Summer 2024 | Fall 2024 | Spring 2025 | Summer 2025

PAST OFFERINGS

Summer 2024

BIOE 5450/5470 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III                                                                ***WAITLIST ONLY***  
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester                                                                        NOTE: Students registering for a mediation intensive for credit towards the MBE/MSME degree      (To register for this intensive as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form)                             Time:  Thursday, May 30 - Sunday, June 2, 9:00a - 5:00p
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                           Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

BIOE 5570 – Disability Bioethics
Instructor: Emily Largent
Time: Tuesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p, May 28 - Aug 6
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
How should disability factor into medical decision making?  How does the way we define disability impact the distribution of scarce resources in society? How should we understand concepts like dignity and autonomy in light of disability?  This disability ethics course uses a variety of approaches to understand disability in personal, social, economic, artistic, historical, legal, and political contexts. In this course, we will discuss topics such as: the challenge of defining disability; the social and medical models of disability; the continuities and discontinuities among different kinds of disability; the centralities of justice and equality in disability discourses; the nature and cuases of disability discrimination; and, the role of disability in personal relationships. Topics of study will include mental health, HIV-positive status, deaf culture, the Americans with Disabilities Act, transgender discrimination, handicap accessibility, and more. No prior study of disability theory or bioethics required. 

BIOE 5690 – Genetics and Ethics
Instructor: Steve Joffe
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Jun 3 - Aug 5
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
More than 20 years have passed since the inception of the Human Genome Project. Where are we now? The results of the HGP have shaped medical practice and have changed the way people talk about themselves and their relationships. In this course students will be introduced to basic genetics and to recent advances in the genetic and genomic sciences. We will explore the ethical, legal, and social implications of these trends while discussing topics such as whole genome testing, ancestry and race, forensic genetics, and the relationship of genetics to health disparities.     

BIOE 5800 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p, May 29 - Aug 7
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

Fall 2024

BIOE 5460/5480 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV                                                                                Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester                                                                      NOTE: Students registering for a mediation intensive for credit towards the MBE/MSME degree MUST register for a 1.0 CU course
(To register for this intensive as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form) 
Time: August 22 - August 25
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                          Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

BIOE 5450/5470 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV                                                                                 Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester                                                                      NOTE: Students registering for a mediation intensive for credit towards the MBE/MSME degree MUST register for a 1.0 CU course
(To register for this intensive as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form) 
Time: September 12 - September 15
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                          Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

BIOE 6010 & BIOE 4010 - Introduction to Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesday OR Thursday, 5:15p - 7:29p, Aug 27 - Dec 5
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
This course is intended to serve as an introduction to the academic field of bioethics.  Students will be introduced to classic papers, basic concepts, field history and important legal cases in the field. But rather than being a broad survey course of many content areas in bioethics, this course will examine how bioethical arguments are constructed with the objective of mastering both the critique of bioethical arguments and their construction. Therefore, most importantly, this course serves as a “methods course” for learning the skill of persuasive bioethics argument, i.e., “the art of conversion.” In some of the course sessions, we will focus on the analysis of arguments made by others. In many of the weeks of the course, we will focus on the process of constructing our own, effective bioethical arguments.

BIOE 5600 – Pediatric Ethics
Instructor: Steven Joffe and Jennifer Walter
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:29p, Aug 28 - Dec 4
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
In this course, we will explore the history, conceptual frameworks, and landmark debates of bioethics related to children. We will examine common ethical challenges (e.g., transplantation, critical illness, end of life) when the patient is a child. We will also examine issues unique to children, such as newborn screening, consent vs. assent, the rights and responsibilities of parents, and the role of the courts and the state. We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, clinical cases, and seminal legal decisions to demonstrate the breadth and complexity of pediatric ethics.

BIOE 5720 – Global Bioethics
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:29p
Location: BLOC 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive   
According to the WHO, around 30 million people with HIV/AIDS should receive anti-retroviral treatment.  But only 10 million do. Drugs containing tenofovir--the standard of care in developed countries—are expensive.  Stavudine-based treatments are much cheaper but have worse side-effects.  Is it ethical to use stavudine-based rather than tenofovir-based treatments in sub-Saharan Africa?   Smoking rates have decreased drastically in most developed countries. But they are increasing in many developing countries. Established public health measures are not implemented, and the tobacco industry pursues a range of marketing activities that would be unacceptable in developed countries. As a consequence, global deaths from smoking are expected to increase to 1bn by the end of the 21st century, with 80% of deaths in developing countries. Is industry’s behavior immoral or normal in a global market? ARDS is a disease of premature newborns.  Is it ethical to test a new ARDS drug in Bolivia if the drug--if proven to be effective-- will be very expensive and accessible only to the richest people in Bolivia and other developing countries?   An overarching question that these different cases raise is whether there are universal ethical standards that should apply to all people, or whether regional variations should be acceptable.  Universalists typically argue that there must be no double standards, and that people should be treated the same regardless of where they live.  Pragmatists raise concerns about moral imperialism, neo-colonialism, or insufficient respect for cultural or other differences. Increasing globalization fuels debates about which of competing sets of moral standards is the right one.  Looking at a range of diverse cases including healthcare research, health policy, flu pandemics, family planning, smoking and obesity policy, and genetically modified crops, this course explores controversies in the cross winds of market forces, politics and ethics, and examines the roles and responsibilities of key actors and international policy guidance. 

BIOE 5750-401 - Health Policy [Cross-Listed as HCMG 250/HCMG 850]
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: Mondays AND Wednesdays, 3:30p - 4:59p, Aug 28 - Dec 4
Location: Wharton Room
The U.S. health care system is the world's largest, most technologically advanced, most expensive, with uneven quality, and an unsustainable cost structure. This multi-disciplinary course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. How did the United States get here? The course will examine the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum.  As the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next decade, the U.S. will witness tremendous changes that will shape the American health care system for the next 50 years or more. The course will examine potential reforms, including those offered by liberals and conservatives and information that can be extracted from health care systems in other developed countries. Throughout, lessons will integrate the disciplines of health economics, health and social policy, law and political science to elucidate key principles.  This course will provide students a broad overview of the current U.S. healthcare system. The course will focus on the challenges facing the health care system, an in-depth understanding of the Affordable Care Act, and its potential impact upon health care access, delivery, cost, and quality.

BIOE 5900 – Ethics in Mental Healthcare
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:29p
Location: BLOC 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive                                                          Mental healthcare spans disciplines including psychiatry, psychology, and clinical social work, each presenting bioethical challenges. These range from somewhat common issues like informed consent in research and therapy, assessing patient competence, and clinical professionalism. More complex challenges include managing involuntary treatment, interfacing with the criminal justice system, conducting high-risk research with individuals who have a serious mental illness, psychedelic treatment and research, maintaining physical and emotional boundaries, and addressing and learning the history of systemic racism in psychiatry. To examine these topics in detail, this course will begin with an introduction to the philosophy of psychiatry. Students will become conversant in bioethical theories and methods, enabling them to critically analyze complex cases in mental healthcare ethics.

BIOE 7010 - Proseminar [Open to first year MBE students only]
Instructor: Matt McCoy
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:29p, Sep 11 - Dec 11
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
The goal of this seminar is to expose first-year MBE students to a broad range of topics, debates, and research methods in contemporary bioethics. With guest lectures from department faculty, we will explore ethical questions raised by emerging neuroscience technology, health care for incarcerated individuals, drug development and approval, COVID policy, the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease, and other topics. In addition to surveying cutting-edge work in the field of bioethics, students will build critical skills for conducting bioethics research, including how to review and synthesize scholarly work in bioethics, how to craft a compelling bioethics research question, and how to marshal empirical evidence in support of a bioethics argument. Over the course of the semester, students will work in teams to conduct in-depth analysis of an emerging issue in bioethics chosen from a list provided by the instructor. For their final project, each team will deliver an in-class presentation and lead a discussion on their findings.

Spring 2025

BIOE 5450/5470 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III  
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester                                                                        NOTE: Students registering for a mediation intensive for credit towards the MBE/MSME degree      (To register for this intensive as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form)                             Time: TBD
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                           Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

BIOE 6020 & BIOE 4020 – Foundations of Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Jan 16 - Apr 29
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                                                   In this course, students examine the two moral frameworks – deontology and consequentialism – that individuals use to make decisions about right and wrong both in their personal life and in their professional life. These two moral frameworks provide the foundation for bioethical analysis. Understanding these two moral frameworks not only enables one to understand one’s own moral perspective, but also provides the tools to be able to understand ethical arguments made by others. The theory of deontology and consequentialism are supplemented by applications of these frameworks in the bioethical literature. Additionally, students are introduced to the three theoretical contributions to moral analysis created internally in the field of bioethics: casuistry; narrative theory, and principlism.

BIOE 5550 – Neuroethics
Instructor: Anna Wexler
Time: Thursdays, 5:15p - 7:30p                                                                                                         
Location: TBD
Neuroethics might well be the most rapidly growing area within bioethics; indeed, in some respects neuroethics has grown as an independent field, with its own journals, professional society and institutional centers. This growth over the past decade is partly attributable to the growth of neuroscience itself and to the challenging philosophical and moral questions it inherently raises. A 2012 Royal Society report, observes that an increasingly mechanistic understanding of the brain raises a host of ethical, legal, and social implications. This has laid the foundation for the emergent field of Neuroethics, which examines ethical issues governing the conceptual and practical developments of neuroscience. Irrespective of their validity, even the claims that modern neuroscience entails the re-examination of complex and sensitive topics like free will, consciousness, identity, and responsibility raises significant ethical issues. As such, neuroethics asks questions that extend beyond the usual umbrella of biomedical ethics. This course will, therefore, consider the new knowledge and ways of learning about the brain from scientific and ethico-legal and social standpoints. We will examine the core themes of neuroethics, including cognitive enhancement, the nature of the self and personhood, neuroimaging and privacy, and the ways that all these themes are brought together in matters affecting national security. 

BIOE 5610 – Ethics, Regulation, and Politics of Science
Instructor: Steven Joffe and Holly Fernandez Lynch
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Jan 22 - Apr 30
Location: TBD                                                                                                                                    As the COVID19 pandemic has reminded us, the conduct of science poses both profound ethical questions and important challenges for policymakers and the public. How should society deploy its limited resources in the pursuit of science? How can we respect research participants and protect their interests? What are the roles of norms, laws, regulations, public engagement, and other governance mechanisms in ensuring that the right science is done and that science is done right? How can we ensure that science benefits rather than harms individuals and communities and that it combats rather than reinforces injustice? Is there some science that simply shouldn’t be done? What can we learn from science “gone wrong?” To address these and other questions, this course will first articulate the fundamental ethical and policy issues raised by the conduct of biomedical science and will then apply those frameworks to a series of timeless and timely case studies, with attention to science and race, science in public health emergencies, and more. Student assessment will be based on midterm and final essay exams. Students will also be expected to complete brief written replies (ungraded) in advance of 6 class sessions.

BIOE 578 - Bioethics and Human Rights
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: TBD
The constitution of the World Health Organization enshrines “the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being.” If such a right exists, it is far from being realized. Worldwide, over 1 billion people are living in hunger. Every day, 21,000 children die before their fifth birthday of pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea and other diseases. Even wealthy countries are marked by significant health disparities. In the U.S., for instance, infants born to African-American women are 1.5 to 3 times more likely to die than infants born to women of other races. This course explores the moral principles and the political and legal structures that inform a human rights approach to health. What sorts of freedoms (e.g., to bodily integrity) and entitlements (e.g., to accessible and affordable health care) does a right to the highest attainable standard of health entail? If countries cannot ensure their citizens’ right to the highest attainable standard of health, what responsibility does the international community bear for intervening? Should undocumented and irregular migrants have the same access to health care as citizens? Is a human rights approach to health compatible with using the market to allocate health-related goods? Finally, what are the limitations of analyzing health and formulating health policy using a human rights framework?

BIOE 6030 – Clinical Ethics
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: TBD
In this course, we will explore paradigmatic clinical ethics debates spanning the life course. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will consider some of the challenges in clinical decision-making for and with patients, such as assessing patient capacity, deciding for others, rationing at the bedside, and requests for assistance in dying. We will also examine hospital policies related to triage and allocation of scarce medical resources, including ventilators, vaccines, and organs.  We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, legal cases, and contemporaneous reports related to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate the live ethical challenges of clinical practice today.

Summer 2025

BIOE 5450/5470 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III  
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester                                                                        NOTE: Students registering for a mediation intensive for credit towards the MBE/MSME degree      (To register for this intensive as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form)                             Time: TBD
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                           Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

BIOE 5700 – Public Health Ethics
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: TBD, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: TBD
Public health ethics is concerned with assessing the adequacy of societal and other structures to enable people to lead healthy lives, and with making policy recommendations to achieve this, should there be shortfalls.  Unlike clinical- or research-ethics, that have been at the center of bioethics since its inception, public health ethics is a more recent field and takes a broader perspective.  While clinical and research ethics are typically concerned with what individual patients or research participants may be owed, public health ethics focusses on the population level, and on what governments at different levels, industry groups or other stakeholders should and should not do to protect or improve population health. This course combines a review of the structure and underpinnings of major public health ethics frameworks with a series of pertinent case studies, including policy on clean air and water, firearm control, tobacco use, healthy eating, fluoridation of drinking water, cancer screening and vaccinations.  In roughly equal measure, the course will integrate a review of empirical evidence and normative justifications of policy and practice, considering also cutting-edge debates in the areas of the social and political determinants of health, and corporate social responsibility.

BIOE #### – Correctional Medicine
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: TBD, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: TBD                                                                                                                                Description coming soon...

Past Offerings

 

Spring 2024

BIOE 5450/5470 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III                                                                                  ***WAITLIST ONLY***  
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester                                                                        NOTE: Students registering for a mediation intensive for credit towards the MBE/MSME degree      (To register for this intensive as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form)                             Time: Friday, Jan 12 - Monday, Jan 15, 9am - 5pm
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                           Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

BIOE 6020 & BIOE 4020 – Foundations of Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Jan 18 - Apr 30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                                                   In this course, students examine the two moral frameworks – deontology and consequentialism – that individuals use to make decisions about right and wrong both in their personal life and in their professional life. These two moral frameworks provide the foundation for bioethical analysis. Understanding these two moral frameworks not only enables one to understand one’s own moral perspective, but also provides the tools to be able to understand ethical arguments made by others. The theory of deontology and consequentialism are supplemented by applications of these frameworks in the bioethical literature. Additionally, students are introduced to the three theoretical contributions to moral analysis created internally in the field of bioethics: casuistry; narrative theory, and principlism.

BIOE 5650 – Rationing and Resource Allocation
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p,  Jan 24 - May 1
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
You have one liver but three patients awaiting a liver transplant.  Who should get the liver?  What criteria should be used to select the recipient? Is it fair to give it to an alcoholic?  These are some of the questions that arise in the context of rationing and allocating scarce health care resources among particular individuals, and concern what are called micro-allocation decisions.  But trade-offs also need to be made at the meso- and macro-level.  Budgets of public payers of healthcare, such as governments, and of private ones, such as health plans, are limited: they cannot cover all drugs and services that appear beneficial to patients or physicians.  So what services should they provide? Is there a core set of benefits that everyone should be entitled to? If so, by what process should we determine these? How can we make fair decisions, if we know from the outset than not all needs can be met? Using the cases of organs for transplantation, the rationing for vaccines and ventilators in a pandemic, and drug shortages, the course will critically examine alternative theories for allocating scarce resources among individuals.  Using both the need to establish priorities for global health aid and to define an essential benefit package for health insurance, the course will critically examine diverse approaches for allocation decisions, including cost-effectiveness analysis, age-based rationing and accountability for reasonableness.  

          
BIOE 5640 – Social Media, Digital Health, and Biomedical Ethics
Instructor: Dominic Sisti and Anna Wexler
Time: Tuesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p,  Jan 23 - Apr 30
Location: BLOC 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive                                                                   It is difficult to overstate the impact of the internet and social media on our lives. Individuals, families, communities, and societies have been transformed. People now relate to and communicate with one another in ways previously unimagined. Social media platforms have redefined our understanding and expectations about friendship, citizenship, individual privacy, and, most fundamentally, reality.  In this course, we will examine the conceptual and ethical challenges posed by the use of artificial intelligence, social media, and the ‘internet of things’ in healthcare contexts. We will begin with selections from the philosophy of technology and then explore ethical issues in the application of social media and artificial intelligence across health care.  The course will combine both didactics and discussion to engage students on these issues.

BIOE 5680 – Science, Technology, Medicine and Society
Instructor: Sharrona Pearl
Time: Thursdays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Jan 18 - Apr 25
Location: BLOC 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive                                                                     This course will explore the relationship between science, technology, medicine, and society, thinking critically about the role that power, politics, culture, and history play in the framing and shaping of scientific and medical practice.  We will consider how science, technology, and medicine both construct the world around us and how we construct the understanding of them.  What role has culture played in diagnostic practice from the nineteenth century to the present?  How do we consider political and social debates on the development of technologies from x-rays to photographs to cars to the bomb?  Case studies will include biometric surveillance, appearance and beauty, and AIDS activism.

BIOE 5730 – Medicine Through the Artist's Eyes
Instructor: Benjamin Farr
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Jan 22 - Apr 29
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                                                    From Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece (c. 1512-1516) with its pox-ridden, emaciated Christ, displayed in a hospital for sick and dying peasants, to Frida Kahlo's The Broken Column (1944), a gut-wrenching self-portrait visualizing her chronic pain after spinal surgery, for hundreds of years, artists have used their work to document, explain, critique, challenge, and glorify medicine, its practitioners, and its institutions. This course will examine artworks from 1450 to today that depict illness and disease, doctors and patients, and medical treatments – or lack thereof. This class offers students an art historical approach to the history of medicine and its critical reception by artists working in different times and geographies. Through class discussions and close readings of scholarly articles, we will consider how the ethics of medicine have or have not changed over the centuries, and how the categories of gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, and physical and mental ability influence medical care. In addition to situating their own approaches to patient care in a vivid, art historical context, students will gain skills in visual analysis and written and oral communication.

Fall 2023

BIOE 5460/5480 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV 
***WAITLIST ONLY***                                                                                                           Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester                                                                     NOTE: Students registering for a mediation intensive for credit towards the MBE/MSME degree MUST register for a 1.0 CU course
(To register for this intensive as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form) 
Time: Thursday, Sep 21 - Sunday, Sep 24, 9am - 5pm
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                          Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

BIOE 6010 & BIOE 4010 - Introduction to Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesday OR Thursday, 5:15p - 7:30p, Aug 29 - Dec 7
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
This course is intended to serve as an introduction to the academic field of bioethics.  Students will be introduced to classic papers, basic concepts, field history and important legal cases in the field. But rather than being a broad survey course of many content areas in bioethics, this course will examine how bioethical arguments are constructed with the objective of mastering both the critique of bioethical arguments and their construction. Therefore, most importantly, this course serves as a “methods course” for learning the skill of persuasive bioethics argument, i.e., “the art of conversion.” In some of the course sessions, we will focus on the analysis of arguments made by others. In many of the weeks of the course, we will focus on the process of constructing our own, effective bioethical arguments.

BIOE 5630 - History of Bioethics
Instructor: Jonathan Moreno
Time: Tuesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Aug 29 - Dec 5
Location: BLOC 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive                                                              This course will take an historical approach to the emergence of modern bioethics, the study of ethical issues in medicine and the life sciences.  The course will consider pre-20th century medical ethics; the scandals, tragedies and controversies that motivated the modern field; the institutionalization of bioethics in the academy, government, industry and the military; and the recent growing emphasis on ethics in basic life sciences research and development, including genetics, stem cell biology and neuroscience; and the role of bioethics in the rules-based global order.  Recurring themes will include physician-patient relations, the ethics of human experimentation, military medical ethics, and human rights theory.

BIOE 5660 – Personal Responsibility for Health in Policy and Practice
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Aug 30 - Dec 6
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                                                   Excess body weight is often associated with higher healthcare cost. Should overweight and obese people pay more for health insurance?  If we want to encourage people to quit smoking, is it best to give insurance discounts to those who succeed, or impose surcharges on those who do not?  Should companies be permitted not to hire smokers?  Globally, more than seven in ten deaths are due to chronic diseases, such as stroke, cancer, diabetes or heart disease. In the US, rates are even higher.  Good or poor health is typically the result of a number of interacting factors.  Genetics, social status, environmental conditions and personal behavior all play a role.  In the best case, appeals to personal responsibility can motivate people to achieve oftentimes challenging behavior change.  But in the worst case, policies penalize people for factor that are beyond their control.  We will critically assess how personal responsibility is conceptualized in law and policy in different countries, and evaluate philosophical, political, economic and health-science related rationales in favor and against personal responsibility for health.  Some of the material will be conceptual in nature, but throughout, the discussion will be focused on concrete cases, including obesity, smoking, breast screening, organ donation and medication adherence.  We will also discuss controversial new work requirements and other policies aimed at strengthening personal responsibility in Medicaid.

BIOE 5750-401 - Health Policy [Cross-Listed as HCMG 250/HCMG 850]
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: Mondays AND Wednesdays, 3:30p - 4:59p, Aug 30 - Dec 11
Location: Wharton Room
The U.S. health care system is the world's largest, most technologically advanced, most expensive, with uneven quality, and an unsustainable cost structure. This multi-disciplinary course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. How did the United States get here? The course will examine the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum.  As the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next decade, the U.S. will witness tremendous changes that will shape the American health care system for the next 50 years or more. The course will examine potential reforms, including those offered by liberals and conservatives and information that can be extracted from health care systems in other developed countries. Throughout, lessons will integrate the disciplines of health economics, health and social policy, law and political science to elucidate key principles.  This course will provide students a broad overview of the current U.S. healthcare system. The course will focus on the challenges facing the health care system, an in-depth understanding of the Affordable Care Act, and its potential impact upon health care access, delivery, cost, and quality.

BIOE 6030 – Clinical Ethics
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Sep 11 - Dec 11
Location: BLOC 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive 
In this course, we will explore paradigmatic clinical ethics debates spanning the life course. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will consider some of the challenges in clinical decision-making for and with patients, such as assessing patient capacity, deciding for others, rationing at the bedside, and requests for assistance in dying. We will also examine hospital policies related to triage and allocation of scarce medical resources, including ventilators, vaccines, and organs.  We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, legal cases, and contemporaneous reports related to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate the live ethical challenges of clinical practice today.

BIOE 7010 - Proseminar [Open to first year MBE students only]
Instructor: Matt McCoy
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:30p, Sep 11 - Dec 11
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
The goal of this seminar is to expose first-year MBE students to a broad range of topics, debates, and research methods in contemporary bioethics. With guest lectures from department faculty, we will explore ethical questions raised by emerging neuroscience technology, health care for incarcerated individuals, drug development and approval, COVID policy, the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease, and other topics. In addition to surveying cutting-edge work in the field of bioethics, students will build critical skills for conducting bioethics research, including how to review and synthesize scholarly work in bioethics, how to craft a compelling bioethics research question, and how to marshal empirical evidence in support of a bioethics argument. Over the course of the semester, students will work in teams to conduct in-depth analysis of an emerging issue in bioethics chosen from a list provided by the instructor. For their final project, each team will deliver an in-class presentation and lead a discussion on their findings.

Summer 2023

BIOE 5460/5480 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV 
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester
(To register for this intensive as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form) 
Time: Thursday, May 18 - Sunday, May 21, 9am - 5pm
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                          Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

BIOE 5720 – Global Bioethics
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:29p, May 24 - Aug 2
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd  
According to the WHO, around 30 million people with HIV/AIDS should receive anti-retroviral treatment.  But only 10 million do. Drugs containing tenofovir--the standard of care in developed countries—are expensive.  Stavudine-based treatments are much cheaper but have worse side-effects.  Is it ethical to use stavudine-based rather than tenofovir-based treatments in sub-Saharan Africa?   Smoking rates have decreased drastically in most developed countries. But they are increasing in many developing countries. Established public health measures are not implemented, and the tobacco industry pursues a range of marketing activities that would be unacceptable in developed countries. As a consequence, global deaths from smoking are expected to increase to 1bn by the end of the 21st century, with 80% of deaths in developing countries. Is industry’s behavior immoral or normal in a global market? ARDS is a disease of premature newborns.  Is it ethical to test a new ARDS drug in Bolivia if the drug--if proven to be effective-- will be very expensive and accessible only to the richest people in Bolivia and other developing countries?   An overarching question that these different cases raise is whether there are universal ethical standards that should apply to all people, or whether regional variations should be acceptable.  Universalists typically argue that there must be no double standards, and that people should be treated the same regardless of where they live.  Pragmatists raise concerns about moral imperialism, neo-colonialism, or insufficient respect for cultural or other differences. Increasing globalization fuels debates about which of competing sets of moral standards is the right one.  Looking at a range of diverse cases including healthcare research, health policy, flu pandemics, family planning, smoking and obesity policy, and genetically modified crops, this course explores controversies in the cross winds of market forces, politics and ethics, and examines the roles and responsibilities of key actors and international policy guidance. 

BIOE 5800 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:29p, May 22 - July 31
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd  
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

BIOE 5810 – Narrative Medicine
Instructor: Amanda Finegold Swain
Time: Thursdays, 5:15p - 7:29p, May 25 - Aug 3
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd  
How can we use the power of storytelling to understand the medical world? How does narrative medicine help us gain insight into the myriad experiences of patients, caregivers, physicians, and other medical professionals? How do we search for and create meaning in the medical context? Why is this search for meaning important not just for patients, but for all those involved in their care? Last, but certainly not least: how can the study of narrative medicine can help us become better doctors, lawyers, bioethicists, and other professionals involved in patient care? Narrative medicine is an interdisciplinary field that uses skills of close reading, radical listening, and creativity to explore the world of patients, caregivers, and those who provide medical care. It helps us turn a critical eye on what we think we know about the experiences of patients and medical providers, as well as allowing us to examine the cultural influences on the medical system and our concepts of disease, wellness, ability, and disability. We will have lively discussions of all of the above questions (and many more) in this narrative medicine course exploring storytelling in many forms, including fiction (novels, films, short stories, poems), creative non-fiction (essays, graphic novels), as well as discussions with doctors and other medical professionals.

 

Spring 2023

BIOE 4020 – 401/402 – Foundations of Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays, Jan 12 - Apr 25, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 252, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                                                   In this course, students examine the two moral frameworks – deontology and consequentialism – that individuals use to make decisions about right and wrong both in their personal life and in their professional life. These two moral frameworks provide the foundation for bioethical analysis. Understanding these two moral frameworks not only enables one to understand one’s own moral perspective, but also provides the tools to be able to understand ethical arguments made by others. The theory of deontology and consequentialism are supplemented by applications of these frameworks in the bioethical literature. Additionally, students are introduced to the three theoretical contributions to moral analysis created internally in the field of bioethics: casuistry; narrative theory, and principlism.

BIOE 5540 – Bioethics and the Law
Instructor: Holly Fernandez Lynch
Time: Wednesdays, Jan 18 - Apr 26, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
This course will present a broad survey of topics at the intersection of law and bioethics. Much of bioethics deals with topics of public policy, and law is the tool of policy. Areas to be covered will range from an overview of American law making to enforcement mechanisms, topics including FDA regulations, state interventions into beginning and end of life issues, privacy, malpractice, healthcare reform, and international issues, including those related to innovation and access to medicines.

BIOE 5600 – Pediatric Ethics
Instructor: Steven Joffe and Jennifer Walter
Time: Mondays, Jan 11 - Apr 24, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
In this course, we will explore the history, conceptual frameworks, and landmark debates of bioethics related to children. We will examine common ethical challenges (e.g., transplantation, critical illness, end of life) when the patient is a child. We will also examine issues unique to children, such as newborn screening, consent vs. assent, the rights and responsibilities of parents, and the role of the courts and the state. We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, clinical cases, and seminal legal decisions to demonstrate the breadth and complexity of pediatric ethics.

BIOE 5900 – Ethics in Mental Healthcare
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Tuesdays, Jan 17 - Apr 25, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BLOC 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive                                                          Mental healthcare—which includes, but is not limited to, psychiatry, psychology, and clinical social work—is an especially ethically fraught subdiscipline of the larger medical enterprise. Issues range from garden-variety problems related to informed consent, patient capacity, and clinical professionalism to novel issues related to involuntary treatment, research on mentally ill persons, racism in psychiatry, and nosological categories. This course will present a survey of these ethical issues by first introducing foundational concepts from ethical theory and the philosophy of psychiatry. Students will be expected to become conversant in several bioethical approaches and methods and be able to use them to critically examine both historical and contemporary questions in mental healthcare and research.

BIOE 5530 – Medicine on the Fringes: the Ethics of Alternative, Experimental, and Do-It-Yourself Treatments
Instructor: Anna Wexler
Time: Thursdays, Jan 12 - Apr 20, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BLOC 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive                                                                    Much bioethics literature focuses on issues in mainstream, established medicine — but what are the ethics of therapies, treatments and techniques utilized outside of common practice? This course begins with a historical exploration of “quack medicine” and medical professionalization. We then explore ethical and regulatory issues regarding complementary and alternative medicine, as well as the ethics of providing experimental, off-label, and placebo treatments. Finally, we will examine how individuals are accessing therapeutic techniques outside of the physician’s office, via do-it-yourself medical movements, direct-to-consumer health technologies, and medical tourism.

BIOE 6020 – 4010/4020 – Foundations of Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays, Jan 12 - Apr 25, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 252, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                                                   In this course, students examine the two moral frameworks – deontology and consequentialism – that individuals use to make decisions about right and wrong both in their personal life and in their professional life. These two moral frameworks provide the foundation for bioethical analysis. Understanding these two moral frameworks not only enables one to understand one’s own moral perspective, but also provides the tools to be able to understand ethical arguments made by others. The theory of deontology and consequentialism are supplemented by applications of these frameworks in the bioethical literature. Additionally, students are introduced to the three theoretical contributions to moral analysis created internally in the field of bioethics: casuistry; narrative theory, and principlism.

BIOE 5450/5470 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III                                                                      ***WAITLIST ONLY***
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester                                                                           (To register for this intensive WAITLIST as a non-credit workshop, fill out the following form) 
Time: Friday, January 13 - Monday, January 16, 9am - 5pm
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                           Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

 

Fall 2022

BIOE 6010/401 - 4010/402 - Introduction to Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesday OR Thursday, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
This course is intended to serve as an introduction to the academic field of bioethics.  Students will be introduced to classic papers, basic concepts, field history and important legal cases in the field. But rather than being a broad survey course of many content areas in bioethics, this course will examine how bioethical arguments are constructed with the objective of mastering both the critique of bioethical arguments and their construction. Therefore, most importantly, this course serves as a “methods course” for learning the skill of persuasive bioethics argument, i.e., “the art of conversion.” In some of the course sessions, we will focus on the analysis of arguments made by others. In many of the weeks of the course, we will focus on the process of constructing our own, effective bioethical arguments.

BIOE 5550 – Neuroethics
Instructor: Jonathan Moreno
Time: Tuesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p                                                                                                            
Location: JMB Class of 1962 Auditorium, John Morgan Building, 3620 Hamilton Walk
Neuroethics might well be the most rapidly growing area within bioethics; indeed, in some respects neuroethics has grown as an independent field, with its own journals, professional society and institutional centers. This growth over the past decade is partly attributable to the growth of neuroscience itself and to the challenging philosophical and moral questions it inherently raises. A 2012 Royal Society report, observes that an increasingly mechanistic understanding of the brain raises a host of ethical, legal, and social implications. This has laid the foundation for the emergent field of Neuroethics, which examines ethical issues governing the conceptual and practical developments of neuroscience. Irrespective of their validity, even the claims that modern neuroscience entails the re-examination of complex and sensitive topics like free will, consciousness, identity, and responsibility raises significant ethical issues. As such, neuroethics asks questions that extend beyond the usual umbrella of biomedical ethics. This course will, therefore, consider the new knowledge and ways of learning about the brain from scientific and ethico-legal and social standpoints. We will examine the core themes of neuroethics, including cognitive enhancement, the nature of the self and personhood, neuroimaging and privacy, and the ways that all these themes are brought together in matters affecting national security. 

BIOE 5750-401 - Health Policy [Cross-Listed as HCMG 250/HCMG 850]
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: Mondays and Wednesdays, 3:30p-5:00p
Location: Wharton
The U.S. health care system is the world's largest, most technologically advanced, most expensive, with uneven quality, and an unsustainable cost structure. This multi-disciplinary course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. How did the United States get here? The course will examine the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum.  As the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next decade, the U.S. will witness tremendous changes that will shape the American health care system for the next 50 years or more. The course will examine potential reforms, including those offered by liberals and conservatives and information that can be extracted from health care systems in other developed countries. Throughout, lessons will integrate the disciplines of health economics, health and social policy, law and political science to elucidate key principles.  This course will provide students a broad overview of the current U.S. healthcare system. The course will focus on the challenges facing the health care system, an in-depth understanding of the Affordable Care Act, and its potential impact upon health care access, delivery, cost, and quality.

BIOE 5700 – Public Health Ethics
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
Public health ethics is concerned with assessing the adequacy of societal and other structures to enable people to lead healthy lives, and with making policy recommendations to achieve this, should there be shortfalls.  Unlike clinical- or research-ethics, that have been at the center of bioethics since its inception, public health ethics is a more recent field and takes a broader perspective.  While clinical and research ethics are typically concerned with what individual patients or research participants may be owed, public health ethics focusses on the population level, and on what governments at different levels, industry groups or other stakeholders should and should not do to protect or improve population health. This course combines a review of the structure and underpinnings of major public health ethics frameworks with a series of pertinent case studies, including policy on clean air and water, firearm control, tobacco use, healthy eating, fluoridation of drinking water, cancer screening and vaccinations.  In roughly equal measure, the course will integrate a review of empirical evidence and normative justifications of policy and practice, considering also cutting-edge debates in the areas of the social and political determinants of health, and corporate social responsibility.

BIOE 6030 – CLINICAL ETHICS
Instructor: Aliza Narva
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
In this course, we will explore paradigmatic clinical ethics debates spanning the life course. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will consider some of the challenges in clinical decision-making for and with patients, such as assessing patient capacity, deciding for others, rationing at the bedside, and requests for assistance in dying. We will also examine hospital policies related to triage and allocation of scarce medical resources, including ventilators, vaccines, and organs.  We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, legal cases, and contemporaneous reports related to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate the live ethical challenges of clinical practice today.

BIOE 7010 - Proseminar [Open to first year MBE students only]
Instructor: Matt McCoy
Time: Mondays, 5:15p - 7:30p
Location: BLK 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive
The goal of this seminar is to expose first-year MBE students to a broad range of topics, debates, and research methods in contemporary bioethics. With guest lectures from department faculty, we will explore ethical questions raised by emerging neuroscience technology, health care for incarcerated individuals, drug development and approval, COVID policy, the diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease, and other topics. In addition to surveying cutting-edge work in the field of bioethics, students will build critical skills for conducting bioethics research, including how to review and synthesize scholarly work in bioethics, how to craft a compelling bioethics research question, and how to marshal empirical evidence in support of a bioethics argument. Over the course of the semester, students will work in teams to conduct in-depth analysis of an emerging issue in bioethics chosen from a list provided by the instructor. For their final project, each team will deliver an in-class presentation and lead a discussion on their findings.

BIOE 5480 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III (FULL)
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester
Time: Thursday, September 8 - Sunday, September 11, 9am - 5pm
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                          Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

 

Summer 2022

BIOE 5510 – Race and Bioethics 
Instructor: Nia Johnson 
Time: Thursdays, May 26 - August 4, 5:15 - 7:30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
Much of the mainstream dialogue regarding medicine, technological advances, and healthcare has relied on the premise of fairness and equality. However, this is not the entire story. Many of the advancements we take for granted were produced at the expense of racially marginalized individuals. This course aims to explore those topics and teach bioethics students how to engage with them in a practical way. The course will cover historical bioethical incidents that shaped racially marginalized individuals relationships with healthcare and science. It will also examine bioethics through the lens of racially marginalized peoples. Lastly, it will also cover various approaches to integrating anti-racist principles into the practice of bioethics.

BIOE 5690 – Genetics and Ethics
Instructor: Steve Joffe
Time: Tuesdays, May 24 - August 2, 5:15 - 7:30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
More than 20 years have passed since the inception of the Human Genome Project. Where are we now? The results of the HGP have shaped medical practice and have changed the way people talk about themselves and their relationships. In this course students will be introduced to basic genetics and to recent advances in the genetic and genomic sciences. We will explore the ethical, legal, and social implications of these trends while discussing topics such as whole genome testing, ancestry and race, forensic genetics, and the relationship of genetics to health disparities.

BIOE 5650 – Rationing and Resource Allocation
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, May 25 - August 3, 5:15 - 7:30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
You have one liver but three patients awaiting a liver transplant.  Who should get the liver?  What criteria should be used to select the recipient? Is it fair to give it to an alcoholic?  These are some of the questions that arise in the context of rationing and allocating scarce health care resources among particular individuals, and concern what are called micro-allocation decisions.  But trade-offs also need to be made at the meso- and macro-level.  Budgets of public payers of healthcare, such as governments, and of private ones, such as health plans, are limited: they cannot cover all drugs and services that appear beneficial to patients or physicians.  So what services should they provide? Is there a core set of benefits that everyone should be entitled to? If so, by what process should we determine these? How can we make fair decisions, if we know from the outset than not all needs can be met? Using the cases of organs for transplantation, the rationing for vaccines and ventilators in a pandemic, and drug shortages, the course will critically examine alternative theories for allocating scarce resources among individuals.  Using both the need to establish priorities for global health aid and to define an essential benefit package for health insurance, the course will critically examine diverse approaches for allocation decisions, including cost-effectiveness analysis, age-based rationing and accountability for reasonableness.  

BIOE 5800 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Mondays, May 23 - August 1, 5:15 - 7:30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

BIOE 5460 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV 

***MAY 2022 MEDIATION CLASS IS FULL, REGISTRATION IS CLOSED***

Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester
Time: Thursday, May 19 - Sunday, May 22, 9am - 5pm
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                  Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

BIOE 5470 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III  
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester
Time: Thursday, June 9 - Sunday, June 12, 9am - 5pm
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                          Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

Spring 2022

 

BIOE 602 – 401/402 – Foundations of Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays,  5:15 - 7:30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
In this course, students examine the two moral frameworks – deontology and consequentialism – that individuals use to make decisions about right and wrong both in their personal life and in their professional life. These two moral frameworks provide the foundation for bioethical analysis. Understanding these two moral frameworks not only enables one to understand one’s own moral perspective, but also provides the tools to be able to understand ethical arguments made by others. The theory of deontology and consequentialism are supplemented by applications of these frameworks in the bioethical literature. Additionally, students are introduced to the three theoretical contributions to moral analysis created internally in the field of bioethics: casuistry; narrative theory, and principlism.

BIOE 564 – Social Media, Digital Health, and Biomedical Ethics
Instructor: Dominic Sisti and Anna Wexler
Time: Mondays, 5:15 - 7:30
Location: BLK 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive                                                                      It is difficult to overstate the impact of the internet and social media on our lives. Individuals, families, communities, and societies have been transformed. People now relate to and communicate with one another in ways previously unimagined. Social media platforms have redefined our understanding and expectations about friendship, citizenship, individual privacy, and, most fundamentally, reality.  In this course, we will examine the conceptual and ethical challenges posed by the use of artificial intelligence, social media, and the ‘internet of things’ in healthcare contexts. We will begin with selections from the philosophy of technology and then explore ethical issues in the application of social media and artificial intelligence across health care.  The course will combine both didactics and discussion to engage students on these issues.

BIOE 570 – Bioethics Goes To D.C.
Instructor: Jonathan Moreno                                                                                                      Time: Tuesdays, 5:15 - 7:30
Location: RICH B102AB, Richards Medical Research Laboratories, 3700 Hamilton Walk        
No field of study has been more identified with governmental commissions than bioethics. Starting in the 1970s with the National Commission, these bodies have given a unique form of legitimacy not only to the topics and questions of bioethics but also to many of the individuals whose careers have been launched and shaped by their role on these commissions, including the instructor in this course. In turn when bioethics issues have been part of the political debate the presence of the commissions has helped to shape the arguments and focus public attention. We will review a number of these commissions and their crucial documents and the biopolitical controversies they have embodied.

BIOE 580 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Mondays, 5:15 - 7:30 
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

BIOE 559 – Speaking For Patients: Ethical Issues in Patient Advocacy                                        Instructor: Matthew McCoy
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15 - 7:30             
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                                                    This course examines the role that activism and advocacy play in shaping health care in the United States and abroad. The course combines in-depth exploration of particular case studies—AIDS activism in the 1980s, the billion-dollar breast cancer movement, the anti-vaccine movement—with an analysis of cross-cutting questions and themes. We consider how health advocates contribute to forming personal identities around certain illnesses and conditions, how they mobilize constituents and recruit allies, and how they influence decisions about health policy, research, and practice. We also consider the implications of an increasingly professionalized health advocacy industry and ask how corporate sponsorship has changed the landscape of health activism. In addition, we examine the ethical issues involved in speaking on behalf of others, particularly those (e.g., young children, persons with intellectual disabilities) who cannot speak for themselves.

BIOE 747 – Contemporary Research Issues in Social, Cognitive, and Affective Neuroscience
Prerequisite: Enrolled in SCAN Certificate Program
Instructor: Martha Farah
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15 - 8:15
Location: GLAB 2nd Floor Conference Room, Goddard Laboratories, 3710 Hamilton Walk 
This course is intended to take you from a textbook-level acquaintance with psychology and neuroscience to critical engagement with the primary literature, through lectures, discussion and short written assignments. You will learn to extract, from the dense and detail-laden pages of a journal article, its contribution to the “big picture” of human neuroscience.  You will also learn to recognize problematic research practices when they arise, and to analyze and communicate about the strengths and weaknesses of research articles.

BIOE 545/547 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III  
Instructors: Edward Bergman and Autumn Fiester
Time: Thursday, Jan. 6 - Sunday, Jan. 9, 9am - 5pm
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.                                                                      Given the emotionally charged nature of bedside conflicts, interactions among the stakeholders in ethical and clinical disputes can sometimes turn hostile or acrimonious, making it impossible to have constructive dialogue. Conventional clinical and ethics training often fails to teach providers how to de-escalate conflicts that have become heated and intense. In this hands-on workshop, we will learn the skills of clinical conflict management.  Students will

• Learn how to navigate and improve challenging clinical relationships (patient-provider, family-provider, inter-staff conflicts)
• Learn the techniques of facilitation among a diverse set of stakeholders
• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover to how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Use video-tapes of simulations to improve mediation techniques and strengthen interpersonal skills
• Receive constructive feedback in a supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

 

Fall 2021

BIOE 550 - Culture Wars: Bioethics in a Diverse Society
Instructor: Matthew McCoy
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15 - 7:30, September 1 - December 8
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
In this course, we will examine the ethical challenges of health and science policymaking in pluralistic democratic societies, considering a number of questions that cut across topic areas in bioethics. How can persons with different religious and moral convictions find common ground for debating bioethical issues? Is it ever acceptable to ban certain medical procedures or certain types of medical research on the basis of religious reasons? We will also ask who has the authority to resolve bioethical controversies. Are there bioethics experts and, if so, how should their input be weighed against public opinion in the policymaking process? Should courts seek to resolve ethically contentious issues or leave them to elected officials? We will address these questions by reading work from bioethicists, philosophers, and social scientists and through in-depth case study of recent and ongoing bioethics controversies.

BIOE 551 - Bioethics and Film
Instructor: Lance Wahlert
Time: Tuesdays, 5:15 - 7:30, August 31 - December 7
Location: BRB 801, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
In reality and metaphorically, cinema has served for generations of moviegoers as a site of communal congregation, pedogogical dissemination, and sometimes disease infection. Accordingly, how and where we watch films are just as important as what films have to say about doctors, disease, and death. This course will consider the epidemiological and cultural implications of cinema on bioethics, including how movies and movie theaters themselves have functioned as spaces of contentious discourse regarding public health. Bearing in mind the recent scholarship of film and medical theorists such as Lisa Cartwright, Paula Triechler, and David Serlin, we will study not only the possibility for film to register and comment on cultural understandings of the clinic, but also the ways cinema itself works out, reimagines, and even changes how the clinic is put into practice. Focusing on themes such as quarantine, vaccination, sexual health, end of life care, professional competence, and globalization, we will be watching and discussing public health films and feature-length films by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Croneberg, Tamara Jenkins, and Todd Haynes. No background in either cinema studies or bioethics is required for this course.

BIOE 555 - Vaccination Ethics
Instructor: Harald Schmidt and Angela Shen
Time: Wednesdays, 5:15 - 7:30, September 1 - December 8
Location: BRB 801, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd 
Vaccination is routinely described as one of the foremost achievements in the history of public health. Vaccines are also viewed as powerful potential tools against a growing list of novel disease targets from HIV to Ebola, to name just a few. Despite this enthusiasm, vaccination is a frequent source of controversy, with critics in the United States and worldwide questioning the safety, effectiveness, and necessity of vaccines. Persistent allegations of a link between childhood vaccines and autism, vocal opposition to U.S. state laws that mandate vaccination in order to attend school, and debates over the appropriate distribution of vaccines during public health emergencies are three of the most visible examples of the often contentious atmosphere surrounding vaccination programs and policy today.

BIOE 575-401 - Health Policy [Cross-Listed as HCMG 250/HCMG 850]
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: Mondays AND Wednesdays, 3:30 - 5:00, September 1 - December 9
Location: Steinberg-Dietrich Hall 351, 3620 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA 19104
The U.S. health care system is the world's largest, most technologically advanced, most expensive, with uneven quality, and an unsustainable cost structure. This multi-disciplinary course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. How did the United States get here? The course will examine the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum.  As the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next decade, the U.S. will witness tremendous changes that will shape the American health care system for the next 50 years or more. The course will examine potential reforms, including those offered by liberals and conservatives and information that can be extracted from health care systems in other developed countries. Throughout, lessons will integrate the disciplines of health economics, health and social policy, law and political science to elucidate key principles.  This course will provide students a broad overview of the current U.S. healthcare system. The course will focus on the challenges facing the health care system, an in-depth understanding of the Affordable Care Act, and its potential impact upon health care access, delivery, cost, and quality.

BIOE 603 – CLINICAL ETHICS
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Mondays, 5:15 - 7:30, September 13 - December 6
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
In this course, we will explore paradigmatic clinical ethics debates spanning the life course. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will consider some of the challenges in clinical decision-making for and with patients, such as assessing patient capacity, deciding for others, rationing at the bedside, and requests for assistance in dying. We will also examine hospital policies related to triage and allocation of scarce medical resources, including ventilators, vaccines, and organs.  We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, legal cases, and contemporaneous reports related to the COVID-19 pandemic to demonstrate the live ethical challenges of clinical practice today.

BIOE 601/401 - 401/402 - Introduction to Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays, 5:15 - 7:30, August 31 - December 9
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This course is intended to serve as an introduction to the academic field of bioethics.  Students will be introduced to classic papers, basic concepts, field history and important legal cases in the field. But rather than being a broad survey course of many content areas in bioethics, this course will examine how bioethical arguments are constructed with the objective of mastering both the critique of bioethical arguments and their construction. Therefore, most importantly, this course serves as a “methods course” for learning the skill of persuasive bioethics argument, i.e., “the art of conversion.” In some of the course sessions, we will focus on the analysis of arguments made by others. In many of the weeks of the course, we will focus on the process of constructing our own, effective bioethical arguments.

 

Summer 2021

BIOE 555 – Medicine on the Fringes: the Ethics of Alternative, Experimental, and Do-It-Yourself Treatments
Instructor: Anna Wexler
Time: Tuesdays, May 25 - Aug 3
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM                                                              Much bioethics literature focuses on issues in mainstream, established medicine — but what are the ethics of therapies, treatments and techniques utilized outside of common practice? This course begins with a historical exploration of “quack medicine” and medical professionalization. We then explore ethical and regulatory issues regarding complementary and alternative medicine, as well as the ethics of providing experimental, off-label, and placebo treatments. Finally, we will examine how individuals are accessing therapeutic techniques outside of the physician’s office, via do-it-yourself medical movements, direct-to-consumer health technologies, and medical tourism.

BIOE 570 – Public Health Ethics
Instructor: Matthew McCoy
Time: Thursdays, May 27 - Aug 5
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM
When New York City passed a ban on the sale of large sugary drinks, critics denounced the law as an abuse of government power and an attack on personal freedom. “If people want to be fat, let them be fat,” protested one opponent of the law. Though the controversy surrounding the so-called “soda ban” garnered national attention, there is nothing unusual about policies that restrict or shape personal choice in the name of public health. From controls on the sale of certain drugs to healthy eating campaigns, governments regularly take measures to promote healthy behaviors and prevent people from engaging in actions that are harmful to themselves or others. What ethical values justify these sorts of public health inventions and how do they differ from the ethical values that inform clinical care? How far should governments go in limiting individual autonomy in order to achieve public health goals? How should governments and other actors prioritize different public health interventions? This course will explore these and other ethical questions in the context of case studies involving childhood vaccination, infectious disease monitoring and control, safe-injection sites, tobacco control, and other public health efforts.

BIOE 580 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Wednesdays, May 26 - Aug 4
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

Spring 2021

BIOE 551 – History of Medicine
Instructor: Lance Wahlert 
Time: Thursdays, Jan 21 - Apr 22
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM        
While concerns over patient care, research ethics, and vocational duty have been hallmarks of the medical profession for over two millennia, bioethics (as a distinct and unified disciple) is relatively new. And yet the history of medicine informs the ways in which clinical practices are effectively conducted and ethically scrutinized even today. Accordingly, this course introduces students to a comprehensive history of the Western Medical Tradition—from the Hippocratic-Galenic method, which dominated Europe and the Middle East from the classical period to the eighteenth century; to the dawn of Paris Medicine, which reorganized clinical practice and professional training in the nineteenth century; to the rise and global proliferation of biomedical research in the early twentieth century.

BIOE 561 – Ethics, Regulation, and Politics of Science
Instructor: Steven Joffe and Holly Fernandez Lynch
Time: Tuesdays, Jan 26 - Apr 27
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM                                                                                  As the COVID19 pandemic has reminded us, the conduct of science poses both profound ethical questions and important challenges for policymakers and the public. How should society deploy its limited resources in the pursuit of science? How can we respect research participants and protect their interests? What are the roles of norms, laws, regulations, public engagement, and other governance mechanisms in ensuring that the right science is done and that science is done right? How can we ensure that science benefits rather than harms individuals and communities and that it combats rather than reinforces injustice? Is there some science that simply shouldn’t be done? What can we learn from science “gone wrong?” To address these and other questions, this course will first articulate the fundamental ethical and policy issues raised by the conduct of biomedical science and will then apply those frameworks to a series of timeless and timely case studies, with attention to science and race, science in public health emergencies, and more. Student assessment will be based on midterm and final essay exams. Students will also be expected to complete brief written replies (ungraded) in advance of 6 class sessions.

BIOE 603 – CLINICAL ETHICS
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Tuesdays, Jan 26 - Apr 27
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM
Since the 1960s, medical technology has rapidly expanded our capacity to intervene in peoples’ lives.  At the same time, profound changes in the health professions as well as in society at large have led to a renegotiation of the relationship between medicine and society.  The field of clinical ethics has worked to understand and to shape these radical changes. Although the reality of human vulnerability to illness may not have changed over the millennia, who qualifies for personhood or what it means to respect human dignity have been up for debate. In this advanced course in clinical ethics, we will explore key ethical debates across the entire life course. We will emphasize an interdisciplinary approach that acknowledges a variety of health care providers' experiences, and will consider some of the challenges in clinical decision-making for and with patients, such as rationing at the bedside and requests for assistance in ending a patient's life. We will also examine policies that impact clinical practice, including systems for organ allocation in transplantation. We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, clinical cases from our practices and from the media, and seminal legal cases to demonstrate the live ethical challenges of clinical practice today.

BIOE 566 – Personal Responsibility for Health in Policy and Practice
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, Jan 20 - Apr 28 
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM                                                                Excess body weight is often associated with higher healthcare cost. Should overweight and obese people pay more for health insurance?  If we want to encourage people to quit smoking, is it best to give insurance discounts to those who succeed, or impose surcharges on those who do not?  Should companies be permitted not to hire smokers?  Globally, more than seven in ten deaths are due to chronic diseases, such as stroke, cancer, diabetes or heart disease. In the US, rates are even higher.  Good or poor health is typically the result of a number of interacting factors.  Genetics, social status, environmental conditions and personal behavior all play a role.  In the best case, appeals to personal responsibility can motivate people to achieve oftentimes challenging behavior change.  But in the worst case, policies penalize people for factor that are beyond their control.  We will critically assess how personal responsibility is conceptualized in law and policy in different countries, and evaluate philosophical, political, economic and health-science related rationales in favor and against personal responsibility for health.  Some of the material will be conceptual in nature, but throughout, the discussion will be focused on concrete cases, including obesity, smoking, breast screening, organ donation and medication adherence.  We will also discuss controversial new work requirements and other policies aimed at strengthening personal responsibility in Medicaid.

BIOE 562 – Propaganda
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Wednesdays, Jan 20 - Apr 28
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM                                                                Is “propaganda” a dirty word? First there was the word, then there was propaganda. This participatory seminar course will involve exploration of propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, and persuasion in the health domain. We will address how propaganda is defined, how to identify it, analyze it, and counter it; examine actors, sources, and methods of communication, interests promoted, audiences targeted, outcomes, and the roles of values and uncertainty; and consider the related ethical issues. Students will research, present, and lead a discussion on an example of propaganda in the health realm. Topics will range from race, eugenics, wars on cancer and illegal drugs, firearms, climate change, income inequality, drug marketing, abortion, public hygiene, STDs, GMO, obesity, healthcare reform, vaccines, vivisection, new technologies, Covid-19, and others to be chosen.

BIOE 602 – 401/402 – Foundations of Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Mondays OR Thursdays, Jan 25/21 - Apr 26/22 4:30-7:00
Location: Online Synchronous 4:30 - 7:00 PM
This course is one of the 2 foundational courses in the MBE program, which together provide students an entre into the field of Bioethics. In Conceptual Foundations, students examine the various theoretical approaches to bioethics and critically assesses their underpinnings. Topics to be covered include an examination of various versions of utilitarianism; deonotological theories; virtue ethics; ethics of care; the fundamental principles of bioethics (autonomy, beneficence, distributive justice, non-maleficence); casuistry; and pragmatism. The course will include the application of the more theoretical ideas to particular topics, such as informed consent, confidentiality, and end of life issues.

BIOE 545/547 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III  
Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: TBA
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.
This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

BIOE 546/548 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV 
Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: TBA
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.
This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

Fall 2020

BIOE 551 – NARRATIVE ETHICS: HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND LITERATURE
Instructor: Lance Wahlert
Time: Thursdays, 4:30 - 7:00
Location: Online
What is it like to live with a chronic, debilitating, or fatal illness? What does it mean to treat a sick person as a doctor, nurse, or other medical professional? And how does it feel to be a caregiver, witness, or outside party in such circumstances? All of these questions will inform the central query of this course: How do personal narratives inform, explain, or complicate our understandings of the medical world? In recent decades, medical humanities scholars and bioethicists have striven to include the perspectives of multiple persons in the history and storytelling of medicine. Moreover, leading medical, nursing, and public health schools have incorporated narrative studies as a part of the training of their future doctors, nurses, and clinicians. While such strategies have been innovative at the level of revamping scholastic curriculums, they are hardly new in medical history. From the case study to the medical history to the talking cure, storytelling has been a central component in the diagnostic, therapeutic, and pastoral strategies of medical cosmologies for centuries. As a trans-historical study of medical storytelling, this course will be concerned with the power of narratives to bring coherence and meaning to the lives of sick persons, caregivers, and medical professionals at moments of great physical and emotional crisis. Accordingly, this course will consider a range of historical and contemporary topics that speak to the bioethical dilemmas of telling, reading, disseminating, and interpreting medically relevant narratives. While we will largely focus on non-fictional accounts (memoirs, medical records, journals, and testimonials), we will also consider how fictional literary sources (stories, poetry, films, and works of art) explore and affect matters related to the topic of “narrative and bioethics.”

BIOE 553 - History of Bioethics
Instructor: Jonathan Moreno
Time: Mondays, 4:30 - 7:00
Location: Online
This course will take an historical approach to the emergence of modern bioethics, the study of ethical issues in medicine and the life sciences.  The course will consider pre-20th century medical ethics; the scandals, tragedies and controversies that motivated the modern field; the institutionalization of bioethics in the academy, government, industry and the military; and the recent growing emphasis on ethics in basic life sciences research and development, including genetics, stem cell biology and neuroscience.  Recurring themes will include physician-patient relations, the ethics of human experimentation, military ethics, and human rights theory.

BIOE 575-401 - Health Policy [Cross-Listed as HCMG 250/HCMG 850]
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: Mondays AND Wednesdays, 4:30 - 6:00
Location: Online
The U.S. health care system is the world's largest, most technologically advanced, most expensive, with uneven quality, and an unsustainable cost structure. This multi-disciplinary course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. How did the United States get here? The course will examine the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum.  As the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next decade, the U.S. will witness tremendous changes that will shape the American health care system for the next 50 years or more. The course will examine potential reforms, including those offered by liberals and conservatives and information that can be extracted from health care systems in other developed countries. Throughout, lessons will integrate the disciplines of health economics, health and social policy, law and political science to elucidate key principles.  This course will provide students a broad overview of the current U.S. healthcare system. The course will focus on the challenges facing the health care system, an in-depth understanding of the Affordable Care Act, and its potential impact upon health care access, delivery, cost, and quality.

BIOE 578 - Bioethics and Human Rights
Instructor: Harald Schmidt and Matthew McCoy
Time: Wednesdays, 4:30 - 7:00
Location: Online
The constitution of the World Health Organization enshrines “the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being.” If such a right exists, it is far from being realized. Worldwide, over 1 billion people are living in hunger. Every day, 21,000 children die before their fifth birthday of pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea and other diseases. Even wealthy countries are marked by significant health disparities. In the U.S., for instance, infants born to African-American women are 1.5 to 3 times more likely to die than infants born to women of other races. This course explores the moral principles and the political and legal structures that inform a human rights approach to health. What sorts of freedoms (e.g., to bodily integrity) and entitlements (e.g., to accessible and affordable health care) does a right to the highest attainable standard of health entail? If countries cannot ensure their citizens’ right to the highest attainable standard of health, what responsibility does the international community bear for intervening? Should undocumented and irregular migrants have the same access to health care as citizens? Is a human rights approach to health compatible with using the market to allocate health-related goods? Finally, what are the limitations of analyzing health and formulating health policy using a human rights framework?

BIOE 590 – Ethics in Mental Healthcare
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Tuesdays, 4:30 - 7:00
Location: Online
Mental healthcare—which includes, but is not limited to, psychiatry, psychology, and clinical social work—is an especially ethically fraught subdiscipline of the larger medical enterprise. Issues range from garden-variety problems related to informed consent, patient capacity, and clinical professionalism to novel issues related to involuntary treatment, research on mentally ill persons, questions about free will and nosological categories. This course will present a survey of these ethical issues by first introducing foundational concepts from ethical theory and the philosophy of psychiatry and mind. Students will be expected to become conversant in several bioethical approaches and methods and be able to use them to critically examine both historical and contemporary questions in mental healthcare and research.

BIOE 601/401 - 401/402 - Introduction to Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays, 4:30 - 7:00
Location: Online
This course is intended to serve as a broad introduction to the field of bioethics. The course will focus on the central areas in research and clinical ethics: genetics, reproduction, end-of-life, informed consent, the history of human subjects research, and surrogate decision-making. In this course, we will study case analysis, bioethics concepts, relevant legal cases, and classical readings in the field of bioethics.

Summer 2020

BIOE 560 – Pediatric Ethics
Instructor: Steven Joffe and Jennifer Walter
Time: Mondays, 4:30-7:00                                                                                                                    Dates:  06/01/20 - 08/03/20
Location: ONLINE
In this course, we will explore the history, conceptual frameworks, and landmark debates of bioethics related to children. We will examine common ethical challenges (e.g., transplantation, critical illness, end of life) when the patient is a child. We will also examine issues unique to children, such as newborn screening, consent vs. assent, the rights and responsibilities of parents, and the role of the courts and the state. We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, clinical cases, and seminal legal decisions to demonstrate the breadth and complexity of pediatric ethics.

BIOE 555 – Neuroethics
Instructor: Jonathan Moreno
Time: Tuesdays, 4:30-7:00                                                                                                            Dates: 05/26/20 - 08/04/20
Location: ONLINE
Neuroethics might well be the most rapidly growing area within bioethics; indeed, in some respects neuroethics has grown as an independent field, with its own journals, professional society and institutional centers. This growth over the past decade is partly attributable to the growth of neuroscience itself and to the challenging philosophical and moral questions it inherently raises. A 2012 Royal Society report, observes that an increasingly mechanistic understanding of the brain raises a host of ethical, legal, and social implications. This has laid the foundation for the emergent field of Neuroethics, which examines ethical issues governing the conceptual and practical developments of neuroscience. Irrespective of their validity, even the claims that modern neuroscience entails the re-examination of complex and sensitive topics like free will, consciousness, identity, and responsibility raises significant ethical issues. As such, neuroethics asks questions that extend beyond the usual umbrella of biomedical ethics. This course will, therefore, consider the new knowledge and ways of learning about the brain from scientific and ethico-legal and social standpoints. We will examine the core themes of neuroethics, including cognitive enhancement, the nature of the self and personhood, neuroimaging and privacy, and the ways that all these themes are brought together in matters affecting national security. 

BIOE 580 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Wednesdays, 4:30-7:00                                                                                                     Dates: 05/27/20 - 08/05/20
Location: ONLINE
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

BIOE 546/548 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV 
Stay tuned for upcoming Mediation Intensives after August 2020.

 

Spring 2020

BIOE 505 – Sex and Bioethics 
Instructor: Lance Wahlert 
Time: Thursdays, Jan 16 - Apr 23, 4:30-7:00
Location: BRB 1201, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd         
While the topics of sex and sexuality have a long and storied history in medical culture, they have been especially complex and problematic in the past century.  With the creation of distinct sexually-minded medical fields since the late 19th-century including sexology, psychiatry, and hormonal studies, medicine has also occasioned the very categories and labels of the homosexual, the hermaphrodite, the invert, and the nymphomaniac, to name a few.  While medical historians and queer theorists have paid almost obsessive attention to these subjects, bioethicists have intervened to a lesser degree and on only a handful of relevant subjects.  In this course, we will address the range of historical and theoretical matters that speak to this intersection of bioethics and sex, paying special attention to the health concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) persons .  Who has sex with whom?  What does it mean to pathologize or diagnose such desires?  How do we raise the stakes when considering persons who question their sex or who are in sexual transition?  And how do such questions reveal the dilemmas of bioethicists at large, not just those related to matters of sex and sexuality?  Accordingly, this course will consider a range of historical and contemporary topics which speak to the bioethical dilemmas of the intersection of medicine, sex, and sexuality, including: the gay adolescent, the intersex person, gay-conversion therapies, the prospect of gay gene studies, sex addiction, and blood/organ donation policies in wake of the HIV/AIDS pandemic.  Specifically, we will focus on literary sources (poetry, memoirs, diaries, and films) as well as on non-literary accounts (medical texts, bioethical scholarship, legal cases, and historical records) that explore the emotional and somatic aspects of matters related to sex and bioethics. 

BIOE 559 – Speaking For Patients: Ethical Issues in Patient Advocacy
Instructor: Matthew McCoy
Time: Tuesdays, Jan 21 - Apr 28, 4:30-7:00
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                              This course examines the role that activism and advocacy play in shaping health care in the United States and abroad. The course combines in-depth exploration of particular case studies—AIDS activism in the 1980s, the billion-dollar breast cancer movement, the anti-vaccine movement—with an analysis of cross-cutting questions and themes. We consider how health advocates contribute to forming personal identities around certain illnesses and conditions, how they mobilize constituents and recruit allies, and how they influence decisions about health policy, research, and practice. We also consider the implications of an increasingly professionalized health advocacy industry and ask how corporate sponsorship has changed the landscape of health activism. In addition, we examine the ethical issues involved in speaking on behalf of others, particularly those (e.g., young children, persons with intellectual disabilities) who cannot speak for themselves.

BIOE 564 – Social Media, Healthcare, and Medical Ethics
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Wednesdays, Jan 22 - Apr 29, 4:30-7:00
Location: BRB 801, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd                              It is difficult to overstate the impact of the internet and social media on our lives. Individuals, families, communities, and societies have been transformed. People now relate to and communicate with one another in ways previously unimagined. Social media platforms have redefined our understanding and expectations about friendship, citizenship, individual privacy, and, most fundamentally, reality.  In this course, we will examine the conceptual and ethical challenges posed by the use of artificial intelligence, social media, and the ‘internet of things’ in healthcare contexts. We will begin with selections from the philosophy of technology and then explore ethical issues in the application of social media and artificial intelligence across health care.  The course will combine both didactics and discussion to engage students on these issues.

BIOE 565 – Rationing and Resource Allocation
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, Jan 22 - Apr 29, 4:30-6:30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
You have one liver but three patients awaiting a liver transplant.  Who should get the liver?  What criteria should be used to select the recipient? Is it fair to give it to an alcoholic?  These are some of the questions that arise in the context of rationing and allocating scarce health care resources among particular individuals, and concern what are called micro-allocation decisions.  But trade-offs also need to be made at the meso- and macro-level.  Budgets of public payers of healthcare, such as governments, and of private ones, such as health plans, are limited: they cannot cover all drugs and services that appear beneficial to patients or physicians.  So what services should they provide? Is there a core set of benefits that everyone should be entitled to? If so, by what process should we determine these? How can we make fair decisions, if we know from the outset than not all needs can be met? Using the cases of organs for transplantation, the rationing for vaccines in a flu pandemic, and drug shortages, the course will critically examine alternative theories for allocating scarce resources among individuals.  Using both the need to establish priorities for global health aid and to define an essential benefit package for health insurance, the course will critically examine diverse theories for allocation decisions, including cost-effectiveness analysis, age-based rationing and accountability for reasonableness.  

BIOE 580 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Mondays, Jan 15 - Apr 27, 4:30-7:00
Location: BLK 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Dr
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

BIOE 602 - 401/402 – Foundations of Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Mondays OR Thursdays, Jan 15 - Apr 27, 4:30-7:00
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This course is one of the 2 foundational courses in the MBE program, which together provide students an entre into the field of Bioethics. In Conceptual Foundations, students examine the various theoretical approaches to bioethics and critically assesses their underpinnings. Topics to be covered include an examination of various versions of utilitarianism; deonotological theories; virtue ethics; ethics of care; the fundamental principles of bioethics (autonomy, beneficence, distributive justice, non-maleficence); casuistry; and pragmatism. The course will include the application of the more theoretical ideas to particular topics, such as informed consent, confidentiality, and end of life issues.

BIOE 545/547 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III  
Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: Jan 17-20, 2020
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.
This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

Fall 2019

BIOE 550 - Culture Wars: Bioethics in a Diverse Society
Instructor: Matthew McCoy
Time: Wednesdays, 4:30 - 7:00, August 28 - December 4
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
In this course, we will examine the ethical challenges of health and science policymaking in pluralistic democratic societies, considering a number of questions that cut across topic areas in bioethics. How can persons with different religious and moral convictions find common ground for debating bioethical issues? Is it ever acceptable to ban certain medical procedures or certain types of medical research on the basis of religious reasons? We will also ask who has the authority to resolve bioethical controversies. Are there bioethics experts and, if so, how should their input be weighed against public opinion in the policymaking process? Should courts seek to resolve ethically contentious issues or leave them to elected officials? We will address these questions by reading work from bioethicists, philosophers, and social scientists and through in-depth case study of recent and ongoing bioethics controversies.

BIOE 551 - Bioethics and Film
Instructor: Lance Wahlert
Time: Tuesdays, 4:30 - 7:00, August 27 - December 3
Location: BRB 801, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
In reality and metaphorically, cinema has served for generations of moviegoers as a site of communal congregation, pedogogical dissemination, and sometimes disease infection. Accordingly, how and where we watch films are just as important as what films have to say about doctors, disease, and death. This course will consider the epidemiological and cultural implications of cinema on bioethics, including how movies and movie theaters themselves have functioned as spaces of contentious discourse regarding public health. Bearing in mind the recent scholarship of film and medical theorists such as Lisa Cartwright, Paula Triechler, and David Serlin, we will study not only the possibility for film to register and comment on cultural understandings of the clinic, but also the ways cinema itself works out, reimagines, and even changes how the clinic is put into practice. Focusing on themes such as quarantine, vaccination, sexual health, end of life care, professional competence, and globalization, we will be watching and discussing public health films and feature-length films by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Croneberg, Tamara Jenkins, and Todd Haynes. No background in either cinema studies or bioethics is required for this course.

BIOE 554 – Bioethics and the Law
Instructor: Emily Largent
Time: Mondays, 4:30-7:00, September 9 - December 9
Location: BRB 801, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This course will present a broad survey of topics at the intersection of law and bioethics. Much of bioethics deals with topics of public policy, and law is the tool of policy. Areas to be covered will range from an overview of American law making to enforcement mechanisms, topics including FDA regulations, state interventions into beginning and end of life issues, privacy, malpractice, healthcare reform, and international issues, including those related to innovation and access to medicines.

BIOE 575-401 - Health Policy [Cross-Listed as HCMG 250/HCMG 850]
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: Tuesdays AND Thursdays, 4:30 - 6:00, August 27/30 - December 3/5
Location: SHDH 350, Steinberg Hall - Dietrich Hall, 3620 Locust Walk
The U.S. health care system is the world's largest, most technologically advanced, most expensive, with uneven quality, and an unsustainable cost structure. This multi-disciplinary course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. How did the United States get here? The course will examine the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum.  As the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next decade, the U.S. will witness tremendous changes that will shape the American health care system for the next 50 years or more. The course will examine potential reforms, including those offered by liberals and conservatives and information that can be extracted from health care systems in other developed countries. Throughout, lessons will integrate the disciplines of health economics, health and social policy, law and political science to elucidate key principles.  This course will provide students a broad overview of the current U.S. healthcare system. The course will focus on the challenges facing the health care system, an in-depth understanding of the Affordable Care Act, and its potential impact upon health care access, delivery, cost, and quality.

HCIN 600-001/002 - The American Health Care System 
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: September 3 - October 14
Location: Online
This course surveys the historical development of the American health care system from the turn of the Twentieth Century to the present.  We examine the logic, economics, and implementation of the system’s basic structural components from insurance, to hospitals, to models for compensating physicians and nurses.  We review many attempts at reform, and discuss why they failed.  We analyze in detail the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court’s rulings, and its provisions on access, cost control, quality, workforce, and financing.  And we begin to consider some of the directions in which the American health care system may evolve next. 

BIOE 601/401 - 401/402 - Introduction to Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays, 4:30 - 7:00, August 28/30 - December 5/7
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This course is intended to serve as a broad introduction to the field of bioethics. The course will focus on the central areas in research and clinical ethics: genetics, reproduction, end-of-life, informed consent, the history of human subjects research, and surrogate decision-making. In this course, we will study case analysis, bioethics concepts, relevant legal cases, and classical readings in the field of bioethics.

BIOE 603 – CLINICAL ETHICS
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Mondays, 4:30-7:00, September 9 - December 9
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
Since the 1960s, medical technology has rapidly expanded our capacity to intervene in peoples’ lives.  At the same time, profound changes in the health professions as well as in society at large have led to a renegotiation of the relationship between medicine and society.  The field of clinical ethics has worked to understand and to shape these radical changes. Although the reality of human vulnerability to illness may not have changed over the millennia, who qualifies for personhood or what it means to respect human dignity have been up for debate. In this advanced course in clinical ethics, we will explore key ethical debates across the entire life course. We will emphasize an interdisciplinary approach that acknowledges a variety of health care providers' experiences, and will consider some of the challenges in clinical decision-making for and with patients, such as rationing at the bedside and requests for assistance in ending a patient's life. We will also examine policies that impact clinical practice, including systems for organ allocation in transplantation. We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, clinical cases from our practices and from the media, and seminal legal cases to demonstrate the live ethical challenges of clinical practice today.

Summer 2019

BIOE 557 – Disability Bioethics
Instructor: Emily Largent and Lance Wahlert
Time: Thursdays, May 30 - August 2, 4:30-7:00
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
How should disability factor into medical decision making?  How does the way we define disability impact the distribution of scarce resources in society? How should we understand concepts like dignity and autonomy in light of disability?  This disability ethics course uses a variety of approaches to understand disability in personal, social, economic, artistic, historical, legal, and political contexts. In this course, we will discuss topics such as: the challenge of defining disability; the social and medical models of disability; the continuities and discontinuities among different kinds of disability; the centralities of justice and equality in disability discourses; the nature and cuases of disability discrimination; and, the role of disability in personal relationships. Topics of study will include mental health, HIV-positive status, deaf culture, the Americans with Disabilities Act, transgender discrimination, handicap accessibility, and more. No prior study of disability theory or bioethics required. 

BIOE 570 – Public Health Ethics
Instructor: Matthew McCoy
Time: Tuesdays, May 28 - August 6, 4:30-7:00
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
When New York City passed a ban on the sale of large sugary drinks, critics denounced the law as an abuse of government power and an attack on personal freedom. “If people want to be fat, let them be fat,” protested one opponent of the law. Though the controversy surrounding the so-called “soda ban” garnered national attention, there is nothing unusual about policies that restrict or shape personal choice in the name of public health. From controls on the sale of certain drugs to healthy eating campaigns, governments regularly take measures to promote healthy behaviors and prevent people from engaging in actions that are harmful to themselves or others. What ethical values justify these sorts of public health inventions and how do they differ from the ethical values that inform clinical care? How far should governments go in limiting individual autonomy in order to achieve public health goals? How should governments and other actors prioritize different public health interventions? This course will explore these and other ethical questions in the context of case studies involving childhood vaccination, infectious disease monitoring and control, safe-injection sites, tobacco control, and other public health efforts.

BIOE 580 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Mondays, June 3 - August 5, 4:30-7:00
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

BIOE 547-910 – Mediation Intensive II/IV                                                                            Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: May 23-26
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th FL, 423 Guardian Drive

Download May Mediation Flyer

This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment

BIOE 548-920 – Mediation Intensive I/III                                                                             Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: August 8-11
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th FL, 423 Guardian Drive

Download August Mediation Flyer

This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Only students currently in a clinical professon are eligible. Permission needed by instructor. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice fmediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment

Spring 2019

BIOE 602 - 401/402 – Foundations of Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Mondays OR Thursdays, 4:30-7:00, January 16/17-April 25/29
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This course is one of the 2 foundational courses in the MBE program, which together provide students an entre into the field of Bioethics. In Conceptual Foundations, students examine the various theoretical approaches to bioethics and critically assesses their underpinnings. Topics to be covered include an examination of various versions of utilitarianism; deonotological theories; virtue ethics; ethics of care; the fundamental principles of bioethics (autonomy, beneficence, distributive justice, non-maleficence); casuistry; and pragmatism. The course will include the application of the more theoretical ideas to particular topics, such as informed consent, confidentiality, and end of life issues.

BIOE 552 – Bioethics and the Body
Instructor: Holly Fernandez Lynch
Time: Thursdays, 4:30 - 7:00, January 17-April 25
Location: BRB 701, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
Many difficult questions in bioethics center on how society and individuals may permissibly use the bodies and body parts of others, as well as the moral status of human bodies themselves. In reproductive ethics, we think about the rights and interests of gestational or genetic surrogates and gamete donors, as well as embryos and future children, who lack a present body but nonetheless may have moral claims. In clinical ethics, we worry about organ donation and sale, and in the context of defining death, questions arise about whether personhood should be tied to the simple existence of a metabolically active human body. In research ethics, the enterprise is built on the use of research subjects’ bodies for the advancement of science and medicine, potentially at substantial personal risk. This course will address questions at the intersection of bioethics and the body, introducing concepts regarding commodification, exploitation, property interests, labor principles, and theories of human rights, among others. We will examine several examples of challenging issues regarding use of bodies and body parts, such as research participation, use of biospecimens, surrogacy, gamete donation, use of embryos, organ donation, and use of cadavers. We may also cover emerging areas of interest, including the ethics of professional sports in which athletes sacrifice their bodies for public entertainment and the potential moral claims of those with artificial bodies (AI). Grading will be based on a combination of class participation, final presentation, and final paper.

BIOE 570 – Genetics
Instructor: Pamela Sankar
Time: Tuesdays, 4:30-7:00, January 22-April 30
Location: BLK 1311, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Dr.
More than 20 years have passed since the inception of the Human Genome Project. Where are we now? The results of the HGP have shaped medical practice and have changed the way people talk about themselves and their relationships. In this course students will be introduced to basic genetics and to recent advances in the genetic and genomic sciences. We will explore the ethical, legal, and social implications of these trends while discussing topics such as whole genome testing, ancestry and race, forensic genetics, and the relationship of genetics to health disparities.

BIOE 572 – Global Bioethics
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays, 4:30-7:00, January 23-May 1
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
According to the WHO, around 30 million people with HIV/AIDS should receive anti-retroviral treatment.  But only 10 million do. Drugs containing tenofovir--the standard of care in developed countries—are expensive.  Stavudine-based treatments are much cheaper but have worse side-effects.  Is it ethical to use stavudine-based rather than tenofovir-based treatments in sub-Saharan Africa?   Smoking rates have decreased drastically in most developed countries. But they are increasing in many developing countries. Established public health measures are not implemented, and the tobacco industry pursues a range of marketing activities that would be unacceptable in developed countries. As a consequence, global deaths from smoking are expected to increase to 1bn by the end of the 21st century, with 80% of deaths in developing countries. Is industry’s behavior immoral or normal in a global market? ARDS is a disease of premature newborns.  Is it ethical to test a new ARDS drug in Bolivia if the drug--if proven to be effective-- will be very expensive and accessible only to the richest people in Bolivia and other developing countries?   An overarching question that these different cases raise is whether there are universal ethical standards that should apply to all people, or whether regional variations should be acceptable.  Universalists typically argue that there must be no double standards, and that people should be treated the same regardless of where they live.  Pragmatists raise concerns about moral imperialism, neo-colonialism, or insufficient respect for cultural or other differences. Increasing globalization fuels debates about which of competing sets of moral standards is the right one.  Looking at a range of diverse cases including healthcare research, health policy, flu pandemics, family planning, smoking and obesity policy, and genetically modified crops, this course explores controversies in the cross winds of market forces, politics and ethics, and examines the roles and responsibilities of key actors and international policy guidance. 

BIOE 580 – Research Ethics
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Mondays, 4:30-7:00, January 16-April 29
Location: BLK 701, Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Dr.
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

BIOE 603 – Clinical Ethics
Instructor: Dominic Sisti and Steven Joffe
Time: Tuesdays, 4:30-7:00, January 22-April 30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Bldg II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
Since the 1960s, medical technology has rapidly expanded our capacity to intervene in peoples’ lives.  At the same time, profound changes in the health professions as well as in society at large have led to a renegotiation of the relationship between medicine and society.  The field of clinical ethics has worked to understand and to shape these radical changes. Although the reality of human vulnerability to illness may not have changed over the millennia, who qualifies for personhood or what it means to respect human dignity have been up for debate. In this advanced course in clinical ethics, we will explore key ethical debates across the entire life course. We will emphasize an interdisciplinary approach that acknowledges a variety of health care providers' experiences, and will consider some of the challenges in clinical decision-making for and with patients, such as rationing at the bedside and requests for assistance in ending a patient's life. We will also examine policies that impact clinical practice, including systems for organ allocation in transplantation. We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, clinical cases from our practices and from the media, and seminal legal cases to demonstrate the live ethical challenges of clinical practice today

BIOE 545/547 – Mediation Intensive I/III                                                                         Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: January 10-13
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th FL, 423 Guardian Drive

Download January Mediation Flyer

This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Only students currently in a clinical profession are eligible. Permission needed by instructor. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment

 

Fall 2018

BIOE 551 - Bioethics and Film
Instructor: Lance Wahlert
Time: Wednesdays, 4:30 - 7:00, August 29 - December 5
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie Boulevard
In reality and metaphorically, cinema has served for generations of moviegoers as a site of communal congregation, pedogogical dissemination, and sometimes disease infection. Accordingly, how and where we watch films are just as important as what films have to say about doctors, disease, and death. This course will consider the epidemiological and cultural implications of cinema on bioethics, including how movies and movie theaters themselves have functioned as spaces of contentious discourse regarding public health. Bearing in mind the recent scholarship of film and medical theorists such as Lisa Cartwright, Paula Triechler, and David Serlin, we will study not only the possibility for film to register and comment on cultural understandings of the clinic, but also the ways cinema itself works out, reimagines, and even changes how the clinic is put into practice. Focusing on themes such as quarantine, vaccination, sexual health, end of life care, professional competence, and globalization, we will be watching and discussing public health films and feature-length films by directors such as Alfred Hitchcock, David Croneberg, Tamara Jenkins, and Todd Haynes. No background in either cinema studies or bioethics is required for this course.

BIOE 553 - History of Bioethics
Instructor: Jonathan Moreno
Time: Mondays, 4:30 - 7:00, September 10 - December 10
Location: BLK 1311, Blockley Hall 13th Floor, 423 Guardian Drive
This course will take an historical approach to the emergence of modern bioethics, the study of ethical issues in medicine and the life sciences.  The course will consider pre-20th century medical ethics; the scandals, tragedies and controversies that motivated the modern field; the institutionalization of bioethics in the academy, government, industry and the military; and the recent growing emphasis on ethics in basic life sciences research and development, including genetics, stem cell biology and neuroscience.  Recurring themes will include physician-patient relations, the ethics of human experimentation, military ethics, and human rights theory.

BIOE 575-401 - Health Policy [Cross-Listed as HCMG 250/HCMG 850]
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: Tuesdays AND Thursdays, 4:30 - 6:00, August 28/30 - December 5/7
Location: STIT B6, Stiteler Hall, 208 South 37th St.
The U.S. health care system is the world's largest, most technologically advanced, most expensive, with uneven quality, and an unsustainable cost structure. This multi-disciplinary course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system and the impact of the Affordable Care Act. How did the United States get here? The course will examine the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum.  As the Affordable Care Act is implemented over the next decade, the U.S. will witness tremendous changes that will shape the American health care system for the next 50 years or more. The course will examine potential reforms, including those offered by liberals and conservatives and information that can be extracted from health care systems in other developed countries. Throughout, lessons will integrate the disciplines of health economics, health and social policy, law and political science to elucidate key principles.  This course will provide students a broad overview of the current U.S. healthcare system. The course will focus on the challenges facing the health care system, an in-depth understanding of the Affordable Care Act, and its potential impact upon health care access, delivery, cost, and quality.

HCIN 600-001 - The American Health Care System ***New Fall 2018 Class***
Instructor: Ezekiel Emanuel
Time: September 4 - October 29
Location: Online
This course surveys the historical development of the American health care system from the turn of the Twentieth Century to the present.  We examine the logic, economics, and implementation of the system’s basic structural components from insurance, to hospitals, to models for compensating physicians and nurses.  We review many attempts at reform, and discuss why they failed.  We analyze in detail the passage of the Affordable Care Act, the Supreme Court’s rulings, and its provisions on access, cost control, quality, workforce, and financing.  And we begin to consider some of the directions in which the American health care system may evolve next. 

BIOE 578 - Bioethics and Human Rights ***New Fall 2018 Class***
Instructor: Harald Schmidt and Matthew McCoy
Time: Wednesdays, 4:30 - 7:00, August 29 - December 5
Location: BLK 1311, Blockley Hall 13th Floor, 423 Guardian Drive
The constitution of the World Health Organization enshrines “the highest attainable standard of health as a fundamental right of every human being.” If such a right exists, it is far from being realized. Worldwide, over 1 billion people are living in hunger. Every day, 21,000 children die before their fifth birthday of pneumonia, malaria, diarrhea and other diseases. Even wealthy countries are marked by significant health disparities. In the U.S., for instance, infants born to African-American women are 1.5 to 3 times more likely to die than infants born to women of other races. This course explores the moral principles and the political and legal structures that inform a human rights approach to health. What sorts of freedoms (e.g., to bodily integrity) and entitlements (e.g., to accessible and affordable health care) does a right to the highest attainable standard of health entail? If countries cannot ensure their citizens’ right to the highest attainable standard of health, what responsibility does the international community bear for intervening? Should undocumented and irregular migrants have the same access to health care as citizens? Is a human rights approach to health compatible with using the market to allocate health-related goods? Finally, what are the limitations of analyzing health and formulating health policy using a human rights framework?

BIOE 590 – Ethics in Mental Healthcare
Instructor: Dominic Sisti
Time: Mondays, 4:30 - 7:00, September 10 - December 10
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie Boulevard
Mental healthcare—which includes, but is not limited to, psychiatry, psychology, and clinical social work—is an especially ethically fraught subdiscipline of the larger medical enterprise. Issues range from garden-variety problems related to informed consent, patient capacity, and clinical professionalism to novel issues related to involuntary treatment, research on mentally ill persons, questions about free will and nosological categories. This course will present a survey of these ethical issues by first introducing foundational concepts from ethical theory and the philosophy of psychiatry and mind. Students will be expected to become conversant in several bioethical approaches and methods and be able to use them to critically examine both historical and contemporary questions in mental healthcare and research.

BIOE 601/401 - 401/402 - Introduction to Bioethics
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Tuesdays OR Thursdays, 4:30 - 7:00, August 28/30 - December 5/7
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie Blvd
This course is intended to serve as a broad introduction to the field of bioethics. The course will focus on the central areas in research and clinical ethics: genetics, reproduction, end-of-life, informed consent, the history of human subjects research, and surrogate decision-making. In this course, we will study case analysis, bioethics concepts, relevant legal cases, and classical readings in the field of bioethics.

 

Summer 2018

BIOE 555 – NEUROETHICS
Instructor: Jonathan Moreno
Time: Tuesdays, 4:30 - 7:00, May 22 - July 31
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie Boulevard              Neuroethics might well be the most rapidly growing area within bioethics; indeed, in some respects neuroethics has grown as an independent field, with its own journals, professional society and institutional centers. This growth over the past decade is partly attributable to the growth of neuroscience itself and to the challenging philosophical and moral questions it inherently raises. A 2012 Royal Society report, observes that an increasingly mechanistic understanding of the brain raises a host of ethical, legal, and social implications. This has laid the foundation for the emergent field of Neuroethics, which examines ethical issues governing the conceptual and practical developments of neuroscience. Irrespective of their validity, even the claims that modern neuroscience entails the re-examination of complex and sensitive topics like free will, consciousness, identity, and responsibility raises significant ethical issues. As such, neuroethics asks questions that extend beyond the usual umbrella of biomedical ethics. This course will, therefore, consider the new knowledge and ways of learning about the brain from scientific and ethico-legal and social standpoints. We will examine the core themes of neuroethics, including cognitive enhancement, the nature of the self and personhood, neuroimaging and privacy, and the ways that all these themes are brought together in matters affecting national security.

BIOE 566 - PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY FOR HEALTH IN POLICY AND PRACTICE
Instructor: Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesday 4:30-7:00, May 23 - August 1
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie BoulevardExcess body weight is often associated with higher healthcare cost. Should overweight and obese people pay more for health insurance?  If we want to encourage people to quit smoking, is it best to give insurance discounts to those who succeed, or impose surcharges on those who do not?  Should companies be permitted not to hire smokers?  Globally, more than seven in ten deaths are due to chronic diseases, such as stroke, cancer, diabetes or heart disease. In the US, rates are even higher.  Good or poor health is typically the result of a number of interacting factors.  Genetics, social status, environmental conditions and personal behavior all play a role.  In the best case, appeals to personal responsibility can motivate people to achieve oftentimes challenging behavior change.  But in the worst case, policies penalize people for factor that are beyond their control.  We will critically assess how personal responsibility is conceptualized in law and policy in different countries, and evaluate philosophical, political, economic and health-science related rationales in favor and against personal responsibility for health.  Some of the material will be conceptual in nature, but throughout, the discussion will be focused on concrete cases, including obesity, smoking, breast screening, organ donation and medication adherence.  We will also discuss controversial new work requirements and other policies aimed at strengthening personal responsibility in Medicaid.

BIOE 580 – RESEARCH ETHICS
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Mondays, 4:30 - 7:00, May 21 - July 30
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie Boulevard
This seminar is intended to give students a broad overview of research ethics and regulation. The students will come out of the class with an understanding of the historical evolution, moral bases and practical application of biomedical research ethics. The course includes reading assignments, lectures, discussions and practical review of research protocols and in-class interviews with researchers and study subjects. Course topics include: history of human subjects protections, regulatory and ethical frameworks for biomedical research, informed consent theory and application, selection of fair research subjects and payment, confidentiality, secondary uses of data and stored tissue, ethics of international research, pediatric and genetic research and conflicts of interest in biomedical research.

BIOE 546/548 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV 
Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: August 2-5, 2018
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th FL, 423 Guardian Drive
This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment 

Click for a August Mediation downloadable flyer.

Spring 2018

BIOE 551 – NARRATIVE ETHICS: HEALTH, MEDICINE, AND LITERATURE
Instructor: Lance Wahlert
Time: Thursdays, January 11 - April 19
Location: BLK 1319, Blockley Hall, 13th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.
What is it like to live with a chronic, debilitating, or fatal illness? What does it mean to treat a sick person as a doctor, nurse, or other medical professional? And how does it feel to be a caregiver, witness, or outside party in such circumstances? All of these questions will inform the central query of this course: How do personal narratives inform, explain, or complicate our understandings of the medical world? In recent decades, medical humanities scholars and bioethicists have striven to include the perspectives of multiple persons in the history and storytelling of medicine. Moreover, leading medical, nursing, and public health schools have incorporated narrative studies as a part of the training of their future doctors, nurses, and clinicians. While such strategies have been innovative at the level of revamping scholastic curriculums, they are hardly new in medical history. From the case study to the medical history to the talking cure, storytelling has been a central component in the diagnostic, therapeutic, and pastoral strategies of medical cosmologies for centuries. As a trans-historical study of medical storytelling, this course will be concerned with the power of narratives to bring coherence and meaning to the lives of sick persons, caregivers, and medical professionals at moments of great physical and emotional crisis. Accordingly, this course will consider a range of historical and contemporary topics that speak to the bioethical dilemmas of telling, reading, disseminating, and interpreting medically relevant narratives. While we will largely focus on non-fictional accounts (memoirs, medical records, journals, and testimonials), we will also consider how fictional literary sources (stories, poetry, films, and works of art) explore and affect matters related to the topic of “narrative and bioethics.”

BIOE 602 - 401/402 – FOUNDATIONS OF BIOETHICS
Instructor: Autumn Fiester
Time: Mondays OR Thursdays, 4:30-7:00, January 10/11-April 19/23
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie Boulevard
This course is one of the 2 foundational courses in the MBE program, which together provide students an entre into the field of Bioethics. In Conceptual Foundations, students examine the various theoretical approaches to bioethics and critically assesses their underpinnings. Topics to be covered include an examination of various versions of utilitarianism; deonotological theories; virtue ethics; ethics of care; the fundamental principles of bioethics (autonomy, beneficence, distributive justice, non-maleficence); casuistry; and pragmatism. The course will include the application of the more theoretical ideas to particular topics, such as informed consent, confidentiality, and end of life issues.

BIOE 550 – BIOETHICS AND THE LAW
Instructor: Jon Merz
Time: Mondays, 4:30-7:00, January 10-April 23
Location: BLK 1319, Blockley Hall, 13th Floor, 423 Guardian Drive
This course will present a broad survey of topics at the intersection of law and bioethics. Much of bioethics deals with topics of public policy, and law is the tool of policy. Areas to be covered will range from an overview of American law making to enforcement mechanisms, topics including FDA regulations, state interventions into beginning and end of life issues, privacy, malpractice, healthcare reform, and international issues, including those related to innovation and access to medicines.

BIOE 560 – PEDIATRIC ETHICS
Instructor: Steven Joffe and Jennifer Walter
Time: Tuesdays, 4:30-7:00, January 16-April 24
Location: BRB 251, Biomedical Research Building II/III, 421 Curie Boulevard
In this course, we will explore the history, conceptual frameworks, and landmark debates of bioethics related to children. We will examine common ethical challenges (e.g., transplantation, critical illness, end of life) when the patient is a child. We will also examine issues unique to children, such as newborn screening, consent vs. assent, the rights and responsibilities of parents, and the role of the courts and the state. We will draw upon theories from moral philosophy, clinical cases, and seminal legal decisions to demonstrate the breadth and complexity of pediatric ethics.

BIOE 565 – RATIONING AND RESOURCE ALLOCATION
Instructors: Ezekiel Emanuel & Harald Schmidt
Time: Wednesdays 4:30-6:30, January 17 - April 25
Location: STIT B21, Stiteler Hall, 208 South 37th St.
You have one liver but three patients awaiting a liver transplant.  Who should get the liver?  What criteria should be used to select the recipient? Is it fair to give it to an alcoholic?  These are some of the questions that arise in the context of rationing and allocating scarce health care resources among particular individuals, and concern what are called micro-allocation decisions.  But trade-offs also need to be made at the meso- and macro-level.  Budgets of public payers of healthcare, such as governments, and of private ones, such as health plans, are limited: they cannot cover all drugs and services that appear beneficial to patients or physicians.  So what services should they provide? Is there a core set of benefits that everyone should be entitled to? If so, by what process should we determine these? How can we make fair decisions, if we know from the outset than not all needs can be met? Using the cases of organs for transplantation, the rationing for vaccines in a flu pandemic, and drug shortages, the course will critically examine alternative theories for allocating scarce resources among individuals.  Using both the need to establish priorities for global health aid and to define an essential benefit package for health insurance, the course will critically examine diverse theories for allocation decisions, including cost-effectiveness analysis, age-based rationing and accountability for reasonableness.  

BIOE 545/547 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE I/III  
Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: Jan 12-15, 2018
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.
This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.

BIOE 546/548 – MEDIATION INTENSIVE II/IV 
Instructors: Edward Bergman, Autumn Fiester, and Lance Wahlert
Time: May 17-20, 2018
Location: Blockley Hall, 14th Floor, 423 Guardian Dr.
This is an immersion experience of learning through role-playing mediation simulations. It has the same format of the other Mediation Intensives, but will NOT duplicate simulations. Students will:

• Learn to effectively manage clinical disputes among and between caregivers, patients and surrogates through mediation
• Discover how to define problems and assess underlying interests to generate mutually acceptable options
• Role-play in a variety of clinical situations as both disputants and mediators
• Practice mediation with professional actors
• Receive constructive feedback in supportive environment

Click for a downloadable flyer.