The College of Physicians of Philadelphia apologized for celebrating the infamous doctor who experimented on people in the Holmesburg Prison

The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, America’s oldest medical society, issued an apology Wednesday for its affiliation with a Penn dermatologist who experimented on people incarcerated at the city’s Holmesburg Prison.

Between 1951 and 1974, Albert Kligman conducted experiments on mostly Black incarcerated individuals at the prison in the Northeast section of the city. He exposed them to viruses, fungi, LSD, and dioxin (a component of Agent Orange).

Kligman, who died in 2010, worked at Penn for more than half a century and invented the popular acne medication Retin-A. He was a fellow of the College of Physicians since 1954 and received the society’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2003.

» READ MORE: Philadelphia issues apology for Holmesburg Prison experiments

“The College of Physicians offers its deepest sympathies for those who suffered, including their families, and it apologizes for its silence in not expressing these sentiments sooner,” the organization said in a statement. “Though this apology is long overdue, it is no less heartfelt for the delay.”

The statement, issued Wednesday, also said the organization had rescinded Kligman’s Distinguished Achievement Award.

The organization decided it needed to issue a formal apology after meeting with members of the Philadelphia Inmate Justice Coalition, said Julia Haller, board president for the College of Physicians and ophthalmologist-in-chief at Wills Eye Hospital.

“I’m so grateful for the coalition for bringing this to our attention,” Haller said.

Kligman’s ethical wrongdoing first drew public attention decades ago. Well before the physician organization awarded him its prestigious award in 2003, there were newspaper accounts of the experiments, lawsuits, and a book detailing the extent of the harm.

On the day Kligman was to receive his award, victims of the experiments stood outside the College of Physicians building on 22nd Street in Center City in protest.

Haller, who wasn’t part of the College’s board in 2003, said she and her colleagues have been reviewing records to try to learn more about the discussion surrounding the decision to give Kligman the award. So far, they’ve come up short.

“How could this have gone down?” she asks. “I don’t know.”

Among those who protested the 2003 award ceremony was Leodus Jones, who was a victim of Kligman’s experiments while he was incarcerated at Holmesburg in the 1960s.

Kligman offered those who participated a small fee, which Jones thought would be useful for commissary and to reduce the burden on his family at home. For one experiment, he recalled, he was injected with a rare disease from India in exchange for $10. It would go up to $15 if he developed an abscess. The skin on his torso looked “like a pinto pony,” he said in a media interview before his death in 2018.

“I didn’t care at the time. I needed the money,” Jones said.

» READ MORE: Leodus Jones, 74, bore witness to Philly's grisly Holmesburg prison experiments

Jones’ daughter, Adrianne Jones-Alston, said that he never spoke about the experiments at home. He was embarrassed and felt he had been “played.”

“He didn’t want us to know that he signed up,” she said.

After prison, Jones dedicated his life to activism, working on crime prevention, helping those in prison, and creating jobs for returning offenders.

Kligman touted his access to prisons and “acres of skin” when trying to recruit new dermatologists to his practice or attract clients for pharmaceutical testing, said Allen Hornblum, who wrote the 1998 book Acres of Skin exposing the extent of the experimentation.

Johnson & Johnson hired Kligman in the 1960s to compare the effects of cancer-causing asbestos with talc, a component in baby powder. He injected the substances to about a dozen men incarcerated at Holmesburg.

Kligman also had contracts with the Pentagon and Dow Chemicals, which The Inquirer reported on in the ‘70s and ‘80s.

“It was a money-making operation,” Hornblum said.

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The College of Physicians is not the first to apologize for the experiments or its association with Kligman. But Hornblum said the organization’s apology is especially important because it represents the medical community “owning up to their own sins of omission” — celebrating Kligman in his lifetime while ignoring the vulnerable people he harmed.

In October, the City of Philadelphia issued an apology for the Holmesburg Prison experiments.

“Without excuse, we formally and officially extend a sincere apology to those who were subjected to this inhumane and horrific abuse,” said Mayor Jim Kenney in a statement. “We are also sorry it took far too long to hear these words.”

In 2021, Penn Medicine also apologized, calling Kilgman’s work “terribly disrespectful.” Penn also discontinued an annual lecture named after Kligman and renamed the “Kligman Professorship II” to honor Bernett L. Johnson Jr., a prominent Black dermatologist who joined Penn in the ‘80s.

Jones-Alston said that she appreciates the apologies and hopes it is the beginning of a process to rebuild trust between the Black community and other vulnerable communities who suffered from medical experiments and the medical community.

“My father fought for decades just to hear one apology and a couple of years after his death, all of these apologies come rolling in,” she said. “I feel like he’s smiling on this day.”