Restorative justice group demands reparations from Penn for Holmesburg Prison medical experiments

For 23 years, during the 1950s, ’60s, and ’70s, scores of people incarcerated at Holmesburg Prison were subjected to experiments conducted by University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Albert M. Kligman. The discoveries burnished Kligman’s reputation as one of Penn’s most successful doctors but left countless people struggling with lifelong psychological trauma and physical issues.

Now, Adrianne Jones-Alston, founder of the Jones Foundation for Returning Citizens Inc., wants Penn to pay reparations to the survivors or their descendants for the medical experiments they endured. That is one of several demands she announced at a panel discussion at the Penn Carey Law School on Oct. 23.

» READ MORE: Those affected by Holmesburg Prison experiments are still seeking justice, 50 years later

Jones-Alston was the eldest daughter of Leodus Jones, a former Holmesburg experiment victim, who later became an activist on behalf of other victims. She explained that the families of the survivors, including her own, endured the trauma that the medical experiment victims brought into their homes and communities.

“Penn needs to step up and take care of this, because it’s not going away,” Jones-Alston said. “My father’s gone, but I’m here.” Leodus Jones died in 2018.

“It affected my life for 50 years. I’ve just started taking about it.”

Holmesburg, a former city prison, was once the site of medical experiments conducted by Kligman between 1951 and 1974. The experiments intentionally exposed victims to viruses, fungus, asbestos, and pharmaceuticals and chemical agents including dioxin — a component of Agent Orange.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the halt of the Holmesburg experiments, but Jones-Alston said the university still needs to account for its mistreatment of the incarcerated.

“The survivors were taken advantage of and were vulnerable, and Penn needs to acknowledge their pain and suffering,” Jones-Alston said.

In addition to reparations, the group’s demands include:

“Survivors are still waiting for restorative justice and restitution,” said panel moderator and Penn professor Dorothy Roberts. She called on the university to be a model for “reparative justice efforts.”

Herbert Rice, 79, gave his account to the more than 100 audience members at the panel event. He was incarcerated three times, the first stint was at 18 in 1963 and the last in 1976. But it was a period in Holmesburg in 1967 that he believes left him permanently psychologically scarred.

“They gave me pills with foreign organisms in them,” he said.

“This university did something horrendous for years.”

Like many of those at Holmesburg, he was unclear of the details of the test, just that he would make at least $1 a day, significantly more than the 25 cents that other prison jobs paid.

» READ MORE: A brief history of the Holmesburg Prison experiments

After 1976, he never returned to jail, but he wasn’t the same. “It got so bad I went to three mental institutions.”

Rice said he was diagnosed as bipolar and still takes the lithium he was prescribed years ago. “It affected my life for 50 years. I’ve just started taking about it.”

It was only when Allen Hornblum, a former instructor at Holmesburg in the 1970s, wrote Acres of Skin, the definitive history of the medical experiments, in 1998, that people began to understand the scope of the testing.

“This university did something horrendous for years,” Hornblum said.

The university issued an apology in 2021 after a two-year review of Kligman’s work and made changes to erase his legacy, including renaming a professorship and annual lecture series.

“It’s the City of Brotherly indifference, and it went on in the post-war period for basically a quarter of a century,” Hornblum said.

Attempts to reach a Penn spokesperson for comment were not immediately successful.

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