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PHL/FYE 1050A Medical Ethics
Fall 2005 MW 100-220PM.
CRN 98184
E-mail: perringc@dowling.edu [All email to me should have "FYE"
in the subject line]
Office Phone: 244-3349
Classroom: RC 330
Office: 330B RC (next to the
computer lab)
Office Hours: MW
Cohort Librarian is Professor
Joyce Gotsch, gotschj@dowling.edu, 244-3150.
All students must go to the
free writing class, which is
Read this syllabus carefully! It is a contract between the professor and students and contains important details about this course. Note that some details are subject to change.
The course will provide
students with philosophical and factual knowledge and both abstract and practical
skills. Students will learn about
current controversies in medical ethics and the ways that different
philosophical theories are used to shed light on conflicting beliefs. This will involve legal, medical and
sociological facts about relevant issues such as, for example, the development
of a fetus, pregnancy, abortion, genetics, disability, terminal illness, the
process of dying, and the distribution of health care. Students will also develop a variety of skills. Through class discussion and paper writing,
students will improve their skills of expressing their understanding of the
complexities in ethical dilemmas, and searching for satisfactory solutions to
those dilemmas. The course will also
focus heavily on particular cases involving real people and actual events, and
they will learn to see the options available to those people, to assess the
ethical strengths and weaknesses of those options, to make a choice of one of
those options, and then to articulate a defense of that option.
As a First Year Experience
seminar, this course is also designed to help students make the transition
between high school and college. As
such, we will focus on the skills and behavior necessary for college courses. We will also spend time on students' need to
take responsibility for their own learning, their future lives, and to be
participating members of both the college community and wider society.
Student Learning Outcomes
a. The
course will provide students with an understanding of a wide variety of
philosophical traditions and in the contemporary world. Medical ethics has in the last forty years
become of the most vital areas of academic research and discussion within
philosophy, and so this course in medical ethics will give students a
background in an important area of contemporary philosophy.
b. The
course will provide students with knowledge and skills that will serve them
well in their future careers. A course
in medical ethics will be very useful for any students who plan to go into
careers in medical health, managed care, health insurance, government health
management, health policy, the law, clinical
psychology. It could also be useful to
those going into careers that involves frequent
interaction with people with health problems and disabilities, such as special
education teachers.
c. The
course provide knowledge and skills that will be useful to them in their
personal lives. Ethical debates about
abortion and physician-assisted suicide, to take two prominent examples, have
persisted for centuries. The
availability of new technology has improved our ability to keep people alive
but has also meant that now most people in the industrialized world at some
point in their lives have to make decisions about when to withhold medical
treatment. This course should help
students to understand the many ethical dimensions of difficult ethical
choices, and therefore it should help students to be more comfortable in coming
to a decision when they confront such choices.
Textbook: Classic
Cases in Medical Ethics, edited by Gregory
Pence. Fourth Edition
(McGraw-Hill, 2004)
· Students will do research on papers and class
presentations.
· Students will receive instruction on research methods,
including web-based research
· Students will write drafts for final papers.
· Students will receive instruction in discussion
methods and active listening.
· Students will receive instruction in active reading.
· Students will evaluate each other's work.
· Class time will be spent on the explication of texts.
· Students will receive instruction in note taking.
· Students will enhance their skills in critical
thinking, analyzing arguments, and expressing their ideas.
We hope to have at least 2
visiting speakers over the semester.
Grade assignment:
5 pop quizzes on assigned
reading: 5%
First paper: 10%
Second paper: 20%
Third paper: 30%
Attendance: 5%
Participation: 10%
Presentation: 10%
Personal reflections (4): 10%
All students will meet with
me to discuss their papers in 1 on 1 tutorials.
6-page paper topics: Chose
ONE of these
1. Why do some disability activists feel that
legalizing assisted suicide would increase discrimination against the
disabled? Does these concerns provide
strong reason to keep assisted suicide illegal?
2. Should children and adolescents under the age
of 18 with terminal illnesses ever be allowed to refuse medical treatment even
when their parents want them to continue treatment? Provide as strong as justification for your
conclusion as possible.
3. Is too much medical experimentation being performed
on animals? Survey the kinds of
experiments that get performed on animals and discuss whether they are
ethically justified.
Plagiarism detection and
prevention: All papers should be
submitted via Turnitin.com or sent to me by email as an attachment in MS Word
or RTF. I will give you information
about how to use Turnitin.com. Note that
I view any form of academic dishonesty very seriously, and if I find that you
have engaged in any significant form of plagiarism or cheating I will fail you
in this course and report my action to the Dean of Students.
The class ID for turnitin.com
is "1151642"
The password is
"dilemma"
Presentations: You must sign
up to do a presentation in by the end of the Week 2. You can do a 5-minute presentation on your
own, or a 10-minute presentation with another person. If you do a joint presentation, you will both
get the same grade. You can use
Powerpoint to do your presentation, but it is not required. However you do your presentation, you must
keep it lively and interesting, and you should not simply read out from a
pre-written text. You should provide
some information that is not available in the course textbook. Your presentation will
be assessed using the form available by clicking here.
Attendance: You need to be in the classroom by the start of the
class period, when I will take attendance.
If you are late to class, you need to speak to me at the end of class to
explain why you were late and ask me to record your presence on my roster. If you need to miss a class, you should
notify me by phone or email before the class.
If you are ill and see a medical professional, or you have an
unavoidable legal obligation, you should show me some documentation as
evidence. Your attendance grade will
suffer significantly if you miss classes without excuse. If you miss classes, you should request
make-up work from me.
Participation: You should participate in class discussion, both
answering questions that are put to the class, raising questions when you do
not fully understand an idea or a part of the text, or what someone in the
class says. You can also participate by
being a member of the Dowling Medical Ethics yahoogroups list and discussing
issues through email. You will be
subscribed to list at the start of the semester, and you can unsubscribe at the
end of the semester. Link:
http://groups.yahoo.com/Dcbioethics [??]
Personal Reflections: These should be at least 400 words, in grammatical English. They will not be graded, but I will give you
some feedback on them. You either get
credit for them or you don't. They are not
meant to be academically challenging, but are meant to give you the opportunity
to link the topics of the class to your own life and ideas you have about how
best to make decisions. It is up to you
how much of your own personal experience you include, but you are encouraged to
do so link your own life with philosophical discussions.
Classroom Etiquette. All cell phones
ringers should be turned off and you should never talk on your cell phone in
class. You should not eat any food in
class, especially food that others will notice through sound or smell. You should turn up on time to all
classes. You are free to express your
views and question the views of others, including your professor, and you can
be passionate about your opinions.
However, you must always treat others in the class with respect; you can
criticize the views and arguments of others, but you cannot criticize them as
persons. You should also make sure you
are not dominating classroom discussion to the exclusion of other class
members.
Extra Credit. There will be
a few extra credit options such as going to talks by visiting speakers or going
to plays and writing 600 words about it afterwards. All extra credit options will be available to
all students. If you want an extra
credit option or have an idea for a task to perform to get extra credit. Extra credit options normally provide 2%
added to your total grade. No student
can receive more than 4% extra credit.
Academic and Personal
Problems. If you have problems that cause you to be
late with work or to miss a number of classes, please stay in communication by
phone, email, or by meeting with me in person.
I will be willing to work with you and sort out a way for you to still
stay in the class and get a fair grade.
If you miss a number of classes or fail to hand in work on time but
don't give me any explanation then you risk failing the class. Most people experience some sort of crisis
during their college career, and you need to find ways to make sure that such
problems don't ruin your college career.
Keeping Copies of Your
Work.
It is your responsibility to keep copies of all your work in this course
until your final grade is submitted. You
need to keep copies of your work in at least 3 different places, because all
storage methods are fallible. Floppy
disks are very unreliable and I recommend you don't use them. If you do use them, back them up every
day. Better methods of storage are
CD-ROMS, flashdrives or jumpdrives, zip-drives, hard disks, and emails to
yourself with your work attached to the emails.
It can be a good idea to print out your work and keep a hard copy. But remember that no method of data storage
is perfect, which is why you should keep your work stored in at least 3
separate places.
Final
Deadline:
All work is due by December 15, when I will calculate final grades. You must make sure that you have given me:
·
all the papers
·
a draft
version of your final paper
·
electronic
copies of all the papers
· proof that you consulted
with a writing tutor.
If
I don't have all of these, you will fail the course.
Schedule.
No classes 3 4 5 Oct
No classes 23 - 27 Nov
Semester ends Dec 21
1 Sept W 7
Introduction: College Life
Dowling Email.
Blackboard Page
Assessment of Skills: Writing
sample, in-class assignment
2 Sept M 12
Chapter 10: Read all of it
Note taking:
Pages 247-253
Assignment: Take notes and be
ready to share them with the rest of the class for peer evaluation
3 Sept W 14
Note taking:
Pages 256-261: The views of Singer, Regan, Cohen and Frey.
4 Sept M 19
First personal reflection:
due Sept 19: Explain whether you think that mice have ethical rights and
whether we have a responsibility to avoid inflicting needless pain on
them. Give a reason for your view.
Reading: Pages 261-268
5 Sept W 21
Evaluating and referring to web sites.
Assignment. Before class, research and find 3 websites
that you think provide useful and well argued ideas about animal rights and
experimentation, and 3 websites that you think are unreliable sources of
information.
6. September M 26
Writing a
paper: Footnotes, references, turnitin.com, and plagiarism.
Writing
Assignment 1. 2 pages. You will be
assigned a term in medical ethics. Your
task is to look up different definitions and explanations of it and to decide
which is the most useful explanation. You need to say in your writing what sources
you looked up, how they compared with each other, and why you think the one you
selected was the best. Then you need to
quote that one, (no more than 100 words), including a citation in MLA format.
Grammatical English and clear
writing style are important.
7. September W 28
Paper Due!
Researching and doing a class
presentation. Finding information,
presenting it, Powerpoint, chalk and blackboard, overhead projectors, videos,
DVDs, speaking skills, generating discussion.
8. Oct M 10
Presentation Topics:
What medical experimentation
did the Nazis perform in concentration camps?
What reasons did the Nazis
have for their program of exterminating Jews?
What was the social position
of blacks in the southern states of the USA in the 1930s?
Reading: Chapter 11, pages
270-286
9. October W 12
Presentation: Present the
result of an interview with the Chair of Dowling College's Human Subjects
Committee or a full-time faculty member of the Psychology Dept to find out how
the committee decides what criteria an experiment on humans must meet in order
to be permissible.
10. October M 17
Show video of Dax Cowart
11. October W 19
Second
paper topic. 1200-1400
words. You must find at least one
book other than the course textbook or scholarly article on the ethics of
reproductive cloning and carefully read at least 20 pages of it. You need to explain the author's ideas and
conclusions in your paper, (half your paper), and then you need to assess the
plausibility of the author's claims (second half of your paper).
You must visit the
The life and death of Dolly
the sheep
Cloning at the movies: Are
clones portrayed positively or negatively?
12. October M 24
Read pages 204-215
Careful explication of the
text
13. October W 26
Paper due.
Chapter 3.
The case of Dax Coward
14. October M 31
Chapter 3: Background:
Perspectives on Suicide
Presentation Topics:
Why was suicide illegal and
where is it still illegal? How are such
laws enforced?
What is the group Not Dead
Yet and what actions does it take?
Why do chronically ill and
disabled people become depressed and how does this affect their judgment about
their future?
Is it possible for people
with chronic illness and severe disabilities to be as happy as people without
those problems?
15. Nov W 2
Chapter 4: Physician Assisted
Suicide: Focus on Kevorkian and Quill and famous cases
Presentation Topics:
Why is Jack Kevorkian in
jail?
What is the Hemlock society?
What was the Nazi program of
euthanasia?
Explain the argument in James
Rachel's article "Killing and Letting Die."
Personal reflection: Describe a case of a difficult decision you had to make and how you made that decision. Was the process a matter of solitary thought, emotional reaction, or discussion with others? Do you think you made the right decision? How could you have prepared better in making the decision?
16. Nov M 7
Chapter 4: Physician Assisted
Dying
Focus on ethical issues,
pages 106-121
How can philosophy help
people make difficult decisions?
17. November W 9
Chapter 2: People in Comas
Karen Quinlan and Nancy
Cruzan: the legal decisions. Pages 29-43
18. November M 14
Chapter 2: Removing Life
Support: The Ethical Issues
Pages 43-57.
How can philosophy help
people make difficult decisions?
19. November W 16
Chapter 9. Babies with
severe disabilities and chronic illnesses.
Reading: pages 216-226
Presentations Topics:
How do non-Western cultures
treat impaired newborns?
What is a neo-natal ward and
what treatments are provided?
What is Down syndrome and what
is the life of a child with Down syndrome like?
Draft of 6-page paper
due Nov 9
20. November M 21
Chapter 9: The rights of
babies and the quality of life.
Reading: pages 226-246.
How can philosophy help
people make difficult decisions?
21. November M 28
Video:
22. November W 30
Chapter 15. Taking away
people's freedom.
Reading: pages 369-381
Personal Reflection: Is
mental illness just a label we use to separate out people who don't fit in with
social norms?
23. Dec M 5
24. December W 7
Chapter 17. AIDS
Reading: pages 429-437
25. December M 12
6-page paper due
Visit from NYGLBT group
26. December W 14
Chapter 17:
Presentations Topics:
What is the US Government
doing to stop the global spread of AIDS?
What education do children
get about the dangers of AIDS in school?
Personal Reflection: Do we
have a responsibility to help people in need in other countries?
27. December M 19
Wrap
Up:
What
has this course achieved? Do you have
what it takes to be a college student?
Course
evaluation
Links: