Miss Evers' Boys: Summary and Reaction

Miss Evers' Boys offered a detailed and heartbreaking depiction of disturbing and immoral medical study examining the late stages of Syphilis and its affect in Black males as opposed to whites. In 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service initiated an experiment entitled, "The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male", which included 399 black men, ages 21 to 60. These men were being told that they were getting treated for "Bad Blood" but in reality, they were being denied treatment in order to study the disease in it's latest stages. Many assumed that Syphilis and other venereal diseases would cause the extinction of the black race as a whole. In order to gain cooperation from the participants, the Tuskegee Study approach was to deceitfully withhold truth when gaining consent, provide free food, medical care, and burial expenses. The doctors would tell the patients that they had "bad blood" when referring to their ailments, but not once did they stop to mention how Syphilis is contracted and how it can be spread onto their offspring. Now, Miss Evers is a fictional version of nurse Eunice Rivers, a secret weapon whose most credited responsibilities were to follow the health of all patients involved as well as get approval for autopsies if any subject passed due to the disease. She was the only piece of continuity in the study that the patients could relate to and as a result trusted to tell them the truth. But what she failed to tell them is that once they agreed to participate, there is NO turning back. In 1950, Penicillin was announced as a cure to Syphilis, and despite the readily available drug, the doctors still denied the treatment to any of the men in the medical research. After almost 40 years of this horrendous act, on July 25, 1972, the government concluded the experiment after the story was released on the front page of The Washington Times by Jean Heller, a reporter for the Associated Press. The NAACP filed a lawsuit in 1973 and free health care was given to men who were still living, and to infected wives, widows and children. Also, a $10 million dollar settlement was divided among the study's participants. Overall, this was a terrible event and President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology and said, "The United States government did something that was wrong-- deeply, profoundly, and morally wrong. It was an outrage to our commitment to integrity and equality for all citizens...clearly racist."

In my opinion and I feel everyone else's opinion, this was a disgusting and inhumane "project". There is not much else to say. These so called doctors tried to wipe out an ENTIRE race of people. They should not even be called doctors. They should be called animals, demons, and nazi's. For this to have gone on for 40 years, is simply crazy. The play did an amazing job portraying the characters emotions and lack of knowledge about what was going on around them and to them. This was an act of total and utter racism and I feel as though no one could have said it better than President Bill Clinton.

Alexis Nicole Thrasher

@02661188

Group 19