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Summer Courses

 April 26, 2011 |  Allhoff Fritz |  Blog |  

During each of WMU’s two summer sessions, I’m teaching Biomedical Ethics (Phil 3340) online.  If you’re interested, have a look at the course syllabus; feel free to email me with questions!  Here’s the description:

Course Description:   Biomedical ethics is composed of two separate fields:  bioethics and
medical ethics.  Bioethics is the study of the ethics of life (and death), and includes familiar topics
such as abortion, cloning, stem cell research, allocation of scarce medical resources, and euthanasia.
We shall spend approximately the first two-third of the course on these issues.  For the last third of
the course, we shall discuss topics in medical ethics, which is concerned with “micro” issues such as
the moral underpinnings of doctor-patient relationships as well as “macro” issues such as the
structures of medical institutions or the duties that societies have to provide health care for those in
need.  No previous coursework in philosophy is required for this course and fundamental concepts in
moral philosophy (e.g., consequentialism and deontology) will be explained as they become relevant.
This is a course on theoretical (as opposed to clinical) bioethics.

Biomedical ethics is composed of two separate fields:  bioethics and medical ethics. Bioethics is the study of the ethics of life (and death), and includes familiar topics such as abortion, cloning, stem cell research, allocation of scarce medical resources, and euthanasia.  We shall spend approximately the first two-third of the course on these issues.  For the last third of the course, we shall discuss topics in medical ethics, which is concerned with “micro” issues such as the moral underpinnings of doctor-patient relationships as well as “macro” issues such as the structures of medical institutions or the duties that societies have to provide health care for those in need.  No previous coursework in philosophy is required for this course and fundamental concepts in moral philosophy (e.g., consequentialism and deontology) will be explained as they become relevant.  This is a course on theoretical (as opposed to clinical) bioethics.