Noted dermatologist Albert M. Kligman dies

Dermatologist Albert M. Kligman, whose research led to discoveries including the acne and wrinkle drug Retin-A but whose pioneering work was overshadowed by his experiments involving prisoners, has died.

He was 93.

Kligman died Feb. 9 of heart failure at Pennsylvania Hospital, his daughter Gail Kligman, a sociology professor at UCLA, said yesterday.

Kligman is credited with being the first dermatologist to show a link between sun exposure and wrinkles. He coined the term "photoaging" to describe skin aging caused by the sun.

In 1967, he patented Retin-A, a vitamin A derivative known generically as tretinoin, as an acne treatment and received a new patent in 1986 after discovering the drug's wrinkle-fighting ability.

As architect of Holmesburg Prison's experimental-research program from 1951 to 1974, Kligman directed and performed hundreds of experiments on prisoners.

The experiments, for which the inmates were paid, included testing of mind-altering agents, dioxin and "skin-hardeners" to protect skin from the effects of toxic chemicals. Many were performed under contracts with pharmaceutical and chemical companies, cosmetics firms, federal agencies and the military.

The experiments were banned in 1974 and 10 years later, a few former inmates sued the university and the city, settling for sums in the $20,000 to $40,000 range.

Kligman never wavered in his defense of the experiments, insisting that the test subjects had not suffered any long-term harm and maintaining that the research should not have been halted because of the scientific advances it might have yielded.

Kligman, born in South Philadelphia in 1916 to Russian immigrants, graduated with a bachelor's degree in botany in 1939 from Penn State, where he also was a competitive gymnast. At Penn, he followed his 1942 doctorate in botany with a medical degree in 1947.

At the start of World War II, the federal government asked him to travel to South America in search of botanical sources for a malaria- and mosquito-fighting insecticide for soldiers in the Pacific. When the trip was abruptly canceled, Kligman attributed it to his membership in the Communist Party.

In a 1992 interview with American Health, he said that he was "extremely liberal and idealistic" at the time and that "it seemed that in the Soviet Union justice prevailed and bigotry had been abolished."

Reeling from the rejection, he enrolled in medical school and specialized in dermatology because of an interest in fungal diseases.