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

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 devices that developed this image also were disclosed. The article specifically exposed, unraveled, analyzed, and challenged other misinformation and paradigm-defining misconduct.The TSUS narrative requires correction by the responsible historical and ethical communities, changing what is taught about the TSUS and Miss Evers' Boys. This is critically important in academic research training and professional development. If left unchallenged, the faulty TSUS scholarship—coupled with Miss Evers’ Boys—fuels and reinforces the incorrect standard narratives of the TSUS and their impact on the history of the TSUS. This is especially true regarding what the TSUS men were told about their diagnosis—bad blood and not syphilis—and the denial of “a hip shot of that penicillin” at the RTC.