This article focuses on medical trials performed by Dr. Albert Kligman on the inmates of Philadelphia's Holmesburg Prison between 1951 and 1974, which have been widely criticized as exploitative. I seek to investigate the mechanics behind the “ethical blind spot” that enabled the American medical community to laud Kligman for his efforts while simultaneously condemning the medical atrocities of the Holocaust and supporting the development of the Nuremberg Code. I argue that this nonrecognition hinges on a colonial logic by which certain populations are produced as waste, both rhetorically and materially. Drawing on the incarcerated men’s accounts included in Allen Hornblum’s books on the subject, I trace the process by which human beings come to be reclassified as natural resources and their exploitation recast as industrious cultivation.

本文重点介绍 Albert Kligman 博士在 1951 年至 1974 年间对费城霍姆斯堡监狱的囚犯进行的医学试验，这些试验被广泛批评为剥削性的。我试图调查“伦理盲点”背后的机制，它使美国医学界能够赞扬克利格曼的努力，同时谴责大屠杀的医疗暴行并支持纽伦堡法典的制定。我认为，这种不承认取决于殖民逻辑，根据该逻辑，某些人口在修辞上和物质上都被生产为废物。根据艾伦·霍恩布鲁姆 (Allen Hornblum) 关于这一主题的书中所包含的被监禁男子的描述，我追溯了人类被重新归类为自然资源以及他们的剥削被重新归类为勤劳耕作的过程。