Medical Ethics
(Phil 131C) Fall 2022
Mon/Wed 4:00-5:20pm
Location: Anteater Learning Pavilion 2500 (map here)
Professor: Brianne Donaldson
Email: b.donaldson@UCI.edu
Description:
The last fifty years of scientific knowledge and technological developments have led to numerous ethical dilemmas that neither medicine nor law alone can adequately address. The emergence of biomedical ethics strains to fill this gap, confronting crucial new questions such as how to define life and death, how to allocate limited resources, how to justify research harms, and issues of social disparity and justice. This course will provide students the philosophical foundations of western normative ethics, with reference to feminist ethics and non-western views. During the term, we will practice utilizing these ethical tools to examine cases related to: autonomy and confidentiality, pharmaceutical clinical trials, research on animals, reproductive technologies, and end-of-life decisions.
Opening Recitation:
“Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
–Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
Student Learning Objectives:
1. Articulate 3-4 normative ethical theories in the west.
2. Explain fundamental concepts in bioethics
3. Identity key tensions within contemporary bioethical issues
4. Gain experience in completing a clinical Ethics Work-Up on case studies with reference to general appeals and their philosophical underpinnings
Professor: Brianne Donaldson
Email: b.donaldson@UCI.edu
Description:
The last fifty years of scientific knowledge and technological developments have led to numerous ethical dilemmas that neither medicine nor law alone can adequately address. The emergence of biomedical ethics strains to fill this gap, confronting crucial new questions such as how to define life and death, how to allocate limited resources, how to justify research harms, and issues of social disparity and justice. This course will provide students the philosophical foundations of western normative ethics, with reference to feminist ethics and non-western views. During the term, we will practice utilizing these ethical tools to examine cases related to: autonomy and confidentiality, pharmaceutical clinical trials, research on animals, reproductive technologies, and end-of-life decisions.
Opening Recitation:
“Do I contradict myself? / Very well then I contradict myself, / (I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
–Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself"
Student Learning Objectives:
1. Articulate 3-4 normative ethical theories in the west.
2. Explain fundamental concepts in bioethics
3. Identity key tensions within contemporary bioethical issues
4. Gain experience in completing a clinical Ethics Work-Up on case studies with reference to general appeals and their philosophical underpinnings