BACKGROUND 
I 
the required time period. 94 The subcommittee speculated that prisoners also 
wanted to help win the war and so would participate out of patriotism. 95 
The prison environment also provided readily available medical facilities. 96 
Finally, the subcommittee observed that because many prisoners had previ- 
ously contracted gonorrhea, they might be less concerned about the risks 
associated with the experiment. 97 
In describing the subcommittee’s proposal, Dr. Moore explained that the 
group rejected other potential populations for several reasons. 98 Both soldiers 
and people living in psychiatric institutions were considered unacceptable 
experimental populations. According to the subcommittee, military personnel 
could not be used because they could not be subjected to sexual isolation, and 
the U.S. Armed Forces would not want military personnel to take time from 
training or combat in order to participate in the experiment. 99 Individuals 
housed in psychiatric institutions were also deemed unacceptable. Dr. Moore 
explained: “[t]his population group has never been seriously considered, since 
it is clearly undesirable to subject to any experimental procedure persons inca- 
pable of providing voluntary consent.” 100 
The subcommittee asked CMR to address two issues about the experiments: 
(1) “legality” and (2) “expediency,” which seems to have been a reference to 
potentially adverse public opinion. 101 Despite these questions, Moore relayed 
the subcommittee’s view that stated that the experiment was legal, despite 
some potentially contrary state statutes, 102 and that public opinion would likely 
be on the side of “any sound scientific proposal” combating STDs. 103 It also 
noted that an experiment involving infected men and non-infected commercial 
sex workers had been reported in 1939 both in the popular press (by journalist 
Paul de Kruif) and in the Journal of the Oklahoma State Medical Association,™* 
without ensuing public outcry. 105 In that experiment, commercial sex workers 
who were not infected with gonorrhea were given a pre-exposure prophylaxis 
and then had sexual intercourse with men infected with gonorrhea (at the 
request of the researchers — the experiment was not purely observational). 106 
The subcommittee recommended that the CMR approve the proposal. 107 
Later that month, OSRD investigated the legality of the experiments. Dr. 
Bush contacted Assistant Solicitor General Oscar Cox, who discussed the 
matter with Attorney General Francis Biddle. 108 Cox and Biddle agreed that: 
17 
