PHL 205 Biomedical Ethics

Lecture Hours: 4
Credits: 4

Covers ethical decision-making regarding health and well-being across a variety of cultural contexts, informed by the historical development of bioethics as a discipline. Investigates ethical questions triggered by contemporary developments-such as changing technology-along with those questions which have persisted since antiquity. Canvasses professional ethical codes and explicitly-stated obligations in order to identify the health care professional’s special responsibilities in arriving at decisions which often have profound consequences.

Prerequisite: Placement into WR 115 (or higher), or completion of WR 090 (or higher) with a grade of C or better; or consent of instructor.
Recommended: Placement into WR 121Z (or higher), or completion of WR 115 (or higher) with a grade of C or better.

Student Learning Outcomes:

Clarify the issues at stake in health care decisions in both personal and professional settings.
Concretely define key values in health care and explain how these values interact in a variety of cases.
Utilize knowledge of past oversights and prejudice to uncover embedded biases and assumptions in contemporary ethical dilemmas.
Integrate personal values with professional codes of ethics in particular areas of health care.
Make principled recommendations for decisions in a variety of cases.
Evaluate the different ways that patient-professional relationships can be configured in terms of rights and responsibilities.
Write coherent essays using textual support, documentation (where applicable), and standard grammar/mechanics.

Statewide General Education Outcomes:

Interpret and engage in the Arts and Letters, making use of the creative process to enrich quality of life.
Critically analyze values and ethics within a range of human experience and expression to engage more fully in local and global issues.

Cultural Literacty Outcome:

Identify and analyze complex practices, values, and beliefs and the culturally and historically defined meanings of difference.

Content Outline

Key Skills in Applied Philosophy
- Good reasoning
- Common fallacies
- Respect for others
- How to write a philosophy essay
Key Ethical Theories
- Self-interest and desire theory
- Consequentialist vs. Non-consequentialist approaches to ethics
- Monistic vs. Pluralistic theories of ethics
Development of Bioethics in History
- Ethical questions important in antiquity
- Contrast of pre-Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment worldviews
- Impact of technology on ethical decisions in the modern world
Case Studies
- Recommended topics
  - Moral status of the unborn
    - Abortion, adoption, and abandonment
    - Legal issues surrounding the murder of a pregnant woman (two deaths, or one?)
    - Rights of the mother and rights of the unborn
  - End-of-life issues
    - “Right to die” movements
    - Active vs. passive euthanasia
    - Quality of life in old age
      - Potential issues
        
        Patient consent
        
        Moral responsibility of health care professionals involved
        
        True humaneness of the death
  - Genetics
    - Selecting a child’s genetic traits
    - Defining “human”
  - Consent and patient autonomy
    - Making medical decisions for others
      - Children
      - Mentally disabled
      - Role of emotions in ethical decision-making: patients who are overwhelmed by pain, bad news, or other extenuating circumstances
    - Medical malpractice
    - Opting out of treatment for religious reasons
    - Patient-professional relationships
  - Population control and management
    - Marriage and birthrates-should they be controlled or regulated
    - National health care policy
    - Resource allocation-hospital beds to organ transplants
  - Research on living subjects
    - Dissection and vivisection
    - Modern human and animal testing
“Quacks,” Shamans, and Well-Being Culture: How Do We Define Legitimate Care?
- How have different societies protected citizens from “quacks,” people who would pretend medical knowledge for a profit?
  - Desperate patients
  - Development of legal discourse surrounding health
- Anti-rationalist discourses in religion
  - Faith-healing, ancient and modern
  - Spirituality in modern medicine: perspectives of non-traditional medical practitioners
    - Well-being culture and holistic medicine