unique problems in medical ethics.
The Guatemala syphilis experiments were United States-led human experiments conducted in Guatemala from 1946 to 1948. The experiments were led by physician John Charles Cutler, who also participated in the late stages of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Doctors infected 1,300 people, including at least 600 soldiers and people from various impoverished groups with syphilis, gonorrhea, and chancroid, without the informed consent of the subjects. Only 700 of them received treatment. In total, 5,500 people were involved in all research experiments, of whom 83 died by the end of 1953, though it is unknown whether or not the inoculations were responsible for all these deaths. Serology studies continued through 1953 involving the same vulnerable populations in addition to children from state-run schools, an orphanage, and rural towns, though the intentional infection of patients ended with the original study.
John Charles Cutler was a senior surgeon, and the acting chief of the venereal disease program in the United States Public Health Service. After his death, his involvement in several controversial and unethical medical studies of syphilis was revealed, including the Guatemala and the Tuskegee syphilis experiments.
William A. Pusey was an American physician and past president of the American Medical Association. He advocated for the use of radiation in the treatment of skin diseases and he was an expert in the study of syphilis. Pusey authored several books, including the first history of dermatology written in English.
The Philadelphia Department of Prisons is operated by the city of Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. The facilities are located on State Road in Northeast Philadelphia. Shawn Hawes is the public spokesperson for the Philadelphia Prison System.
Prison plastic surgery is plastic surgery or cosmetic surgery offered and performed to people who are incarcerated, as a means of social rehabilitation. These services were normally provided as part of a larger package of care that may include work training, psychological services, and more. Popular surgeries included rhinoplasties, blepharoplasty, facelifts, scar removal and tattoo removal. These programs began in the early 20th century and were commonplace up till the early 1990s. They took place across the US, the UK, Canada, and Mexico.