Pseudo Horny History: The Heller Experiments

It’s real history, as told by the potentially horny man in my inbox and me.

Incarcerated people have long been used as test subjects in experiments. Even today, likely someone would read this and think there’s no ethical dilemma with harmful experiments done on prisoners. Likely even someone who would say they deserve it. They committed a crime after all.

Perhaps they did, but in 1963 in Oregon, what happened to them next, was just as criminal. In the case of offenders imprisoned for victimless crimes, what happened to them was much worse than their own offenses. David joins us for this story.

Carl Heller’s research developed from the experiments was never published. He suffered a stroke and became too ill to complete it. It remains part of the overlooked history of inmates being used for scientific experiments. It’s one of many stories I want to cover, and it’s one of the less morbid ones. Our history is riddled with the mistreatment of prisoners.

Today’s suggestions for learning more on this are:

Human radiation experiments: What price informed consent? by Sue Rabbitt Roff

Prisoners a Captive Research Population from Columbia University

I also wrote on our treatment of Guatemalan prisoners here:

Horny History: Guatemala