Question

What role did Nurse Eunice Rivers play in the gentrification of the citizens of Macon County, Alabama during the Tuskegee Syphillis Study?

Answer 1

In 1932, She worked for the U.S Public Health Service on “The Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male in Macon County”, Alabama, popularly known as the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.

She recruited 399 Men (African-American) with syphilis for the study and worked to keep them enrolled as participants in the program. As return for their participation, the study offered participants free medical care, which Nurse Rivers provided. She was the experiment's only consistent full-time staff member.

Although the study was initially planned to run only 6 months, it eventually extended to 40 years. During the entire study, the participants were not informed that the ailment they called "bad blood" was Actually Syphilis.

When the study started, Salvarsan and Neosalvarsan were the only available treatments for syphilis, and both compounds had dangerous side effects. However, even after the 1940s when the discovery of penicillin offered a reliable and safe cure for the disease, study participants still did not receive treatment for syphilis. After the New York Times and Washington Post revealed that study participants had been allowed to suffer rather than receiving a known safe treatment, the Public Health Service ended it in 1972.

The Role Nurse Eunice Rivers play in the gentrification of the citizens of Macon County, Alabama during the Tuskegee Syphillis Study:

Once the news of the unethical treatment of participants in the Tuskegee Study was exposed in 1972, Rivers retreated into silence.

1. Some see her as the ultimate nurse, have the ability and willingness to follow any order the physicians gave her.Others, see her as the ultimate race traitor.

2.They believe she used her education and class power to keep her job and sell out the rural men she was caring.There is evidence for both sides of the story.

3. She was crucial in recruiting and keeping participants in the study, she also provided them with both medical and mental care they otherwise would not have. She listened to their complaints, suggested ways to gain assistance outside of the hospital, offered them comfort, and provided simple medication, such as vitamins.

4. She even helped to establish the “Miss Rivers Lodge,” which provided the men’s families financial assistance for burials in exchange for the men’s participation in study. Her actions provided the men with more treatment opportunities for other conditions than they previously received from health professionals.