NVCC COLLEGE-WIDE COURSE CONTENT SUMMARY
PHI 229 - ADVANCED BIOMEDICAL ETHICS  (3 CR.)

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Continues to build on the topics and issues introduced in PHI 227, Biomedical Ethics. Increases the student's intellectual and practical access to biomedical ethics topics including informed consent, conflicts of obligations, conflicts of interest, and issues involving children within the medical setting. Lecture 3 hours per week.

GENERAL COURSE PURPOSE

To allow the experienced bioethics student an opportunity to further explore new topics. To examine the latest controversies in medicine in comparison to the more classic dilemmas dealt with in PHI 227. To allow the student to experience the phenomenon of a medical technology that is generating continuously new challenges for the ethicist.

ENTRY LEVEL REQUIREMENTS

PHI 227 or permission of instructor.

COURSE OBJECTIVES/EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES

At the completion of this course, the student will be able to evaluate newer, more recent controversies in medicine and biology in light of the insights learned in the more basic course. Specifically, the student will be able to:

A. Discuss and refine relevant concepts, such as "assisted suicide," "assisted reproduction," advance of "fetal viability," etc.   B. Identify the more classical theories of Kant and Mill at work in current evaluations of biomedical situations.   C. Be able to use these and other ethical theories to analyze recent medical controversies.   D. Be able to identify and write a consistent ethical argument within the confines of a very brief position paper. MAJOR TOPICS TO BE COVERED A. Problems in the continuation of nutrition and hydration

B. Assisted suicide

C. Fetal tissue transplantation

D. The abortifacience of RU486, the new "abortion pill"

  E. Gamete Intrafallopian Transfer and how it differs from other, older forms of assisted reproduction, such as IVF   F. The ethics of liver transplantation to alcoholic patients

G. The repercussions of the new Dutch law legalizing voluntary active euthanasia

H. The rights of health care professionals to require patients to disclose their HIV status

I. Advance directives such as the "living will"

J. Privacy and the ethics of treating the AIDS patient

K. The honoring of "Do Not Resuscitate" orders in code situations

L. Early transplantation of organs from anencephalic infants

M. The autonomy of minor children in treatment decisions

 Revised 6/94
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