Teaching

In Winter of 2024, I am teaching an in-person undergraduate course "Cases in Bioethics."

In Summer of 2024, I am teaching an on-line graduate course "Biomedical Research Ethics."

And in the Fall of 2024, I am teaching an on-line graduate course "History of Medical Ethics and Bioethics" and the undergraduate "Cases in Bioethics" course.

Cases in Bioethics

BIOETHCS 3000 - Cases Studes in Medical and Healthcare Ethics

Fall 2023

In this course, we take a deeper look at the key cases that frame bioethics debates today. By taking a deep-dive into seminal and contemporary case as well as the accompanying literatures, this skills-based course will build students' facility with the methods of case analysis at the core of medical and healthcare ethics. Cases will be drawn from clinical ethics, research ethics, and health care policy. 

History of Bioethics

BIOETHCS 7030 - History of Medical Ethics and Bioethics

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). 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.

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, abelism, justice, biopolitics, sexuality, and religion. Technological developments emphasized are mapping the genome, IVF, organ transplantation, ventilators, stem cells and cloning, and gene editing. Lastly, institutions highlighted include IRBs, presidential commissions, and hospital consult services.