Prisoner Guinea Pigs

In Trenton last week, 79 New Jersey convicts received beribboned service certificates from the U.S. Army. Their service : letting themselves be inoculated with dengue and sand-fly fever so that Army doctors could try to find preventives and treatments for these diseases, which have already been a problem in Hawaii, North Africa, Sicily and Italy, and will be more of one when large numbers of U.S. troops are involved in the Pacific and China-Burma-India theaters.

Working on the experiments is Major Albert Bruce Sabin, Rockefeller Institute and University of Cincinnati researcher on poliomyelitis and other viruses. With a satchelful of serum, flies, cultures and swabs, he has shuttled for six months between the Trenton penitentiary and the Rockefeller Institute's Princeton laboratories.

When Dr. Sabin bestowed the certificates, 850 fellow convicts whistled and cheered. They learned that 300 had volunteered for the experiments, even when told that the diseases, while rarely fatal, were violent, painful and feverish. Some of the certificates went to men still weak and shaky from fever. Seventeen of them had to be presented in the prison's isolation ward.

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