Miss Evers Boys the Tuskegee Experiment Often

Miss Evers Boys

The Tuskegee experiment often receives special attention in textbooks about ethics. In the case of Miss Evers' Boys, the experiment became a critically acclaimed television movie starring Laurence Fishburne and Alfre Woodard. Although some of the details were changed to make the subject amenable for a screenplay, Miss Evers' Boys is based on the Tuskegee experiments, in which researchers were authorized to study African-Americans with syphilis while purposely withholding treatment.

The film fills in the details that the textbooks usually omit. These details include the psychological suffering, the human perspective that is impossible to imagine otherwise. There is a personal dimension displayed in Miss Evers' Boys that cannot be captured in a dry, objective textbook or academic article. Although it is difficult to watch due to the heavy subject matter, Miss Evers' Boys is a mandatory accompaniment to formal study on the subject of ethics in research design.

The Tuskegee experiment lasted for decades, showing how ingrained racism is and has been in American culture. Only because African-Americans, and especially poor African-Americans, were the subjects, was it possible to carry out the experiments. In the film, Alfre Woodward plays Eunice Evers, the title character. Evers is a nurse who is finally able to achieve a modicum of justice for the victims of the horrible experiments. Miss Evers' Boys is told primarily from her perspective, but while she is telling her story, the viewer is privy also to the minds and hearts of the victims.

Evers' testimony during the 1973 Senate hearings allows the viewer to learn how, when, and why the experiments started in 1932. Until the early 1970s, there were few constraints on scientific researchers. This was especially true in emerging fields such as social psychology and psychology, but as this film shows, medical research also had few ethical rules. According to the film, the experiment was not intended to directly harm the inflicted men. Men inflicted with syphilis in the African-American community were to be treated and studied to reveal the effects of the disease and any intervention. However, when funding for the research dried up, there was no interest in providing the men with relief.

The film shows that people who are politically disenfranchised and underprivileged do not enjoy the same rights and freedoms as those in power. A situation like that depicted in the film would never have occurred in a prestigious community. Among poor blacks in Macon County, Alabama, though, such an experiment was likely and possible. The subjects in the research were viewed as lab rats, rather than as full human beings. Miss Evers' Boys is a film that is as much about racism as it is about medical ethics. The film raises important questions about how the nation failed to eliminate racist social, political, and economic institutions after the Civil War. African-Americans could not be legally owned as slaves, but they were treated no differently than slaves in situations like this, in which they were dehumanized.

One of the most important ways Miss Evers' Boys humanizes the stories of those involved in the Tuskegee experiments is through character development. The title character is a nurse who cares for the patients. She is generally powerless to make an impact on the political decisions motivating the experiments, until she is able to finally testify before the United States Senate. However, Nurse Evers does make a direct and meaningful impact on the lives of those who suffered during the clinical experiments. She develops personal relationships with the patients. Some of the patients even name their band after Nurse Evers, giving rise to the name of the film: Miss Evers' Boys. The musicians provide blood samples, and one of them becomes Miss Evers' love interest (Caleb, played by Laurence Fishburne). Caleb plays an important role in Miss Evers' Boys. He discovers that penicillin might help, and he begins to take it. However, penicillin is not available to all of the patients involved in the experiment.

The film exposes the potential for deep corruption in the government, in the medical community, and even in academia. Although unlikely, it is possible that such an experiment might be carried out today. This is why ethics committees carefully review all scientific studies, to ensure that informed consent and other formalities are followed during research design.

Another key element of Miss Evers Boys is the way that Nurse Evers faces a moral dilemma. She works under the assumption that the government will live up to its word by providing the medication to the patients. Even though she knows that the patients are being harmed in the process, she continues to comply with the parameters of the experiment. This makes Nurse Evers complicit in some ways; she struggles with whether or not to disobey orders. The human side that Miss Evers' Boys exposes causes the viewer to feel a lot of compassion. There are no moral black-and-white issues, but only shades of gray.