CAT 2: Biomedical Ethics
Gerald Doppelt
Syllabus: CAT2_WI13_Doppelt_Syllabus.pdf
Modern societies like the USA tend to believe that advances in science, technology, and medicine will solve all our problems and make all of us happy. But these scientific and medical advances generate new moral problems that can’t really be solved by science itself. Some of these moral problems concern the ethics of abortion, the right to die, the authority of patients and physicians in treatment decisions, the right distribution of medical care, the risks of the human genome project, the value of genetic testing, the benefits and dangers of eugenic engineering and the pursuit of the eugenically perfect baby. These problems engage us as moral agents and not simply as scientific and technical experts. How do we deal with these moral problems and avoid an absolute faith in the power of science/technology/medicine, to make us all happy?
