Can prisoners make rational decisions under the complete absence of most personal freedoms? Absent a paying job, and enticed by research funds promising thousands of dollars a month? I think it’s a highly dubious argument, to say the very least.

The whole idea of prison is basically the complete absence of personal freedom. You can’t shit without people watching you. You can’t eat what you want – you eat what they give you. You sleep when they turn off the lights. You go outside when they let you. You come inside when they tell you to. The proposition, posed by some medical experts, to revive the practice of testing pharmaceuticals on prison inmates is terribly frightening, to say the least.

“Supporters of such programs cite the possibility of benefit to prison populations, and the potential for contributing to the greater good.”

…

“While confirming that he used radioactive materials, hallucinogenic drugs and carcinogenic materials on prisoners, Dr. Kligman said that they were always administered in extremely low doses and that the benefits to the public were overwhelming.”

Ahhh, now we’re getting somewhere: the old socialist fallacy of promoting the “greater good.” Always, always, it’s about the greater good. Recall that the Lebensraum was about the “greater good” of German hegemony. And the Nazis were not averse to bizarre medical testing on concentration camp “inmates.”

I’m generally in favor of individual rights – the right of any free man to make decisions about his own health, under the supervision and assistance (or not) of his doctor(s) should not be trumped by asinine regulatory burdens imposed by bureaucrats in the FDA. I would love to believe that prisoners could make rational, informed decisions about whether to participate in such testing, but I don’t think decisions made under such circumstances can be classified as truly free, or voluntary. Some amount of coercion is unavoidable under the circumstances.