Q. Would you please be so good as to read what you intended before?
A. There are two conclusions:
“Conclusion 1: The service of prisoners as subjects in medical experiments should be rewarded in addition to the ordinary time allowed for good conduct, industry, fidelity, and courage, but the excess time rewarded should not be so great as to exert undue influence in obtaining the consent of the prisoners. To give an excessive reward would be contrary to the ethics of medicine and would debase and jeopardize a method for doing good. Thus the amount of reduction of sentence in prison should be determined by the forbearance required by the experiment and the character of the prisoner. It is believed that a 100 percent increase in ordinary good time during the duration of the experiments would not be excessive in those experiments requiring the maximum forbearance.
“Conclusion 2: A prisoner incapable of becoming a law-abiding citizen should be told in advance, if he desires to serve as a subject in a medical experiment, not to expect any reduction in sentence. A prisoner who perpetrated an atrocious crime, even though capable of becoming a law-abiding citizen, should be told in advance, if he desires to serve as a subject in a medical experiment, not to expect any drastic reduction in sentence.”
I might explain, when I used the expression “reduction in sentence in prison,” that that implies that when the prisoner is released on parole, he is still under supervision, observation, or sentence outside of prison. He is subject to arrest and return to prison at any time; so when we say reduction of sentence in prison, we do not mean that there is an actual reduction of sentence prescribed by the court. That is the law in the State of Illinois.
Q. Witness, if the experimental subjects are prisoners, are they told about this policy ahead of time?
A. They will obviously have to be told of this policy from now on, since the matter has come up for the first time.
Q. Yesterday a prosecution document was shown to you. That was Document NO-3968, Prosecution Exhibit 517, Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, a document from Texas. This was in no document book but was put in only yesterday. I shall have this shown to you immediately. This is a form from the Department of Justice, Bureau of Prisons, a statement of voluntary consent and it says here the following:
“I agree to cooperate to the fullest extent with the physicians conducting the study during an over-all observation period of approximately 18 months. I understand that at the conclusion of the observation period, I am to be furnished with an appropriate Certificate of Merit and a statement of my voluntary cooperation in the study and the fact that I have thus rendered voluntarily an outstanding service to humanity will be placed in my official record.”
Is that not a rather extensive promise which might induce a prisoner to apply without having a purely idealistic motive?