Law, Biomedicine and Bioethics – 6853

Reading assignment for the first class: pages 1-27 in Barry  Furrow et al., Bioethics: Health Care Law and Ethics (West, 7^th ed., 2013).

Reading for the course will be drawn from a well-established casebook on law and bioethics, plus major reports and publications on bioethics and biomedicine. Each week we will analyze and debate the key issues raised. Students will be exposed to landmark publications in bioethics as well as seminal legal cases. This will allow students to develop a critical appreciation of the different approaches taken in law and bioethics and how those approaches are deployed in development of policy. Students will actively debate the issues posed by each week’s reading and other material. Each student will write a paper on a topic of their choosing, as approved by the instructor, and will present the paper-in-progress in depth for class and instructor feedback. Students may use PowerPoint, hand-outs, or both for the presentation. The paper will be an opportunity to develop an original proposal and argument. Grading will be based on class participation, the presentation, and the paper.