Courses:

This page includes a calendar of lecture topics and key dates.

Many difficult ethical questions have arisen from the growth of biomedical research and the health-care industry since World War II. Questions include: should doctors be allowed to help patients end their lives? If so, when and how? Should embryos be cloned for research and/or reproduction? Should parents be given control over the genetic make-up of their children? What types of living things are appropriate to use as research subjects? How should we distribute scarce and expensive medical resources?

Drawing on philosophy, history and anthropology, this course will demonstrate how problems in bioethics can be approached from a variety of perspectives. However, the course does not seek to provide answers to ethical questions. Our intent is to teach two things. First, how do you recognize ethical or moral problems in science and medicine? When something does not feel right (whether cloning, or failing to clone) - what exactly is the nature of the discomfort? What kind of tensions and conflicts exist within biomedicine? Second, how can you think productively about ethical and moral problems? What processes create them? Why do people disagree about them? How can an understanding of philosophy or history help resolve them? By the end of the course students will hopefully have sophisticated and nuanced ideas about problems in bioethics, even if they do not have comfortable answers.

You must very carefully read the assigned texts in advance of each class. Some of the texts are dense and difficult. If you don't understand a text first time around, then read it again.

There will be two one hour lectures per week. You must attend all the lectures.

HASS-CI subjects offer students substantial opportunity for oral expression. Each of you will be assigned to a weekly one hour discussion session, where you will be expected to participate actively. Enrollment in these sections will be capped at 18.

Each of you will give a formal presentation, 10-15 minutes long, on a subject determined in discussion with the instructor leading your recitation section. You will be strongly encouraged to coordinate your presentation with one of your papers.

HASS-CI subjects require at least 20 pages of writing divided among a number of assignments, at least one of which is revised and resubmitted. In this class you will write three 4-6 page papers, and one 8-10 page final paper, for a minimum of 20 pages. You will revise and resubmit your second paper in consultation with your instructor. Topics for the first three papers will be assigned to you. You will be free to choose the topic of your final paper.

A writing tutor will be available for this course. We encourage you to set up an appointment to discuss any of your papers.

The TAs will be following standard procedure in dealing with late papers: a third of a letter grade comes off for every day the paper is late.

As you surely know, all your writing must be your own. This means that anything quoted verbatim must appear within quotation marks and be accompanied by a footnote that identifies its source. And it means that you may not paraphrase a person's writing without making it explicit that you are doing so. Changing the words does not make it your writing. And it means that whenever another person's insights or ideas appear in your paper you must credit that person in a footnote.

If you are in any doubt about whether something you are writing amounts to plagiarism, talk about it with your TA before you hand in your paper.

There is no textbook for the class. Various readings are assigned for each class session.

Your grade will be determined in the following way: