Prisoners-of-war don't have many choices. They live where they're told, eat and drink what they're told, and go to the bathroom only how they're allowed. And they're locked up. They can't go to the grocery store, a restaurant, for sure not to a bar. Oh, yes, and no sex. They're not even allowed to see a woman, maybe in the far, far, distance. I've never been a prisoner-of-war, so I don't know, exactly, what happens, but I can imagine, and I'm pretty sure a prisoner-of-war camp is not a very pretty place. As said, and "Experiments, and " is not about a prisoner-of-war camp. But there are some similarities. Nutrition research volunteers are absolutely locked up. They can go to movies, the mall, bookstores, pretty much whatever, but their every move is chaperoned. No candy, no pop, no cigarettes, no alcohol, not even a public water fountain, no anything that people living a normal life can have anytime they want. Life at MEAL, the Metabolism and u0026 Excretion Analysis Laboratory, is not a normal place. Men living there are told what to eat, when to eat, how much to eat, and definitely how to go to the bathroom. At the end of their meals they're required to clean their dishes, literally, to lick them clean, so that they get every drop of nutrition that was measured out for each individual. There's lots of free time, but tests like electrocardiograms, electroencephalograms, underwater weighing, controlled exercise, etc., go on all week. So, it's not really like a prisoner-of-war camp, and nobody gets tortured or brutalized. And even though they signed their name and get paid for living under these conditions for up to six months at a time, they still have the option of stopping, of quitting. And that's the clincher, what makes living at MEAL way similar to, but also way different from, a prisoner-of-war Any time they can't take it a moment longer, they can leave. The real test is Frustrations build, tempers flare, love affairs, friendships, hatreds, develop.An Shea McTory felt guilty for photographing this cruel scene, but the world needed to know. No, the truth was, Shea McTory needed to further his hoped-for journalism career. And he had just learned something about himself that he would rather have not found out. He knew he had always been, basically, a loser, but he had always tried to not be an asshole too. But that's what was going through his mind. He was an asshole. The subjects of the cruel scene, the two boys, stood beside each other. They were skin and bone. I'm an asshole. The sight of them, the smells in the room, the pure ugliness, all were making Shea's insides crawl. His skin was crawling. He could barely look at the boys. No way could he touch them. No way. I'm an asshole. And Natalie hadn't even said, specifically, what was happening, but he knew that she knew, and Shea didn't even want to know.