Ethics of Medical Technology

Catalog description

This class will introduce students to ethical debates regarding modern medical technologies, such as gene therapy, in-vitro fertilization, and cloning. These debates expose deep problems in our assumptions about individual choice, personal liberty, and fairness and equality in a whole society. Despite not fitting neatly into traditional categories of applied ethics or political philosophy, debates about medical technologies raise urgent questions, such as the limits of our obligations to one another in a technologically sophisticated marketplace and the extent to which an individual's body counts as the sort of thing with respect to which he has an unassailable right. In this way, the class will be relevant to law, business, technology, medicine, and many other fields. Students will learn how to adopt positions for more standard debates in applied ethics and political philosophy. Furthermore, students will learn how to defend their positions with rational argument and how to address criticism effectively. This course fulfills an Applied Ethics course requirement. Fulfills: Value Theory for PHL majors