Bioethics and the Law

3 Credit Hours

This course is intended to provide insight into controversial and difficult ethical issues that arise at the intersection of law and medicine. Topics include issues of reproductive ethics and law; the ethics of vaccine research, distribution, and requirements; ethics and regulation of research with human tissues; access to and regulation of innovative or experimental therapies; public health ethics, including access, justice, allocation and the limits of state authority; and the ethics of end of life care, including withdrawal and withholding of life sustaining therapies, brain death and organ donation. We will touch on how these perennial issues take on new salience in the COVID-19 pandemic.