PHIL 1200 - Medical Ethics

1. Use relevant central terms in the formal study of ethics (e.g. moral agency, character, consequentialism, deontology, impartiality, etc.).
2. Summarize arguments and principles put forth in normative ethics by specific philosophers (per Content area).
3. Critique normative ethical theories, identifying the logical and practical challenges implied by those positions with regard to medical ethics.
4. Use relevant central terms in the field of medical ethics, demonstrating the implicit connections between them and one another.
5. Explain ethical considerations around the distribution of health care resources in a pluralistic society.
6. Use ethical argument in order to identify and critique systemic injustice against race and other vulnerable populations in healthcare.
7. Summarize arguments and principles put forth by applied medical ethicists on specific topics (per Content area).
8. Evaluate current case studies in which the student takes a position that is defended in terms of ethical theory and a professional code of ethics within the field.

1. Introduction to the field of Ethics as a form of philosophical argument
2. Identification of a “moral dilemma” (conflicting duties or virtues)
3. Distinction between questions of individual and social morality; consideration of ethical theories which connect them to one another
4. Distinction between claims that express empirical fact and claims that express ethical principle/value (recognition of how such claims distinctly impact moral reasoning)
5. Introduction to the following concepts employed in medical ethics: patient rights (including confidentiality, consent, and directives), autonomy vs. paternalism, systemic injustice (in relation to race and other vulnerable groups), diverse criteria pertaining to personhood and death, acts of omission vs. acts of commission, ethical considerations for medical research, and patient advocacy.
6. Introduction to culturally and religiously relevant considerations around medical treatment (such as perceptions around death and dying, medical intervention, and Directives to Physician).
7. At least one fourth of the course will be spent specifically studying the following ethical theories:
   • Moral Relativism, including its strengths and challenges
   • Utilitarianism, including its strengths and challenges
   • Deontology (Kant’s respect for persons), including its strengths and challenges
   • Virtue Ethics (the role of character), including its strengths and challenges
   • At least one ethical theory that places high value on emotion as a central tenet to its foundation (e.g., Care Ethics or forms of feminism).
8. Connection between ethical theory (in number seven above) and the “Code of Ethics” for medical professional organizations (such as the American Pharmacists Association or the American Nurses Association).
9. Application of ethical theories (in number seven above), in comparison to one another, and to at least three issues in health care today (e.g. euthanasia, abortion, human cloning, genetic engineering, etc.). Students will compare ethical theories to one another by applying them to contemporary case studies in health care ethics.
10. Introduction to diverse views regarding the right to treatment and the distribution of scarce resources.
11. Introduction to contrasting arguments put forth by at least two medical ethicists today who represent different positions on the same moral issue.
12. Introduction to the use of ethical argument in order to identify and critique systemic injustice against racial groups and other vulnerable populations in healthcare.