Emmanuel Kant's Ethical Ethics: The Tuskegee Syphilis Case

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, which aimed to figure out at long-term effects of untreated syphilis by studying 400 African American men who had the disease, began in 1932 . The study took place over several decades without any intervention despite the rise in Penicillin as a treatment in the 1950s . If administered, the medication could have saved the subjects from a great deal of pain and suffering. None of this information came to light until the 1970s when the study was published and despite the obvious ethical oversights, even when an investigation was opened, important questions of the researchers were never asked and documents that would have exposed the problems with the study were never pursued . The case is particularly egregious when analyzed through the lens of Emmanuel Kant’s ethics philosophy. Due to Kant’s focus on the concept of the Categorical Imperative, which postulates that for an action to be considered moral it must be universally moral, Kant would consider the Tuskegee case to be unethical because of the blatant dishonesty, lack of informed consent, and withholding of

Kant writes states “Autonomy is thus the ground of the dignity of the human and of every rational nature .” Autonomy is one of the foundations of being a human, according to Kant. Since the study was designed to look at the effects of untreated syphilis, the men in the study did not get treatment, which most of them would have likely sought. Because they were never told about the purpose of the study nor were they informed of their condition, there was no way for them to consent to what was happening to them. Because they were not given the information necessary to make these key life-governing decisions, it is immoral and unethical through the eyes of