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  • Sentenced to Science: One Black Man’s Story of Imprisonment in America by Allen M. Hornblum
  • Lee Berry
Sentenced to Science: One Black Man’s Story of Imprisonment in America. By Allen M. Hornblum. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007. xiv, 207 pp. Paperback, $24.95.

The present moment is marked by a new critical focus on the phenomenon of mass incarceration in the United States. Citizens and leaders from across the political spectrum seem to be inching toward a remarkable—if fragile—consensus that America’s war on drugs has produced little of benefit, while leaving this country with the second largest imprisonment rate of any nation in the world. Works such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2012) and Marie Gottschalk’s Caught: The Prison State and the Lockdown of American Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014) have provided incisive sociopolitical and legal analyses of America’s toxic love affair with mass incarceration. Allen M. Hornblum’s 2007 work, Sentenced to Science, offers a more intimate take, a biographical look at one man’s experience of imprisonment.

In 1998, Hornblum published Acres of Skin, an examination of the history of dermatological and pharmaceutical experiments on inmates at Holmesburg Prison and other Philadelphia-area jails (Acres of Skin: Human Experiments at Holmesburg Prison [New York: Routledge, 1998]). Between the 1950s and the 1970s, University of Pennsylvania dermatologist Albert M. Kligman undertook these experiments on hundreds of imprisoned men on behalf of at least thirty pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies. One outcome was Kligman’s [End Page 202] development of the acne treatment Retin-A. Kligman also oversaw experiments with psychoactive drugs for the US Army and the Central Intelligence Agency. Many survivors of these experiments continue to experience skin problems, breathing difficulties, cancers, and infections that they attribute to their experiences as research subjects.

Amid the media attention that followed the publication of Acres of Skin, former Holmesburg inmates came forward to tell their stories, to support one another, and to seek redress for the damage they have suffered and continue to suffer. Hornblum became their advocate and invited many of them to participate as guest speakers in the urban society classes he taught at Temple University. One such Holmesburg survivor was Edward “Butch” Anthony, who became Yusef Sidiquu after a religious conversion. In the introduction to Sentenced to Science, Hornblum recalls: “Anthony’s honest, unembellished account of his days as an imprisoned test subject held listeners’ undivided attention. Facial expressions denoting shock and revulsion became commonplace; it was clear students were not listening to an ordinary guest lecturer. Gradually I recognized that Edward Anthony’s powerful testimony as a test subject was worthy of a larger audience” (ix-x).

More than a decade before President Nixon declared drug abuse “public enemy number one,” North Philadelphia resident Edward Anthony exemplified the spiral of drug addiction, petty theft, and repeated incarceration that Nixon (and every president since) sought to eradicate. His is, indeed, a riveting story, and Sentenced to Science tells it largely in his own words, in vast stretches of directly quoted first-person narrative. It is not clear whether these are taken from interviews by the author or from recordings of Sidiquu’s guest lectures. Sidiquu is unflinching in his recounting of the harrowing details about life inside Holmesburg and about his own culpability in the choices that resulted in his being there. Nonetheless, he calls out the injustice rampant within the institution, particularly with respect to the medical experiments. Characterizing himself as functionally illiterate and unable to give truly informed consent to what he would undergo, he also repeatedly draws attention to the fact that participating in the experiments paid inmates better than any other available prison work. (These factors came together to entice 75 percent of Holmesburg’s inmate population into becoming research subjects.) At one point, Anthony recalls occupying his time during a stint in solitary confinement by composing a letter in his head: “I was planning on sending it to the judge that had originally sentenced me . . . I told him it was bad enough being sentenced to...

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