Bioethics Course Offerings
Core Courses
Advanced Introduction to Bioethics
G83.1005
Ruddick and others
4 points
The course explores a range of concepts and principles for framing and addressing moral questions in both medical and environmental practices. Combining these two areas broadens Bioethics to include and connect individual, public, and global health issues. Topics include: respect for Life and Nature; comprehensive concepts of health, disease, and cure; autonomy and rights to life and healthcare; ethical principles of medical care, research, and environmental “stewardship;” population and environmental constraints on creating and extending human lives.
Life and Death
G83.1175
Richardson, Ruddick, and Velleman
4 points
Scientific, metaphysical, and moral issues involving concepts of life and death. Topics include the rights and wrongs of killing oneself, other humans, animals; reproduction; biological/biographical life; and theories of death and postmortem survival.
Philosophical Research
G83.3300, 3301
Ruddick and others
2-6 points
One to two months of a Practicum, an affiliation with one or more medical or environmental organizations, committees, or projects, and a supervised Master’s Essay on the moral issues these groups address and ignore (or alternatively, extension of a course term paper).
Elective Courses (Partial Listing)
Advanced Introduction to Ethics
G83.1104
Murphy, Street
4 points
Background course for entering graduate students. The class is divided into a first part, providing a fundamental graduate-level introduction to normative ethical theory, and a second part focusing, in a research seminar matter, on the theory of rights (Student presentations occur in the second part.)
Clinical Ethics
G83.2222
Ruddick and Medical School faculty
4 points
Theoretical and practical medical ethics, combined with observation in a clinical setting.
Colloquium on Health, Medicine, Law, and Society
L13.3500
3 points
This interdisciplinary colloquia will tackle problems in the United States in the 21st Century, exploring the intersections of health care, law, education, politics, and ethics. There are four central themes for this colloquium: 1) an exploration of the consequences that flow from
characterizing an issue as social, medical, ethical, scientific, religious or legal, 2) the role of rights, and the complexity of constructing rules and often fragile enforcement mechanisms, 3) consideration whether policy be set or money raised at the federal, state, local, professional, family or individual level, 4) the pervasive influence of class, race and gender.
Comparative Health Care Systems
P11.2852
Rodwin
4 points
An introduction to the organization and financing of health care and to the reimbursement of providers (hospitals and physicians) in nations through the world. Special emphasis is placed on industrialized nations, particularly Canada and Western Europe.
Community Health & Medical Care
P11.1830
Rodwin, Weitzman
4 points
This course is designed to familiarize students with some basic concepts and ideas concerning the distribution of health and illness in society, the organization of the health care system, and the relationship of one to the other. We shall discuss and debate definitions of health and illness, tools for their assessment, and the historical context for developments in public health and medicine.
Contemporary Ethical Theory
G83.2284
Murphy, Nagel, Parfit
4 points
Varieties of normative ethical theories and the nature and justification of moral judgment, with special attention to issues of moral objectivity.
Cultures of Biomedicine
G14.3214
Martin, Rapp
4 points
Overview of central issues in medical anthropology. Focuses on the relationship of theory to practice. Examines problems in international health,
occupational health, health care delivery, and clinical issues, illustration of the roles of anthropologist at the interface of the medial and social
sciences. Implications of cross-cultural variation and commonality in health institutions; behavior and beliefs for change in health care systems. Students critique the literature in a particular area of medical anthropology; research projects utilized the New York University hospital and
medical school.
Earth Biology
G23.1201
Volk
4 points
Global sciences of life: biogeochemical cycles, biodiversity, evolution, and human impacts.
Environmental Health
G48.1004 identical to G23.1004
Lippmann
4 points
Discussion of some of the basic concepts of environmental health science in terms of contaminant sources, transport, fate, and levels in environmental media (air, water, food, and soil) and occupational settings. Hazard recognition and control are discussed in terms of toxicology,
epidemiology, exposure assessment, risk assessment, and risk management
Environment and Urban Dynamics
P11.2615
Zimmerman
4 points
This course provides students with approaches to evaluating and using environmental information and experiences in order to make planning, policy and management choices about the use and protection of environmental resources in urban and natural environmental contexts. Environmental analysis and planning techniques are emphasized using case-based and statistical analyses that combine urban and environmental databases for environmental policy and plans in the context of other societal needs and priorities. Implications of sustainability and security for city and regional land usage are overarching and cross-cutting themes in the course.
Environmental Politics
E50.2021
Jamieson
3 points
This seminar will be devoted to discussing various dimension of environmental policy, especially as they arise at the intersection of concerns about climate and questions about sustainability. Important themes of the seminar will include responsibility and equity, the relations between climate change and variability, the complex feedbacks between climate and society, interactions between science and policy, and the holistic nature of global governance and regulation.
Environmental Values, Policies, and the Law
L01.3563
Jamieson
2 points
Environmental law is the site of conflicting value perspectives. In addition to concerns about economic growth and quality of life for our contemporary compatriots, concerns about future generations, citizens of other countries and even non-human nature figure in our discussions and debates. This seminar will focus on the way these value questions emerge in discussion of “global” environmental
change.
Ethics: Selected Topics
G83.2285
Murphy, Nagel, Ruddick,
Unger
4 points
Seminar on different
topics in ethical theory and applied ethics, varying yearly. Some of the following topics (as well as
others of research interest to the instructor and students) may be considered:
concepts of duty, virtue, and right; kinds of moral failure; the moral
distinction between actions and omissions; the relation of individual ethics to
group ethics and politics; morality and
the law.
Global Health Governance and Management
P11.2244
Boufford
4 points
After discussing definitions of health in
international agreements and the general influence of globalization on health,
the course will explore the roles and responsibility of national health
leadership, primarily Ministries of Health, in assuring the health of their
populations and the different strategies and variable capacity of national
governments in developed, developing and counties in transition. We will then explore in some depth the role,
functions and effectiveness of global organizations affecting health in the UN,
NGO and business sectors as well as
multilateral and bilateral donors and how they interact with each other and
with national leadership. Finally we
will look at emerging instruments for global health governance, how they
operate and their effectiveness for promoting health action at the country
level.
Health Law
L13.3525
Law.
2-4 points
Health Law integrates legal issues in the delivery and
financing of medical care with historical, economic, sociological and political science data and theory. It first
considers the core issues of access,
financing, and quality of care, and concludes with two case studies, focusing on reproductive
health and care at the end of life.
Three major themes run through the course. The first is the conflict for control of medicine among
professionals, the state, financial
markets, and individual and organized patients and consumers. A second major theme is an
exploration of the respective roles of
legislatures, administrators, courts and private actors in determining the shape of medical care
services. Finally, the course highlights
issues of federalism that have arisen from reform at the federal level, the impulse to give the states
substantial discretion, and the contrary
desire of large corporation to block state
authority through federal deregulation of health benefit plans.
Impacts of Technology: Information: Technology & Privacy
E38.1034
Nissenbaum
3 points
The study of technology and social values can
be—indeed, must be—approached through a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
This course will emphasize the philosophical, which will involve grappling with
conceptual underpinnings of technology and privacy –their meaning and
value. Philosophical analysis will,
however, be balanced with significant contributions by legal scholars, computer
scientists, social scientists, and popular social critics.
International Population and Family Health
E81.2383
Guttmacher
3 points
A cross-cultural
framework is used to compare the health status of populations and families and
factors that affect their health in societal subgroups (for example, urban,
rural, poor, women and children, and the elderly). The course emphasizes the effects of secular
changes in women’s roles and status and other societal, economic, and
environmental trends on population and family health.
Philosophical Problems of Medicine
G83.1177
Ruddick
4 points
General and distinctive
features of medical research and practice and of philosophical assumptions that
underlie current moral, political, and methodological issue in medicine
Philosophical Research
G83.3300, 3301
Ruddick and others
2-6 points
Sociology of Medicine
G94.2401
Duster
4 points
Political economy of health care in the United States,
with concentration on the roles of the medical profession in the system. Issues
include the social construction of illness, the social organization of
treatment, and the institutional organization of the medical profession in its
methods of recruitment and training.
Discusses relations between the medical profession, para-professional
occupations, third-party payers, and the government.
Terrorism: Biological, Chemical & Psychological Warfare
G48.1007
Evans
4 points
The
course will survey the agents of terrorism, their immediate effects, long-term
consequences and emerging research questions. Agents of terrorism include
chemical weapons, radioactive materials, infectious agents, torture and ethnic
conflict. Long-term consequences include stress disorders, respiratory disorders,
sensitization and conditioned responses to noxious stimuli. We will meet with a
broad range of experts to help deal with these questions.
Topics in Moral and Political Philosophy
G83.3006
4 points
Thorough study of certain concepts and issues in current theory and
debate. Examples: moral and political
rights, virtues and vices, equality, moral objectivity, the development of
moral character, the variety of ethical obligations, and ethics and public
policy.
Weather, Air Pollution, and Health
G48.1010
Thurston
4
points
Concerns about global climate
change have made clear the need to better understand the interaction of air
pollution and weather. This course covers the scientific bases for the known
effects of weather on air pollution, and, conversely, for the known and
hypothesized effects of air pollution on weather, as well as the interactions
of both with human health. Lecture topics include: the fundamentals of
atmospheric motions and weather; air pollution formation and dispersion in the
atmosphere; acidic air pollution and acid rain; the health effects of air
pollution and of extreme weather; global-scale weather and air pollution; and,
the ozone layer.
