Spring Research Topics

Activity #6

The Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee

My first primary source, relating to Dr. Carter's teachings in Black Religions and the Arts, is "Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro", a research report on the discoveries of an inhumane research that studied Syphilis, a sexually-transmitted infection, in Tuskegee black men without their consent.

It occurred from 1932-1972, and it was originally a study for treatments to the disease, recruiting 399 poor African American men who already had Syphilis. However, it shifted into an analysis of what would happen to non-treated people, and these men had no clue what the study was ever about. In fact, at some point, a treatment was discovered but the researchers did not give it to them. It was public knowledge, as this primary source is a research report from 1954, 18 years before it was ended. It was framed as a government health program, and so community members of Tuskegee did not do anything about it, but even then, nobody did anything about the fact that untreated men were being left untreated.

This case is similar to the study on Henrietta Lacks, in which she was never told that the researchers looked into her cell line. While most of the text in the primary source are scientific data that would make no sense to me, what I would be looking at is how exactly they refer to their test subjects, who were human beings, but in the eyes of the research, were expendable for the sake of research. Their personal lives did not matter, instead, they were data that these researchers extracted from. In fact, because of the lack of treatment, women had contracted syphilis. A preventable situation that didn't matter to them.

Relating back to Dr. Carter's studies, I would hope to find why exactly the researchers and even the general community of people lacked the ethics to realize what they were doing was completely wrong. Would things have been different if the test subjects were white men? The ignorance from people is something that probably arose through the forced imagination of matter that created racism.

ExxonMobil's Anti-Electric Vehicle Advertisement

My second primary source, relating to Dr. Schield's teachings in Oil and Gender, is ExxonMobil's anti-EV advertisement in 2023. It depicts a troublesome world where everyone is connected by wires, and thus their movement and capabilities as a human are severely limited. But fret not, combustion engine vehicles is here to save the day, providing the freedom that everyone needs.

This advertisement is a clear attack on a world that is becoming more electrified, and most specifically, cars. In the 21st century, alternatives to oil-based energy are becoming increasingly more available and promising a more sustainable future. However, this creates a threat to the long-dominating oil companies, who want to frame electric vehicles as burdens to society, whereas true freedom can only be experienced through driving a combustion engine vehicle.

In 2023, this advertisement seems absolutely ridiculous, and this time, the general public does agree, as the ad has been heavily criticized and has now been taken down. Just like the ads that we looked at in Dr. Schield's lectures, ExxonMobil tries to integrate themselves into family, emphasizing the points that a functioning society relies on oil dependence. In the modern day, the general public has grown to realize the environmental costs of oil-powered vehicles. The main problem with electric vehicles is the expensive cost and short mileage, which is a much better problem than actually harming our world. ExxonMobil is literally creating a false narrative, a non-existent problem. They are literally lying in front of the world, and it clearly shows that they are just purely profit hungry. By framing electric vehicles in this way, people will be hating them for completely invalid reasons and be unwilling to accept the fact that the world is moving forward. Opposition from oil companies instead of support will only make the adoption of electric vehicles into society harder and longer. Advertisement has a lot of power over perception.

Miyazaki's Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

My third primary source, relating to Dr. Pitt's teachings in Plants and Japan, is the film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, directed by Hayao Miyazaki. It is a story about an apocalyptic future environment that humans have caused, and the main character, Nausicaä, aims to make peace between the two conflicting worlds. (I haven't watched it yet)

In the film, there are giant mutant insects that inhabit the Toxic Jungle, which mankind fears. Nausicaä is a 16 year-old princess from the kingdom of the Valley of the Wind, and has the ability to talk with these insects. The setting of the film is a dystopia that humans have directly caused, and instead of saving it, they aim to destroy it.

In being a film by Miyazaki, the themes of the movie are clearly grounded in real world problems, similar to Princess Mononoke. Throughout the movie, we'll see the perspective of the regular humans who probably hate these mutant insects, but their perspective will probably be ignorant of the reality that they are unconsciously or consciously unaware of.

Works Cited

Shafer, J. K., et al. “Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro. A Prospective Study of the Effect on Life Expectancy.” The Milbank Memorial Fund Quarterly, vol. 32, no. 3, 1954, pp. 262–74. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/3348281. Accessed 10 Mar. 2026.
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, Studio Ghibli/Topcraft, 1984.
ExxonMobil Anti-EV Ad: https://vimeo.com/845125155 (No longer officially public)
Group of men in Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee: https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/images/GentlemenWithDog.gif
Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind Poster: https://www.themodern.org/sites/default/files/nausicaa_still_0.jpg

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