Pre-Existing Condition
Year: 2019
Country: United States
Type: Short
Form: Experimental
Lazard displays archival documents listing medical experiments a University of Pennsylvania professor conducted on incarcerated people between 1951 and 1974. Overlayed is the voice of one survivor, Edward Yusef Anthony, who discusses his mistrust of medical and legal systems.
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Image description: A scanned document of a table of information pertaining to medical experiments conducted in a prison in 1964. The scan is an inverted image: white, type-written text on a black background speckled with white dots and a white margin on the left side of the frame. The information presented includes the dates of these experiments, the University of Pennsylvania doctors who facilitated them, the number of inmates who participated in the experiments, and the amount that inmates were paid, ranging from one to fifteen dollars per study. Brief descriptions of each test is listed, including “Transplant Removal,” “Topical Caproic Acid Test (Environmental Chamber),” “Intradermal Injection of Dextrose Solution,” and “48-80 on inner lip.” At the bottom of the frame is a yellow subtitle, “they keep giving me medicine that makes me sick.”