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Apart from the federal system, at least a dozen states allow prisoners to be recruited for research. The Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus has pioneered in cancer research by providing volunteers who were given injections of cancer cells. The fact that none of them developed cancer has shown that healthy people have some immunity against another person's disease. At the Cook County Jail in Chicago, prisoners have received injections from leukemia victims. They did not get leukemia, and their serum later protected mice against the disease—another clue to the mysteries of immunity. Profit Motive. Prisoner volunteer programs sometimes get involved in ethical questions when the profit motive becomes dominant. Perhaps the nation's biggest, the program in Oklahoma State Penitentiary at McAlester was being drastically overhauled last week for this reason. It had become a gold mine for private contractors. As the prison's medical director for 25 years, Dr. Austin R. Stough (rhymes with scow) had made deals with pharmaceutical companies to test new drugs. From this, Stough and his partner, Dr. Cranfill K.
Wisdom, and their two companies grossed an estimated $300,000 a year.
The prisoner volunteers got small fees. Far bigger, and worth at least $700,000 a year, was a Stough-Wisdom program to supply blood plasma to commercial concerns. Its success depended on the recent finding that a man can donate blood as often as once a week, provided that only the plasma is kept and the red blood cells are promptly reinfused into his arm. Stough-Wisdom got about $15 a quart and paid the prisoners $5 a donation. The money and resulting self-respect were good for prisoners' morale. But state officials decided that the program should not be run for private profit, and are turning it over to a research council headed by medical professors.