BSOC 2051 - Ethical Issues in Health and Medicine

(crosslisted) STS 2051
(ETM-AS, KCM-AS, SCD-AS)

Fall. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Permission of instruction required for first-year students to enroll.

R. Prentice.

In the rapidly changing world of healthcare, complex ethical issues arise from interpersonal interactions between patients and clinicians to broad controversies that propel medicine into headline news. This course will examine ethical challenges in contemporary medicine, healthcare, and biomedical research from the bedside to health policy. Using case-vignettes, news stories, narratives, and readings from the healthcare, ethics, and social science literature we will examine issues from multiple vantage points. A range of topics will be explored including the patient-clinician relationship, heath care decision-making, issues at the beginning and end-of-life, technological advances, human experimentation, healthcare systems, and distributive justice. The course will also examine the fluidity of normative ethical boundaries, and how context and point of reference influence our perceptions of and approach to ethical issues.