Philosophy 230
Medical Ethics
Spring 2003
Prof. Craig Duncan
Ithaca College
Handouts
Syllabus
Utilitarian Decisions
Section 01 (9am) Philosophy
Court debate pairings
Section 02 (10am)
Philosophy Court debate pairings
Section 01 (9am) contact
list + moral conversation project pairings
Section 02 (10am) contact
list + moral conversation project pairings
Truth-telling Cases
Some Thoughts on the
"Adoption Option" Response to Abortion
Decision
Scenarios and Theories of Abortion
Lecture Notes
Major Moral Principles, Part One
Major Moral
Principles, Part Two
The Hippocratic Oath
The Dax Cowart Case
Drane on Informed Consent
Truth-telling and Medicine
Defining Death, Part One
Defining Death, Part Two
Presumed Consent & Organ
Donation
Two Common Arguments
Against Abortion
Singer on Abortion
Thomson
on Abortion (Part One)
Thomson on Abortion (Part Two)
Killing and Letting Die (Part One)
Killing and Letting Die (Part Two)
Brock
on Euthanasia
Callahan against
Euthanasia
Singer on the Old and New Ethics
Cloning and Stem Cell Research (Background)
Therapeutic Cloning--Pro and Con
The President’s Council on Bioethics Report
Reproductive Cloning -- Possible Uses
Miscellaneous Related Links
(2/17/03)
Click here to
be taken to an interesting PBS site on organ donation, with some information
relevant to our class discussion on the topic. Click here to be taken to
an organ donation fact sheet. For a detailed overview of the law on organ
donation, click here.
Finally, click here
to hear an NPR report on the topic of paying organ donors.
(2/21/03) For an interesting website describing the biological
stages of prenatal development, click here. A recent Time cover story contains
photos from the womb with the latest technology; click here.
(2/24/03) Today in class I mentioned the odd phenomenon of "chimerism." This refers to a condition wherein a person's cells contain genetically distinct DNA. One way this occurs is when two genetically distinct, pre-implantation embryos fuse together in the uterus to form one individual. For an article on this phenomenon in the journal Nature, click here. For more details regarding an actual case of chimerism, click here. For some information on the even more bizarre phenomenon of "fetus in fetu," click here or here.
(2/24/03)
Today in class I was not sure
how long Peggy Stinson's baby (mentioned by Singer) lived. The answer is
6 months. For info on the book the Stinsons wrote about their experience,
click here.
(2/28/03) Questions came up today
about the medical risks of abortion.
I’m not at all an expert on the medical risks of anything. It’s difficult, moreover, to find unbiased
sources of information like this on the web; both sides of the abortion debate
have an ax to grind. One site that
seems to me to exert at least some effort to be impartial is
www.religioustolerance.org. Click here for their site
on abortion.
(3/17/03) Click here for
the article “Unspeakable Conversations” by Harriet McBryde Johnson. Johnson is a disability activist; the
article discusses the views of Peter Singer on disability.
(3/21/03) Apropos of our discussion today of civilian deaths
in wartime, click here.
(4/2/03) As I mentioned in class, as of this past April,
euthanasia is now legal in the Netherlands (as opposed to being
illegal-but-still-officially-tolerated); click here
to read about this decision. Click here to read
about Belgium's recent decision to legalize euthanasia.
(4/2/03) The Dutch experience with euthanasia is interpreted
differently by the different sides in the debate. Perhaps the most
authoratitive discussion of this to date is in John Griffiths, Alex Bood, and
Heleen Weyers, Euthanasia and Law in the Netherlands (Amsterdam
University Press, 1998). Click here to
read a review of this in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
(4/2/03) Singer notes that in 1994 Judge Richard Kaufman
ruled that the legal ban on assisted suicide used to prosecute Jack Kevorkian
was unconstitutional. It turns out that after Singer's book was
published, a higher court overturned Judge Kaufman's decision. Meanwhile
there was a similar challenge to the constitutionality of bans on assisted
suicide in our own state of New York. This went all the way to the U.S.
Supreme Court, which decided in the landmark Vacco v. Quill (1997) that
state bans on assisted suicide are constitutional. If you wish to read
their decision, click here.
(A similar case, Washington v. Gluckberg, concerning a Washington State
ban on assisted suicide was also decided similarly by the Court in 1997; click here
for it.) One interesting element of these decisions is that several
very prominent philosophers (including Judith Jarvis Thomson, who wrote the
abortion article we read) filed an "amicus brief" on behalf of those
who wanted assisted suicide bans declared unconstitutional. This has become
known as "The Philosophers' Brief." It's not an easy read, but
if you are interested, click here.
For some short criticisms of the brief, and a reply, click here.
(4/18/03) Click here
for a very recent White House press release on stem cell research and
cloning. For President Bush's first speech (August 9, 2001) on federal funding
for stem cell research, click here.
For a critical account of President Bush's August 2001 policy, click here.
(4/18/03) For the
website of the wacky UFO cult that claims (in what is almost surely a hoax) to
have produced cloned human babies, click here. For the
website of their cloning division, click here. UPDATE 4/23: A frontpage article in the Boston Globe offers evidence of
fraud on the part of the UFO cult.
Click here.
(4/22/03)
Click here
for a front-page Washington Post article describing some scientists’
dissatisfaction with Pres. Bush’s policy regarding federal funding for stem
cell research.
"Philosophy Court" Debates
Click here to down load general instructions for Philosophy Court debates.
Debate 1: Patient Autonomy and Paternalism
Note: Debate 1 briefs
and opinions have been removed to make room for later briefs and opinions.
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Section 01 |
Section 02 |
Debate 2: Abortion
Note: Debate 2 briefs and opinions have been removed to make room for later briefs and opinions.
Section 01 |
Section 02 |
Debate 3: Impaired Infants
·
Handout describing the topic
Section 01 |
Section 02 |
Section 01 |
Section 02 |
Debate
5: Stem Cell Research
NOTE: Briefs have now
been posted and are available.
Section 01 |
Section 02 |
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Last updated 05/05/03 by Craig Duncan (cduncan@ithaca.edu).