General Catalog 2023-24

(Same as Society and Genetics M166.) Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Consideration of critical ethical concepts as they apply to health-care practice, medical decision-making, and medical technology development and use. Consideration of concepts drawn from philosophy, literature and culture, and political history including freedom, equality, justice, vitality, knowledge, kinship, mercy, illness, and disability. Examination of how concept of human dignity should shape health-care decisions such as physician-aided dying or selective abortion; proper relationship between history and concept of human rights and distribution of medical resources; how political and ethical category equality should structure development and use of genetic editing; how health-care concept of patient autonomy relates to political concept of liberty or freedom; how to evaluate good life, or what philosophers call flourishing, in medical treatment decisions for individuals or development of therapies. P/NP or letter grading.