Some are apparently not content with just having a mere vile disgrace of a penal system that makes the phrase "free country" a corpse in the mouth of everyone that utters it:

An influential federal panel of medical advisers has recommended that the government loosen regulations that severely limit the testing of pharmaceuticals on prison inmates, a practice that was all but stopped three decades ago after revelations of abuse.

The proposed change includes provisions intended to prevent problems that plagued earlier programs. Nevertheless, it has dredged up a painful history of medical mistreatment and incited debate among prison rights advocates and researchers about whether prisoners can truly make uncoerced decisions, given the environment they live in.

Supporters of such programs cite the possibility of benefit to prison populations,and the potential for contributing to the greater good.

Until the early 1970’s, about 90 percent of all pharmaceutical products were tested on prison inmates, federal officials say. But such research diminished sharply in 1974 after revelations of abuse at prisons like Holmesburg here, where inmates were paid hundreds of dollars a month to test items as varied as dandruff treatments and dioxin, and where they were exposed to radioactive, hallucinogenic and carcinogenic chemicals.

In addition to addressing the abuses at Holmesburg, the regulations were a reaction to revelations in 1972 surrounding what the government called the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, which was begun in the 1930’s and lasted 40 years. In it, several hundred mostly illiterate men with syphilis in rural Alabama were left untreated, even after a cure was discovered, so that researchers could study the disease.

...

The discussion comes as the biomedical industry is facing a shortage of testing subjects. In the last two years, several pain medications, including Vioxx and Bextra, have been pulled off the market because early testing did not include large enough numbers of patients to catch dangerous problems.

What really offends my sensibilities is the shortsightedness and inefficiency of the whole idea. If the pharmaceutical companies could just cool their jets for a year until Homeland Security gets all those shiny new detention centers built, then they're not going to have to shell out good capital for all this R & D. Don't they get it? You don't have to pay illegals because they don't have any rights!

A steady hand on the rudder with the patience to get through the next four quarters and they could probably cut their overhead by 50%! 50%!! The shit doesn't grow on trees people!

But no, all these young bucks who can't see the forest for the trees are screwing it up yet again. God I miss the good old days when an shrewd executive could calculate some rational self-interest on behalf of the shareholders before reaching over to hit the snooze button.

These new economy spendthrifts will be the death of us. Has it really come to this, America?