Report on LSD raises hackles

BRONWYN CHESTER | It was out of the frying pan and into the fire last week at the release of A Review on the use of LSD and ECT at the Prison for Women in the early 1960s. The investigation, conducted by professors Norbert Gilmore and Margaret Somerville of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, was to set straight the medical research and ethical context of the times when as many as 23 female prisoners were administered LSD and electroconvulsive treatment (ECT) at the Kingston prison.

What has made their report subject to attack, both by those who believe the prisoners should receive a formal apology and financial compensation, and by the government which maintains that the medical "research" was, in fact, treatment "for the purpose of protecting and promoting the health of individuals," is that the authors don't lend full support to either side.

Rather, Gilmore and Somerville conclude that: 1) there is insufficient information regarding the long-term effects of the research on the former prisoners to offer unconditional compensation, and 2) it is probable that the reason for the research was unethical as it was carried out, not for the benefit of the prisoners, but for the institution, which sought a more easily managed clientele.

Moreover, the authors maintain that the research itself was carried out in an unethical fashion: inmates returning alone to their cells, after being administered LSD, for instance, were heavily sedated "because there were no personnel available to provide overnight surveillance, support and, if needed, intervention," states the report. Also, LSD was administered, to at least one inmate, in quantities that were known to risk causing hallucinations.

To remedy the lack of information regarding the subsequent mental health of the ex-prisoners, Gilmore and Somerville recommended in their 201-page report that the 21 women possibly affected (two have already identified themselves) be offered the possibility, at Correctional Service Canada's expense, of being assessed by a psychiatrist or neuro-psychiatrist "for adverse outcomes from the LSD." Contrary to what was reported in a recent article in The Ottawa Citizen, the investigators don't categorically rule out compensation; compensation was recommended by the government's own Board of Investigation which conducted an earlier investigation, released last March.

Somerville and Gilbert criticized this first investigation for not taking into consideration the context of the times. "But that doesn't mean the affected prisoners shouldn't be compensated," Somerville says. Gilmore adds that the original investigation wasn't rigorous enough in substantiating the adversity the LSD and ECT caused the ex-prisoners.

As both Gilmore and Somerville emphasize in the report, the period before 1962 was a bizarre era in the medical research that was carried out on humans. LSD, for instance, they write, "was widely seen by the psychiatric community to be a powerful instrument to help people gain insight into their problems and personality, especially when it was administered in a counselling or therapeutic context." Physicians and scientists too were regarded as benevolent, paternalistic and their actions were generally trusted, says Somerville. The question for the investigators remained, however: In the context of a prison in the early '60s, was the drug used for therapeutic purposes or to control difficult prisoners?

After evaluating the account of Dorothy Proctor, one of the women affected, who published her account of the experience, Chameleon, in 1994, plus an article and research proposal by the researchers involved (prison psychiatrist George Scott and psychologist Mark Eveson), as well as re-examining the Board of Investigation report, Gilmore and Somerville concluded that the research was not benevolent. "We took the attitude that a civilized country does not do that and doesn't support that," says Gilmore, pointing out that the 1948 Nuremberg Code had already established the ethical norms for medical research.

Now that Proctor is suing the government for her alleged mistreatment, Gilmore expects the McGill report to be used by the courts. It is not the first time that the services of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law have been called upon on a question regarding prisons. Gilmore headed an investigation into AIDS in prisons several years ago, and it was due to the credibility of his work that Correctional Service Canada approached him for this particular issue.