Philosophy 181 - Medical Ethics

Contemporary medicine gives rise to a variety of moral and philosophical questions. What are the responsibilities of medical researchers towards their subjects? How can we best understand the nature of disability? What moral duties do we have to those at the beginning of life? Do we have reason to be worried about the growth of technology in medicine> How should limited health care resources be distributed? The goals of this course are to improve our understanding of the best arguments on different sides of these questions and to acquire the tools to evaluate those arguments. The course will begin with a theory section, where we survey three influential theories -- utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and Rossian ethics -- each of which will be helpful towards finding reasonable answers to questions within medical ethics.