This course will survey the writings of the various president’s bioethics councils beginning in 1974 to the most recent bioethics commission established by President Obama. This course will consider the intersection bioethics, law, and public policy by looking at the role and recommendations given by the various councils. By reviewing the writings of the various council by a topical approach, and considering the history and surrounding political circumstances, students will critically engage with the material.
By taking a deep-dive into seminal and contemporary cases as well as the surrounding literatures, this skills-based course will build students’ competency with the methods of case analysis that lies at the core of medical, research, and healthcare ethics. Cases will be drawn from clinical, research, healthcare, and policy ethics. By the end of the course students will have gained an appreciation for the interplay between theoretical considerations and real-world cases and will have gained proficiency in their ability to analyze the weigh the morally relevant variables at play in novel medical and healthcare cases. Bioethics field-specific skills that we will work on include concept articulation through in-class discussion and writing (both research paper and short answer/longer essay questions).
The goal of this course is to explore the emergence of bioethics as a field. In so doing, we examine bioethics’ major events (cases, laws, court decisions, and reports), institutions (hospital ethics consult services and IRBS), professionalization (journals and jobs), and concepts (autonomy, beneficence, justice, etc) chronologically to explore its development. We begin by unearthing ancient, pre-modern, and early twentieth century ideas toward medicine, science, and the body. Next, we examine how the atrocities of World War II and the Nuremberg Codes catapulted us into a new paradigm of human subject research and doctor-patient relationships. Following this, we will analyze the historical developments in the twentieth century that led to the birth of bioethics as a field, including the use of the term “bioethics” in the 1960s and 1970. Finally, we explore the key controversial cases of the times and the development of technologies and institutions that will bring us through to the Covid Pandemic and current moment.
Topics explored include research ethics, end-of-life decision making, doctor-patient relationships, genetics, public health ethics, reproductive ethics, organ transplantation, scarce resource allocation, and more. Frameworks employed feature gender, race, ableism, justice, biopolitics, sexuality, and religion. Technological developments emphasized are human genome mapping, IVF, organ transplantation, ventilators, stem cells and cloning, and gene editing. Lastly, institutions highlighted include IRBs, presidential commissions, and hospital consult services.
The broad intent of this course is to highlight the importance of ethics in biomedical research and to explore how critical ethical thinking can be used to analyze personal decision-making, public regulation, and the law concerning advanced biomedical sciences/technologies and their clinical applications. This course will (a) provide a foundation in traditional biomedical research ethics including its history and regulatory framework; (b) a consideration of the ethical issues that arise in particular subcategories of biomedical research, such as in genomics, COVID related research, and research conducted in low- and middle-income countries; and (c) instruct students in how to apply ethics to contemporary issues in research and technology.