Driving Miss Evers' Boys to the Historical Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis.

Driving Miss Evers' Boys to the Historical Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis. J Natl Med Assoc. 2019 Mar 07;: Authors: White RM Abstract The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis (TSUS) intersects racial and research ethics discourse in medicine and public health. Miss Evers' Boys is a fictionalized play of the 40-year TSUS. In 2016, the Cultural Programs of the National Academy of Sciences and the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC co-sponsored a reading of the play at the National Academy of Sciences Auditorium. Ethics instructors and students, who may use the play for research training and professional development, may lack awareness of a pattern of deviations from the TSUS historical record. This may compromise what instructors and students teach and learn, respectively. Historical analysis revealed that the playbill-handed to play patrons-had challenges in the core arguments about the TSUS, particularly the notion of "bad blood." A broad collection of documents from a variety of sources-documents concurrent with the TSUS-illustrated how the term, "bad blood" was used. Bad blood was syphilis and syphilis was bad blood. "Bad blood as syphilis," in post-hoc reviews, was suppressed and nullified. In another area, the focus on the denial of penicillin at the Birmingham Rapid Treatment Center (RTC)-an important scene in the play and the history of the TSUS-exposed conflicts with the historical record. The origin and the d...
Source: Journal of the National Medical Association - Category: General Medicine Tags: J Natl Med Assoc Source Type: research