Mar 28, 2024  
2022-2023 Undergraduate Academic Catalog 
    
2022-2023 Undergraduate Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

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HU 332 - Bioethics

3 lecture hours 0 lab hours 3 credits
Course Description
Bioethics is a broad interdisciplinary field encompassing consideration of the ethical significance of the practice and results of the biological sciences as well as the ethics of practice of the various health care professions. This course emphasizes ethical issues arising in health care delivery and its institutions. Topics include the nature of professional ethics; truth telling, informed consent and confidentiality; children, well-being and competence; decision-making with respect to the end of life; the ethics of reproductive technologies; and justice and access to health care. The polarity of the values of autonomy and community is a recurring theme of the course. (prereq: junior standing)
Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  • Identify ethical issues in their professional practice
  • Articulate the outlines of traditional consequentiality and deontological ethical theories
  • Articulate the nature of the demand for justification
  • Explain the requirements for the application of abstract principles to concrete situations
  • Demonstrate an understanding of the range of bioethical issues
  • Appreciate the responsiveness of bioethical thought and practice to technological and social change

Prerequisites by Topic
  • None 

Course Topics
  • The nature of morality
  • Responsibility
  • Utilitarianism
  • Kantian moral theory
  • Central professional values
  • Truth telling
  • Informed consent
  • Confidentiality
  • Abortion and infanticide
  • Euthanasia and assisted suicide
  • Justice in the distribution of health care
  • Human gene therapy
  • Reproductive technologies and surrogate parenting
  • Global AIDS epidemic

Coordinator
Dr. Jon Borowicz



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