Revised 9/2025
PHI 227 - Biomedical Ethics (3 CR.)
Course Description
Introduces medical ethics with an emphasis on practical moral issues faced by professionals in medicine, public health and related fields. Explores major theories, concepts and terminology in the field of bioethics. Lecture 3 hours. Total 3 hours per week.
General Course Purpose
The purpose of this course is to introduce the basic framework and major debates in biomedical ethics.
Course Prerequisites/Corequisites
None.
Course Objectives
- General Learning Outcomes
- Communication/Critical Thinking
- Evaluate important dilemmas in healthcare and biology (such as informed consent, human reproduction, and euthanasia) in terms of major ethical theories.
- Make an argument for a position on a topic in bioethics, with replies to counter-arguments.
- Professional Readiness
- Explain key concepts related to situations likely to occur in a professional healthcare setting (such as but not limited to `death, `whole brain death', `informed consent', `extraordinary means', `euthanasia', and `assisted reproductive technology').
- Written Communication
- Describe, analyze, and evaluate biomedical issues in written form.
- Communication/Critical Thinking
- Course Outcomes
- Moral Reasoning and Theory
- Apply core ethical theories (such as but not limited to utilitarianism, deontology, divine command theory, rights theory, virtue theory, emotivism, cultural relativism, and egoism) as well as the four principles of bioethics (respect for autonomy, nonmaleficence, beneficence, and justice) to real-world biomedical situations.
- Professional Duties and Readiness
- Identify the specific duties of medical professionals while considering the moral foundations of those duties, and apply those duties to real-life case studies.
- Ethical Issues in Medicine
- Identify, consider, and evaluate the most important and relevant ethical issues in modern medicine and be able to apply core ethical theories to issues such as but not limited to: Human and animal research, academic freedom, stem cell research, use of genetic technologies, beginning and end of life issues, privacy, confidentiality, mandatory testing, advanced directives, resource allocation (generally and in emergency situations), disparities in access to healthcare, organ donation, and eugenics, and the role of artificial intelligence (AI) agents in the healthcare system.
- Moral Reasoning and Theory
Major Topics to Be Included
- Problems surrounding the changing definition of death, life and personhood
- Truth-telling and confidentiality
- Informed Consent and autonomy
- Rights of patients
- Suicide, Euthanasia and Physician-Assisted Suicide
- In vitro fertilization and other forms of Assisted Reproduction Technology (ART)
- Surrogate motherhood
- Ethics of organ and other transplantation
- Problems of allocating scarce medical resources
- Genetic choices in ART and other treatments