Running List of Review Questions
PHILH201 – Bioethics
These questions serve two purposes: (1) they guide your weekly reading; (2) a selection of them
will be used as exam questions during our two exams. Each week when you read, you should be
thinking about these questions. You should also begin formulating answers to them, based on
what you’ve been reading. The exams in this course will consist of long-form essay questions –
think old-school “blue book” essays, though you’ll type them rather than write them by hand.
Good answers may range from a long paragraph to several such paragraphs. The emphasis is on
quality rather than quantity. During the exam period (see course calendar for dates), you’ll have
a limited time in which to respond to a selection of the essay questions below. You will not know
which questions until the exam begins. Therefore, it is important to be preparing and editing your
answers as you go. That way, during the exam period you can simply paste your prepared answer
into the exam. Students who are not prepared will be forced to create their answers from scratch.
This is a system designed to incentivize weekly work and to disincentivize “coasting” between
the exams.
Week 1: Ethics and the Professions (March 7 & 10)
1. What is bioethics, specifically? What is ethics, generally? What are the different branches
of academic ethics? What is the relationship between bioethics and these branches?
Bioethics specifically is the study of ethical issues within the medical profession. This
then leads into ethics being the study of what is right and what is wrong in a moral sense.
This specific are of ethics known as bio ethics was derived from 4 different branches of
ethics. These are, Descriptive ethics, Normative ethics, Meta ethics, and Applied ethics.
Descriptive ethics studies the morality of society and what society feels is right and
wrong. Meaning that it is directly defined from societies beliefs. Normative ethics deals
with how people are supposed to act based on societies set of morals. Therefore, it is
describing what it means to be normal in society. Meta ethics gets into the fine details of
the ethics that society has set for themselves. It analyzes what these morals mean and if
they are good or bad. This branch is used to mainly evaluate the actions of people.
Applied ethics sets out guidelines of what is considered right and wrong. It uses aspects
of all the other branches and makes it one, by using principles defined in Descriptive
ethics. Then evaluating if they seem “normal” within Normative ethics. Then try to get a
better understanding of what it means within Meta ethics. After that process the new ethic
that was defined is now a part of descriptive ethics. This then leads into the relationship
between all the branches and bioethics. All these branches are used to specifically the
ethical code that medical professionals use. This code gives medical professionals a
guideline of how to act and how to treat a patient within the morals that the society that
they are in, live by.
2. What is the difference between morality and ethics? What is the difference between
ethics qua person and ethics qua professional? Finally, how do these various distinctions
clear up the common confusions about whether bioethics is just a matter of expressing
personal opinions? Explain in detail.
Morality specifically is the determining what is right and wrong. Morality is then used to
determine the ethical principles. Therefore, Ethics is different because it uses morality to
describe a code that a person follows. Meaning that Ethics is a guideline that is set out
and specific while morality can change over time. The ethics in the sense of a person is
how they go about making decisions for themselves only. This is where it differs from
professional ethics, professional ethics must protect the person and the professional, but
also allow the professional to act within a set or morals that are set for them. A person
can ask how ever their own morals are defined. This then leads to the person not having
their ethics defined for them unlike professionals. For example, medical professionals
have an entire code of ethics they must follow, while any normal person can follow the
ethics, they have defined for themselves.
Bioethics, before more recent times was much more than just personal opinions. Opinions
where first given to make up the ethical codes, but these opinions were looked at by
many people, over time, to decide if it is truly morally ok and if that’s how a medical
professional should act. Therefore, Bioethics is a set of rules, made by society, that
medical professionals must follow. Meaning that it is much more than opinions, it is
opinions of society that are laying out a code of conduct.
3. Explain the complex relationship between bioethics and medical law. Include also a
sketch of the history of bioethics as a form of investigation distinct from, though related
to, law and policy.
The relationship between bioethics and medical law is very complex in the sense that
they don’t always obey each other. Over the time that it took for bioethics to emerge it
was seen that there where many things being done in the medical field that were seen as
being morally wrong. For example, the Nazi doctors and their experiments where not
only morally wrong but also found to be illegal. This was one of the major cases that lead
to bioethics being created.
Week 2: The Central Concepts: Autonomy and Consent
4. Explain how it is that many of the core ethical problems running through the history of
medicine—medical paternalism, experimentation, consent, and confidentiality
especially—are all best analyzed in relation to the concept of autonomy. It’s essential that
you explain in detail the specific problem(s) involved in each of these cases, and how
focusing on autonomy can help us develop justifiable and logically consistent strategies
and solutions for making progress on these problems.
5. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are widely regarded as the “gold standard” of
research in evidence-based medicine, and they remain an important element of human
subjects research. But they also raise a host of potential ethical problems to which society
must remain attentive. Write an essay that organizes and briefly but accurately explains
the potential concerns. Cite relevant texts in support of your claims. In addition to the
standard list of ethical concerns, include in your discussion the problem posed by patients
seeking access to experimental treatments.
Week 3: Challenges for Consent
6. Biomedical research broadly construed, and especially in the US, routinely involves
conducting experiments on nonhuman animals, both vertebrate and invertebrate. Indeed,
the scale of animal experimentation is now so large—with animals used in preclinical
trials, university research departments, corporate research, medical training, and more—
that it is difficult to get an accurate estimate of just how many animals are sacrificed
annually. As a society, we’ve grown increasingly aware of the ethical concerns involved
in this practice, as regards both quantity and quality of the research. But the principles
that inform the debate remain widely misconstrued and misunderstood. In particular,
critics of animal experimentation are often portrayed as being exclusively focused on
“animal rights.” But while some scholars have advanced a rights-based case, significant
criticisms have emerged that do not invoke or depend on the concept of rights at all.
Write an essay that carefully details these approaches. What kinds of principles,
considerations, and arguments have been used to raise concern about the animal
experimentation industry? And in what ways have these arguments been distorted or
misunderstood by proponents of animal experimentation? Finally, which considerations
do we need to investigate more clearly to make progress on this issue?
Week 4: Pitfalls for Professionalism
7. Explain how debates about conscientious refusal, direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA)
of pharmaceuticals, and financial conflicts of interest in medicine force us to adjudicate
between competing models or ideas of medicine, i.e., competing accounts of the proper
role of the medical profession in society. What are the competing accounts or views of
medicine that these disputes bring to the fore, and in what ways do they expose that
uncertainty? Explain in detail.
End of questions for Exam 1 – all questions eligible for Exam 1 now complete.
Week 6: Birth and Death in Biomedicine
Week 7: Genetic Control
Week 8: The Ideology of Contemporary Biomedicine, Part I
Week 9: Ideology, Part II