Disability Bioethics

Catalog description

What values and assumptions underlie our conceptualizations of disability? What can we learn from the lived experiences of disability? How should these insights inform fundamental concepts, priorities, and analyses in bioethics? Even though developments in medicine, clinical research, and public health often disproportionately impact people with disabilities, disabled people have been systemically marginalized within these fields and within bioethical discourse. This course introduces students to the distinctive approach known as disability bioethics. Disability bioethics is characterized by 1) rejection of biomedical interpretations of disability, 2) methodological primacy of the perspectives of disabled people, and 3) anti-ableism. We will explore this theoretical lens and its application to a range of issues, such as biomedical technology, guardianship for healthcare decisions, futility judgments, and public health emergencies. Offered as BETH 320 and BETH 420 . Counts as a Human Diversity & Commonality course. Counts as a Moral & Ethical Reasoning course.