LAW 614 - Bioethics Seminar

Course Type: Upper Writing Requirement
Credits: 2

Description: This seminar examines developing medical technologies that pose acute ethical dilemmas, viewed from the context of the legal system’s actual or desirable response to them. Subjects include medical research and experimentation, genetic engineering, reproductive technologies and maternal-fetal conflicts, allocation of resources in organ transplantation and other scarce forms of medical treatment, legal issues raised by AIDS, and control of the dying process. Initial class meetings will discuss the ethical and legal contexts for examining these issues. Each student will develop a research paper of approximately 20-30 pages, analyzing the ethical and legal considerations relevant to a particular issue of interest to the student and proposing an approach or solution for dealing with the problems raised. Papers will be critiqued by the instructor individually for re-writing. Students will read each other’s work, and each student will conduct a discussion of their paper with the group as a whole.