Bioethics ((3))

Catalog description

This course addresses some of the key issues in contemporary bioethics. The first part of the course focuses on an issue central to several contemporary bioethics debates: moral status. In this portion of the class, we explore the question of what gives human beings moral status by looking at several types of cases at the ¿margins of personhood,¿ including ones at both the beginning and end of life. Next, we address the issue of altering personhood through neurocognitive enhancement. Finally, we step back from focusing on individual persons to address several systemic bioethical issues, including racial and ethnic disparities in medicine, pharmaceutical patents, and justice in international health research.