Second Writing Assignment

In 1964, patients at a hospital in New York were injected by doctors with live cancer cells as part of a medical experiment. The patients were not told the true nature of the injections they were receiving; instead they were told that the injections were part of their treatment for whatever medical problem had originally brought them to the hospital. The patients were not in any danger from the injections. (You are to assume this.) There was no chance that the cancer cells would take root in their bodies and grow. The doctors simply wanted to measure the rate at which the human body would reject live cancer cells. The doctors explained that they kept the true nature of the injections secret from the patients because they thought they could gain valuable knowledge from the experiment-knowledge that might play a role in finding a cure for cancer-and they didn't think that anyone would consent to the injections if he or she knew that the injections contained cancer cells. Explain how an (a.) act utilitarian, (b.) a rule utilitarian (also known as a "rule consequentialist" for the purposes of this paper), and (c.) a Kantian would reason about the rightness or wrongness of what the doctors did. Explain what factors each one would take into consideration in his or her reasoning, and describe what conclusion you think each would be likely to arrive at. Be sure that your answer to this question is written in such a way that somebody who hadn't attended our class or done the course readings would grasp the basic idea of each of the above-mentioned philosophical positions.

(Note: Kant has two tests for the rightness of actions. One is covered in chapter 11 of the Shafer-Landau book; the other is covered in chapter 12. In discussing how a Kantian would reason about the above case, you should consider both tests.)