The use of humans as subjects for medical and biological tests can be traced back to ancient Greece, but has declined significantly in recent decades. History has shown that the use of human test subjects is extremely successful. One of the earliest recorded is that of Herophilus, often referred to as the first anatomist. Before his work, live dissections were performed on animals and never on humans. They almost exclusively chose animals that anatomically resembled humans. On rare occasions they had the opportunity to work with corpses, but they were generally maimed or diseased. Herophilus was able to work with live subjects, prisoners provided to him by the rulers of Alexandria. At the beginning of the 3rd century BC Alexandria was under the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty. This family was known for its involvement in the sciences, and this was in Herophilus' favor. Alexandria was a relatively new city, and radical ideas and studies about the world and how it worked were on a higher plane than a moral code. Although none of Herophilus' writings still exist, many of his colleagues wrote about human anatomy in great detail, often referring to Herophilus. Herophilus was convinced that it was better to sacrifice a few for the good of the many. (Von Staden, 1989) After the thirty or forty years that Herophilus was able to experiment with living humans, the practice became illegal. It remained illegal until the Renaissance, a period known as the Middle Ages, in both the literary and medical worlds. Anatomical progression had stopped and there is no known documentation of human experimentation from that time. It is no wonder why Herophilus was hailed as the father of a... middle of paper... by putting an end to these criminals with their deaths, the government can save the money and, instead, subject them to medical treatment and tests anti-drug. Testing a human being, even a prisoner, is cheaper than testing an animal which, biologically, is at the same level as a human being. (Mitford, 1973) Both the government and pharmaceutical companies would benefit from such a change. By testing on humans we can discover more, and faster, than with animals. Gathering a group of consenting subjects would require more time and money than simply using prisoners. Individuals already in the prison system receive medical care and have undergone medical checks, which saves time. Less time spent gathering arguments and fixing things, legally, saves more lives and is better for the public. The longer it takes the FDA to procure a treatment, the more negatively the American public views it.