PHIL1205 - 02 - Health Care Ethics

(ER) Ethical Reasoning (M) Moral Reasoning

After an overview of the various normative frameworks for making moral decicions and judgements that moral philosophies and moral theologies propose, the course will focus on intelligent decision making about the ethical issues and dilemmas that arise in the field now known as bioethics. Among the topics considered are: patient choices and informed consent, proxy decision making, advance directives, brain death, withholding life-prolonging treatments and feeding tubes, diagnostic and experimental interventions on human embryos, cloning, artificial reproductive techniques, surrogate motherhood, preimplantation and prenatal testing, treatment and destruction (abortion) of fetuses, treatment of seriously defective babies, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, medical research on human subjects, transplanting organs from dead and living donors, the ethical implications of genetic medicine and genomic information, and the ethical issues arising in managed care payment systems.