Against Their Will Quotes

“Institutionalised children, like other vulnerable populations including prisoners, soldiers, hospital patients and those with mental illness, we re an attractive wellspring of opportunity for enterprising doctors and scientists.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“The demonizing and devaluing of certain segments of the population during the last two decades of the nineteenth century would grow in both support and legitimacy.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“The request was quickly granted; no one in authority, including the child’s lone parent, the facility’s superintendent, or the researchers, seemed opposed to castrating a child for the sake of increased knowledge. 6”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“institutionalized children would be viewed as increasingly expendable and much sought after as test subjects. World War II and the Cold War that followed further fostered a need for test subjects. Research “volunteers” and institutions holding physically and mentally challenged children became particularly attractive for their convenience, isolation, and affordability. Many researchers viewed such facilities as a gift, a gift that kept on giving.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“The use of vulnerable institutionalized children for exploratory procedures, investigative treatments, and experimental preventives was common in the 1920s.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“Medical triumphalism had taken hold of a hero-obsessed culture, and little thought was given to those caught in the wake of the latest scientific success. Those languishing in institutionalized settings—asylums, hospitals, orphanages, and prisons—would make their contribution as well. But they would never see their names in books or newspapers, and they would never earn commendations or receive lucrative endorsements—they were the grist used by the increasingly well-oiled medical mill to achieve the doctors’ personal and corporate goals.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“three associates of the William Pepper Clinical Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania used well over a hundred children under the age of eight at the St. Vincent’s Home for Orphans, a Catholic orphanage in Philadelphia, for a series of diagnostic tests in which a tuberculin formula was placed in the test subjects’ eyes. 23”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“Even infants were used in research studies; for example, two-day-old babies were fed bismuth, a metal-like substance used in the manufacture of some pharmaceuticals, and then exposed to extensive X-rays to chart the course of different foods in their stomachs.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“It should be understood that doctors did not want to damage their patients—as a profession they were sworn to do no harm—but if they committed dastardly acts, they were more easily pardoned if something positive had come of the exercise. Experiments on humans were usually excused if the results of the study were substantial, the process had an element of science to it, and the physicians were correct in their expectations. 19”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“The message of Microbe Hunters was clear: Great men like Pasteur, Reed, Theobald Smith, and Paul Ehrlich were a rare breed. But for all their skill, training, and dogged pursuit of that deadly microbe or magical elixir, their mission was infinitely complex, the challenges multifaceted, and the trail of disease and death a daily occurrence.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“Yes, giving test subjects yellow fever would be considered “murder” by some, but Reed’s zealousness and his willingness to put people at risk were understandable. It was crucial that medical science determine, by any means necessary, if mosquitoes caused yellow fever. The book caused many Americans to confront the unattractive calculus of medical research. It wasn’t pleasant, but it paid dividends—thousands of innocent lives eventually would be spared. De Kruif’s heroic accounts of great men doing dangerous things would also illuminate the majesty as well as the desperation of the various test subjects, the experimental guinea pigs.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“As de Kruif wrote of Reed and his deadly experiments, “To make any kind of experiment to prove mosquitoes carry yellow fever you must have experimental animals, and that meant nothing more nor less than human animals.” De Kruif did not always sugarcoat unpleasant facts; he let readers know that Reed was involved in human experimentation and that such research often ended tragically. There was no getting around it, de Kruif informed his readers; that was the nature of human research. It was “an immoral business.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“Doctors quickly discovered that access to institutionalized populations could springboard them to lucrative contracts with drug companies and great wealth. The financial incentives became so enticing that some physicians gave up their private practices to conduct large-scale clinical trials full time. 10”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“Bereft of legal status or protectors, institutionalized children were often the test subjects of choice for medical researchers hoping to discover a new vaccine, prove a new theory, or publish an article in a respected medical journal.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America

“Many test subjects at the dawn of the Atomic Age and throughout the decades that followed, as the public would come to learn, were children. Some were only days old; some were cognitively and physically impaired.”
― Allen M. Hornblum, Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America