Although I was not pleased I needed to pay $5.00 and spend my Friday night doing school work, I am absolutely glad I did attend this production. The story was about a nurse named Miss Evers who was treating four black men who contracted syphilis. However, due to some corrupt and completely unethical government policy, the nurse was instructed not to treat them correctly. Syphilis, which is a bacterial sti, which presents in four stages which could lead to serious neurological or cardiac symptoms, including psychosis and heart failure.
This play reminded me of a case I learned of in a psychology class, known as the Tuskegee Study, where men who sometimes had and sometimes did not have syphilis were contained and "treated" for the disease. However, the directors, just like the government in this production, kept the actual cure from its patients. This is completely illegal and unethical, and seeing as again these patients were mostly black men, it seemed racially motivated, which shows the exact status of America during these times.
Luckily now there are ethical codes in place that will never allow for this to happen again. But, it is a reasonable theory that if these were not, black men would still be the guinea pigs in the United States.
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