Miss Evers Boys Sparknotes

Miss Evers’ Boys is a movie set in 1932 Macon County, Alabama, when federal government began a medical study called The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Blacks with Syphilis. The aim of the study was to determine if African-American men reacted differently to whites to the overall effects of Syphilis, a sexually transmitted infection. 412 rural black men carrying the disease were selected for the study, being told that they would get free long-term treatments when really they were only given placebos and liniments. Despite the validation of penicillin as an effective cure for Syphilis in 1940, the study continued for 40 years until a Senate investigation initiated. The story is told from the perspective of Nurse Eunice Evers, who became aware that …show more content…
At the end of the study only 127 men were left alive, following the Senate investigate, survivors were given penicillin and financial compensation. When analyzing this film from an ethical standpoint, there are many points of views to be addressed and discussed in detail. It is hard to clearly judge whether Miss Evers is a moral or amoral character because there are several degrees of complexities and this also depends on our moral beliefs and values. If we look at the study overall, one could say that this is experimenting with human lives and a disrespectful act towards a person's’ rights. However, if we put ourselves in Miss Evers’ position, another side of the argument is also valid. The great philosopher Aristotle believed that being a “good person” is about being virtuous, finding the right balance between the two extremes of character, also known as the ‘golden mean’. He believed that we could all become good by doing …show more content…
Despite the negative consequences Kant urges everyone to take on these two roles in order to encourage good intentions and good people thereby. As a nurse Miss Evers not only has the duty to care for her patients but more importantly she has the responsibility to protect their rights and to stand up for their interests at all times. Her universal duty, outside her nursing role is to be kind to people and to respect their rights as a person. To some extent Miss Evers does care for and is very sympathetic towards her patients but she fails to fulfill her roles entirely because she makes decisions based on her emotions and not her intellect. When making decisions based on our emotions, we often tend to do what we ‘want’ and not necessarily what we