Jessica Vargas

Mr. Kelly
Class 3A
Nov 02, 2015
Draft #4

Miss Evers Boys

Have you heard of informed consent? This is a process for getting permission
before conducting a healthcare intervention on a person. Unfortunately, these are several
examples in medical history where this rule is not followed.
Miss Evers Boys is a film about a true story of the U.S Governments 1932 Tuskegee
syphilis experiment. In which a group of black test subjects were allowed to die because the
doctors used a placebo treatment, despite a cure having been developed. Decades after Miss Ever
who was nurse that participated in the research was called before a senate committee to testify as
to what really happened during the infamous Tuskegee Study. This research was the most
shameful example of racism in the medical field which can be connected with other researches
where the human rights were trampled.
Some connections between the Tuskegee study and other similar studies stand out. For
instance, The Guatemala project was a study in the 1940s that involved infecting prisoners and
mental patients with syphilis, so the goal of the study to have been to determine the effect of
penicillin in treatment of venereal diseases. Another example is the Unit 731 throughout the
1930s and 1940s. This research consisted of infecting prisoners with Cholera and typhoid, as
well as exposing the prisoners to freezing weather to determine the best treatment for frostbite.

The link between all the above investigations is that numerous experiments were performed on
human test subjects that have been considered unethical because doctors practiced the research
without the knowledge or informed consent of the test subjects. Such tests have occurred
throughout world history.
In my opinion, although doctors and nurses studying to heal and save life, some use their
knowledge to harm others. The above were unscientific experiments because it is evidence of
racism and cruelty. I believe that the Tuskegee Study is a real eye - opener because it was an
infamous study that gave a placebo treatment to patient that really needs a real medication to
avoid dying. The problem was the doctors didnt have consent from patients because the patients
participated in the experiments deceived. I believe that we all are human and no race, gender,
religion etc. is better than any other. On the other hand people who work in medical field have to
try to preserve the life and they should not be allowed to damage patients for any reason. For me
the human experiments were a dark chapter in history of medicine.