Dr. Alf S. Alving, of the University of Chicago, asks incarcerated men at Stateville Penitentiary in Illinois to volunteer as experimental subjects to find a cure for malaria. More than 400 prisoners participate in a two-year study, which is a partnership between the University of Chicago, the U.S. Army, and the State Department. The experiments are coercive because shortened sentencing is offered to the incarcerated men who agree to participate.

At the U.S. Penitentiary of Atlanta, Georgia, testing is performed on 800 incarcerated men. Four hundred are injected with malaria from a particularly virulent strain and then given anti-malaria medication to test its efficacy. The incarcerated men are offered early release in exchange for their participation. The men are told they are helping the war effort, but are not told they are being injected with malaria or undergoing drug testing.