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Bioethics Courses -- Fall 2022

Fall 2022 Bioethics Courses:

 

BIOE 5700 – Public Health Ethics
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd

 
Public health ethics is concerned with assessing the adequacy of societal and other structures to enable people to lead healthy lives, and with making policy recommendations to achieve this, should there be shortfalls.  Unlike clinical- or research-ethics, that have been at the center of bioethics since its inception, public health ethics is a more recent field and takes a broader perspective.  While clinical and research ethics are typically concerned with what individual patients or research participants may be owed, public health ethics focusses on the population level, and on what governments at different levels, industry groups or other stakeholders should and should not do to protect or improve population health. This course combines a review of the structure and underpinnings of major public health ethics frameworks with a series of pertinent case studies, including policy on clean air and water, firearm control, tobacco use, healthy eating, fluoridation of drinking water, cancer screening and vaccinations.  In roughly equal measure, the course will integrate a review of empirical evidence and normative justifications of policy and practice, considering also cutting-edge debates in the areas of the social and political determinants of health, and corporate social responsibility.

 

 

BIOE 6030 – Clinical Ethics
Instructor: Aliza Narva
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:30p

Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 


In this course, we will explore paradigmatic clinical ethics debates spanning the life course. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will consider some of the challenges in clinical decision-making for and with patients, such as assessing patient capacity, deciding for others, rationing at the bedside, and requests for assistance in dying. We will also examine hospital policies related to triage and allocation of scarce medical resources, including ventilators, vaccines, and organs.  We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, legal cases, and contemporaneous reports related to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate the live ethical challenges of clinical practice today.

 

BIOE 6010/4010 - 401/402 - Introduction to Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesday OR Thursday, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 

This course is intended to serve as an introduction to the academic field of bioethics.  Students will be introduced to classic papers, basic concepts, field history and important legal cases in the field. But rather than being a broad survey course of many content areas in bioethics, this course will examine how bioethical arguments are constructed with the objective of mastering both the critique of bioethical arguments and their construction. Therefore, most importantly, this course serves as a “methods course” for learning the skill of persuasive bioethics argument, i.e., “the art of conversion.” In some of the course sessions, we will focus on the analysis of arguments made by others. In many of the weeks of the course, we will focus on the process of constructing our own, effective bioethical arguments.

 

 

BIOE 5550 – Neuroethics
Instructor: Jonathan Moreno
Time: Tuesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p                                                                                                            
Location: BLK 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive

Neuroethics might well be the most rapidly growing area within bioethics; indeed, in some respects neuroethics has grown as an independent field, with its own journals, professional society and institutional centers. This growth over the past decade is partly attributable to the growth of neuroscience itself and to the challenging philosophical and moral questions it inherently raises. A 2012 Royal Society report, observes that an increasingly mechanistic understanding of the brain raises a host of ethical, legal, and social implications. This has laid the foundation for the emergent field of Neuroethics, which examines ethical issues governing the conceptual and practical developments of neuroscience. Irrespective of their validity, even the claims that modern neuroscience entails the re-examination of complex and sensitive topics like free will, consciousness, identity, and responsibility raises significant ethical issues. As such, neuroethics asks questions that extend beyond the usual umbrella of biomedical ethics. This course will, therefore, consider the new knowledge and ways of learning about the brain from scientific and ethico-legal and social standpoints. We will examine the core themes of neuroethics, including cognitive enhancement, the nature of the self and personhood, neuroimaging and privacy, and the ways that all these themes are brought together in matters affecting national security. 

 

 

BIOE 5750-401 - Health Policy [Cross-Listed as HCMG 250/HCMG 850]
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:30p-5:00p
Location: Wharton

The U.S. health care system is the world's largest, most technologically advanced, most expensive, with uneven quality, and an unsustainable cost structure. This multi-disciplinary course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. How did the United States get here? The course will examine the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum.  As the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next decade, the U.S. will witness tremendous changes that will shape the American health care system for the next 50 years or more. The course will examine potential reforms, including those offered by liberals and conservatives and information that can be extracted from health care systems in other developed countries. Throughout, lessons will integrate the disciplines of health economics, health and social policy, law and political science to elucidate key principles.  This course will provide students a broad overview of the current U.S. healthcare system. The course will focus on the challenges facing the health care system, an in-depth understanding of the Affordable Care Act, and its potential impact upon health care access, delivery, cost, and quality.

Please send any questions to Rashon.Clark@pennmedicine.upenn.edu