Houston criminal defense lawyer Mark Bennett posts about the University of Texas Medical Branch’s engagement in the use of mentally ill prisoners as guinea pigs.  The benign explanation for their involvement:

“UTMB’s Correctional Managed Care program has an agreement with Lone Star College involving its Law Enforcement Phlebotomy Program. The participating Houston police officers at the units were there as part of the Lone Star College course they were taking. Having blood drawn is part of the standard intake process at TDCJ and mentally ill offenders were given the option of having a police officer or a staff phlebotomist perform the procedure. All of the mentally ill offenders involved chose to allow the police officers to do the procedure.”

While short of the experimentation on prisoners that marks one of the most depraved medical experiences in history, it comes way too close to the line to fall within even debatable parameters.

Now we don’t expect police officers necessarily to have a functioning ethical compass—the Supreme Court has endorsed police lies, and where the truth is optional there’s no ground on which ethics can stand.

But we expect doctors (presumably there are doctors involved with making policy at UTMB ) to behave ethically. I’m no medical ethicist, but this one doesn’t pass even the general-ethics smell test.

It seems unimaginable that anyone would elect to have a needle jabbed into them by a police officer training to draw blood.  Why, but why, would a person prefer a novice, not to mention a person whose dedication is to collecting evidence rather than caring for the sick, to put a needle into their veins rather than a trained phlebotomist? 

But this goes even further.  A mentally ill prisoner, which as well-noted by Bennett, is a very high bar given that mental illness is a pervasive problem with the prisons of Texas (and pretty much everywhere else).  To be denominated a mentally ill prisoner, someone has to be really, really mentally ill.  These are not people who have a strong grasp on reality.

Consent has three components, intentional, voluntary and knowing.  Typical of legal criteria, they all overlap to an extent, and are otherwise relatively amorphous.  But one thing is clear: They are, by definition, incompetent.  Incompetent people cannot consent.  Using incompetent people, whether with purported consent or not, for phlebotomy training is wrong and sick. 

No press release, explanation, rationalization from UTMB can make right what is patently wrong. Although it doesn’t compare with the conduct of experiments on prisoners before, it is certainly a step onto the slippery slope that could lead to the ethical and moral breakdown that gives rise to such conduct. 

No step, not even a single baby step, onto that slippery slope is tolerable.  Mentally ill prisoners cannot be used for practice by cops learning to stick a needle into a vein.  This cannot be rationalized.