Friday, February 21, 2025
A spotlight on the infamous Tuskegee Experiment
New Pittsburgh Courier: New York-based playwright Layon Gray sees his latest play, “Feed the Beast: The Tuskegee Experiment on the Negro Male,” as his new masterpiece.
“I gave this play an old school presentation,” Gray told the New Pittsburgh Courier. “A lot of times, today’s theater is shortened because of attention span, but I said this play deserves to be a full two hours and 20 minutes because it spans 40 years and I didn’t want to cheat the whole 40 years of this experience.”
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Such a horrifying experiment and truly shows how little the government cared about its black citizens. It’s interesting to see a play tackle such a long time period (from 1932 to 1972) though the 2 hour 40 minute time stamp is quite daunting. It’s the kinda stuff they make horror movies about really, a whole town infected with a virus from a shady government agency. The entire situation is just comically evil. While the article states that there are depictions of happy times in the men's lives but I’m interested in the way they’ve chosen to present this story to keep such a sad subject mater continuously impactful for the full runtime.
I never realized that it lasted 40 years. I knew only a little about the Tuskegee experiments, but didn’t know about the men it truly affected, and how it was done. The US Public Health Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention were the organizations that committed this atrocity. It is horrific that hundreds of men were not informed that they had syphilis for years, as well as given placebos and ineffective treatment methods. It is additionally horrific that after being told six months, it lasted 40 years. Once funding was lost, the study continued without telling the men they’d never be treated- despite penicillin being available. It only ended when a lack to the press occurred. People died, were infected, and were born with syphilis as a result of the experiment. The establishment of the Office for Human Research Protections is a good thing, but far too late.
Post a Comment