Question

In the film "Miss Evers' Boys" Tuskegee film, What do you believe were the motives for the people to become involved in the study, specifically: The Research Subject? The Macon County physicians? Nurse Evers?

Answer 1

The Tuskegee experiment started at the time when there was no treatment available for syphilis, syphilis was spread in the community of Tuskegee, 600 people were involved in this study in a hope that they will get free treatment for syphilis.

The participants who had participated were mainly sharecroppers or most of them had never had a visit to the doctor, they were innocent people didn't have knowledge about medicine and the treatment.

This study was conducted on these people by US health services, and participants were informed, out of 600 participants 399 were suffering from syphilis rest 201 was free from syphilis, but doctors had a different intention and they were not treating them for syphilis but for BAD BLOOD.

The motives for conducting the research were that the researchers wanted to know the long term effect of syphilis if left untreated.

The people were being considered by the doctors but they were getting medication only for placeboes like aspirin and mineral supplement, despite knowing that the treatment for syphilis is penicillin, and also physicians from bacon country were instructed not to treat the participants with penicillin.

No effective care was given to the participant and one of the men died and blame was given to some other disease for the cause of his death in spite of untreated syphilis.

In mid-1960 Peter Boston from San Francisco who was known as venereal disease inventor found that this study was unethical, as a result, he leaked the information to the reporter friend, he continued passing the story to the fellow reporters and the people came out with the outrage and forced them to shut this study.

But by the time syphilis was spread to 40 spouses and 19 children,100 of them died due to complications of syphilis and 28 of them died suddenly.

Congress held hearings in 1973 and the affected community was compensated with the $ 10 million.

Also in 1947, Nazis physician forcefully started an experiment on people, as a result, many people from Africa and America developed a trust issue with the public health officials,

and in 1997 president Clinton promised to create better health care services and also apologized for the insanely mistake done by the doctors of the united state.

The research subject of the study was to determine if penicillin could prevent, and not just cure, syphilis infection, infected people had never received medicine, and the research journal was never published.

Doctors are already involved in the research along with the nurse named Eunice Evers ,the nurse was very much aware about the lack of treatment and the cure, but felt that her role is to console the affected people, many of the people were her close friends and also she was sent to help doctors in treatment of Rural black men of her town (Alabama) was sent in all areas of the town to announce that the government is funding syphilis treatment for free, without informing them that they will be involved in research studies without getting any treatment.

She was able to make people agree for the treatment and they were told that they will be getting treatment for the bad blood,

Despite the available treatment, the nurse misses Ever, never release the information to the people involved in the study and also long term fake treatment was given.

One of the participants left the treatment and joined the army during world war 2 he got treated there with penicillin, he tried to provide the same treatment to his friend but it was not allowed as the public health doctors informed all the local doctors not to treat an individual with syphilis.

This was insane and the unethical experiment done by the doctors and the nurses in the history of the research.