Some Unusual Prison Scars

Former inmates of a Pennsylvania prison have banded together in what they say is an effort to get justice.

They're still paying their debt to society, they say, because of medical experiments that were done in that prison decades ago.

CBS News Correspondent Troy Roberts reports that hundreds of prisoners at Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison agreed, for pay, to participate in scientific testing and in doing so, permanently damaged their health.

Russell Green remembers the day 20 years ago when he first walked through the gates of Holmesburg. " I was 22 years old, dumb and naïve to a lot of things," he recalled.

Sentenced for shoplifting, he quickly learned what it would take to survive in the city's toughest lockup. "You needed money in Holmesburg to make it. If you didn't have no money in Holmesburg, you was in trouble."

Green is one of hundreds of former inmates who earned the money they needed by participating in medical tests while behind bars.

With funding from major pharmaceutical companies, among others, Holmesburg had become a testing ground for experimental medical products and procedures.

The experiments began in the early 1950s under the direction of Dr. Albert Kligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He saw Holmesburg as a natural laboratory for his dermatological research, a controlled environment with ideal test subjects.

Now a professor emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, Kligman declined requests for an interview, but issued a statement saying his research was valid and test subjects were recompensed.

But some prisoners said the tests went too far.

"They cut my back, " said one former prisoner."They cut some pieces out, layers of skin."

One prisoner claimed to have taken part in LSD testing; another said some inmates were burned with radiation.

"I took the toothpaste test in the early '60s," one man said. "I lost all my teeth by the time I was 23 years old."

The prison eventually closed and what went on there was nearly forgotten. Most of the records from the prison studies were destroyed, frustrating the inmates' attempts to bring a lawsuit against the university.

Allen Hornblum, a Temple University professor who worked at the prison in the early '70s, never forgot what he saw. He has chronicled the wide-ranging series of prison experiments in his book Acres of Skin.

"They had bandages on them, on their arms and their backs and their chests," he said of the prisoners. "Right away, it gave me a chill."

Hornblum said the tests included everything from the innocuous (hair dyes and skin creams) to the dangerous (dioxin, radioactive isotopes, and chemical warfare agents).

And while the former prisoners may lack documents for evidence, they do have another kind of evidence: Their scars and their health problems.