FTHS BIOSCIENCE ACADEMY BIOETHICS
Cohort 3MR. RICHARD GEIB
2007-2008 Academic School Year
SEMESTER ONE
Philosophies | Medical Ethics: Theory and Abuses | The Food Cycle | End of Life Issues | Health Care and Equity | Public Health in ActionSEMESTER TWO
Trans- and Post- Humanism, Part I | Reproductive Issues, Part I | Trans- and Post- Humanism, Part II | Reproductive Issues, Part II | The Parthian Shot
PHILOSOPHIES
Essential Philosophies: Idealism, Realism, Pragmatism, Existentialism
Philosophy Applied: Test Scenarios
Opposing and irreconcilable values and difficult ethical choices1
MEDICAL ETHICS: THEORY AND ABUSES
Hippocratic Oath: Ancient and modern
Medical Abuses: The most unfortunate 20th century
Nazis, Communists, Tuskeegee experiments, drug testing in 3rd world.
Ethics for Health Care Workers: Professional Codes of Behavior and the Law
Confidentiality, privacy, paternalism, and "culturally appropriate" care
THE FOOD CYCLE: ANIMALS AND PLANTS AND HOW WE USE THEM
Medical Experimentation on Laboratory Animals
PETA and "Human Exceptionalism"
American Farming and Eating: The "slow food" movement and its critics.
TERMINUS: END OF LIFE ISSUES
The Phenomenon of Suicide
Rash, premeditated; autonomy and "the law."
Right or Wrong?
Capital Punishment in Contemporary America
An ancient argument rages anew.
Withholding and Withdrawing Life Support
Biological and biographical life; brain death and persistent vegitative state; DNR and advanced directives; and hospice care and organ donation.
Euthanasia: Practices and Principles
Active and passive
TOO LITTLE BUTTER OVER TOO MUCH BREAD: THE ALLOCATION OF SCARCE HEALTH CARE RESOURCES
Domestic Health Insurance and Justice
History of health insurance in America and current realities; proposals from within and examples from overseas; health care reform in California and the United States; no easy choices.
International Public Health and Equity
"Preferential treatment for the poor" and pros and cons of Cuban social model; AIDS and public health; the struggle for global consensus.
NGO AND WHO: "PUBLIC HEALTH IN ACTION"
Main Actors at Play: International Bureaucracies and Unofficial Altruism
The main-line world health agencies and non-governmental organizations
FIRST SEMESTER FINAL EXAM
Many Possible Futures: Plan your work and work your plan!
THE DELICATE, DIFFICULT CONVERSATION: BEGINNING OF LIFE ISSUES, PART I
Faith Versus Reason: Must It Be So?
The theory of evolution taught in science classrooms in public schools; what is "science," what is not "science" -- and why that is important; what we know and don't know; and Intelligent Design as an alternative theory?
TRANS- AND POST-HUMANISM: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE DANGEROUS, PART I
Introduction: "Human Exceptionalism" Revisited
Science and medecine, the alleviation of unecessary suffering, and "human progress" as reason helps mankind help itself; hubris, Frankenstein's Monster, and "playing God."
The Genetics Revolution: Human Genome Project, Genetic Engineering, Genetically Modified Organisms
Nosce te ipsum for real: privacy concerns and possible benefits; the dangers of manipulating the "Book of Life," genetic equity and "designer babies"; genetic "diversity" at risk among food, plant, and animal/human life.
Cloning: Controversial theory and commonplace practice: theapeutic and reproductive cloning.
Stem Cell: Possibilities and Perils
Adult, embryonic, adult, and chord "stem" cells; the idea of "personhood" introduced.
THE DELICATE, DIFFICULT CONVERSATION: BEGINNING OF LIFE ISSUES, PART II
The Dance of Courtship, Sexuality, and Conception: Pre-marital sex, sex education in public schools, in vitro fertilization, and abortion.
Emerging adults, budding sexuality, and the 'rents; abstinence and right vs. wrong; sexually transmitted diseases and public health; sex education and youth in the schools; conception, contraception, adoption, and abortion; Roe vs. Wade, Pro-Choice, and Pro-Life; righteous anger, the ambiguity of the majority, and (seemingly) endless discomfiture.
TRANS- AND POST-HUMANISM: THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE DANGEROUS, PART II
Nanotechnology: Today and tomorrow: from the drawing board to production and use.
Not Man, Not Machine: Moore's Law as the catalyst: the subsequent blending of organic and inorganic matter in homo sapies, our "post-human" future, and the concept of "singularity."
THE PARTHIAN SHOT
Parting Podcast for FTHS Bioethics Seniors
NOT copyrighted - SPREAD THE WEALTH!
"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation."
-- Thomas Jefferson