Art and Entertainment Exploring Clinical Research Through Creative Minds

CVS brought Atlanta’s CREATIVE Minds and Clinical Research together, combining the creativity of the culture with clinical trials, with hopes of reigniting Melanated Participation.

Per usual, Sheen Magazine was On The Scene and the location was CVS’s Health Clinical Trial Services: Evening of Art & Entertainment Exploring Clinical Research Through Atlanta’s Creative Minds—presented by Atlanta Creative and Performing Arts & Clinical Research

Clinical research merged with Creative Minds at the Russel Center in Atlanta, in the form of theatre, poetry, and music. Spawned by CVS’ Health Clinical Trial Services Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Owen Gerrick and Head of Equity, Leticia Murray and staged by Coco Studios and Hispanola Productions. Artists wrote and performed pieces with intentions of influencing Melanated—Black People, to participate in clinical trials, despite America’s dangerous history of misleading—especially the Diaspora, but truthfully anyone, about pharmaceutical medicine, holistic medicine, and healing.

Directed by Shuntel Renay, America’s Next Top Model—Tocarra Jones and Atlanta Creative and Performing Arts thespians performed comical scenes depicting the drama, trauma, chaos, and confusion concerning Black People, western medicine, and clinical trials. Poetesses and Poets perorated about their personal experiences with faulty medicine and distorted information. Musicians set the auditory tone via song, rap, and instrumentation.

Attendees were reminded of various medical assaults on the Melanated community such as, the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis experiment, in which “researchers” misinformed and failed to educate Black sharecroppers that they were infected with syphilis, while observing the disease worsening within the victims, then denying the treatment of the infected Men when the penicillin cure later became available. While that is one of the primary atrocities used as a reference as to why many Melanated people are wary—there are many ways the shadow American government used Melanated people as test subjects for their research. From Melanated persons being operated on against their free will, to the CIA releasing genetically modified mosquitoes into non-white communities. Author Harriet Washington deep dives into this subject in her critically acclaimed New York Times Bestselling exposé—Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present.

Everybody has choices and it’s imperative to research and choose wisely as it pertains to your health and detach from limited ideas about healing. If affected by an illness, the objective is to be cured, healed, and healthy.