Bioethics – Course Outline

Bioethics is a developing field that examines ethical issues emerging from biotechnology and medicine. Many difficult ethical questions have arisen from the exponential growth of technology and the health-care industry. We will be examining the following questions: When should we initiate or withdraw life support? Who should make the decision? How should organs be allocated to transplant candidates? Should parents be given control over the genetic make-up of their children? Should the rights of fetuses trump those of pregnant women? How can we justly distribute scarce and expensive medical resources? How important is it to keep bioinformation private? Do we owe moral consideration to animals? Is enhancing human capacities through technology ever morally wrong?

Upon completion of this course you will be able to:  Understand the key issues in bioethics and the different positions taken on them  Appreciate the arguments for and against the differing positions  discuss the issues with confidence  deliberate independently about issues that arise in the future  come to your own well reasoned conclusions on various issues  identify, evaluate and construct arguments  apply critical thinking to real life cases

Required Texts:

Marianne Talbot, Bioethics: An Introduction Cambridge University press (2012)

Other readings will be made available