MHU 120 - Introduction to Clinical Ethics

This course will introduce students to the history, evolution and current topics relevant in clinical ethics. Topics will include issues around birth, reproduction, organ donation, refusal of vaccinations and blood transfusions, experimental treatments, alternative medicine, euthanasia, physician assisted suicide, and issues around death. Students will navigate ethical principles from a theoretical perspective, such as autonomy (self-determination), beneficence, non-maleficence and justice. At the same time they will discuss these principles in practical applications through case analysis and they will examine the tension between theory and practice. The course seeks to create awareness of the health care setting as an enterprise with different stakeholders and tensions, and to develop methods and analytical reasoning skills to discuss value-based conflicts in the health care setting.

Satisfies an interdisciplinary minor requirement in Medical Humanities.
Students entering 2012 and after: satisfies Philosophical and Religious Perspectives distribution requirement.