Choice factors into all ethical dilemmas. The point is to resolve a matter at issue to the best of our (collective) abilities from the myriad options circumstances present. Inherent to choice are twin poles: giving and taking. Given options, we must take action(s). Determining which is/are best is the practical pursuit of a worthwhile ethics. This second year began by reëstablishing the ethical reality of minds and bodies. Recognizing minds and bodies may be altered or absent, different from ours or in turmoil, we sought to understand the decisions of all moral actors from before their beginnings to their ever reverberating ends since only from the constellation of our choices can we end up with a view of ourselves. This view, our identity, can also be chosen, given, taken. As it is when one’s taken to task but not given a fair shake for their gender, as it is when rights are taken from those given others for their race, as it is when given to children by flesh taken through cultural happenstance. Our time ever fleeting, we make of it what we can and work to ensure others others can too. What the past dictates the present decides on behalf of the future. What is “a given” is also “taken for granted”. We must choose what we do within the biomedical landscape. In this series of discussions, participants shared with each other – giving and taking – so that after we might choose both well and good.
A quick look
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Pertinent details
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Essays to consider
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Neuroethics. A discussion on the origins of our moral situation.
September 11, 2018, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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Neuroethics: an agenda for neuroscience and society
Neuroethics: the practical and the philosophical
Neuroethics for the new millennium
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Drugs. A discussion on the manipulation of our biochemical status.
September 25, 2018, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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Towards responsible use of cognitive-enhancing drugs by the healthy
Adverse health effects of marijuana use
Practical, legal, and ethical issues in expanded access to investigational drugs
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Alternative medicine. A discussion at the boundaries of the medical sciences.
October 9, 2018, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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The placebo effect in alternative medicine
The use of complementary and alternative medicine in pediatrics
Efficacy of complementary and alternative medicine therapies
Trends in the use of complementary health approaches among adults: United States, 2002-2012
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Zombies. A discussion of the living, the dead, and those in between.
October 23, 2018, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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Consciousness: the most critical moral (constitutional) standard for human personhood
CDC preparedness 101 – zombie pandemic
Zombies v. materialists
In vitro meat
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Cloning. A discussion coping with copying seeing double, and creating anew.
November 6, 2018, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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Genetic encores
Human cloning and our sense of self
The ethics of reviving long extinct species
Uniqueness, individuality, and human cloning
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Animal experimentation. A discussion testing the limitations of our testing limitations.
November 20, 2018, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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Does animal experimentation inform human healthcare?
Ethical principles and guidelines for experiments on animals
The flaws and human harms of animal experimentation
Animal testing is still the best way to find new treatments for patients
Alternatives to animal testing
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Suicide. A discussion on our (chosen?) ends.
December 4, 2018, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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The myth of Sisyphus
The ethics of suicide
Suicide: rationality and responsibility for life
Suicide responsibility of hospital and psychiatrist
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Race. A discussion on (in)equality that’s more than skin deep.
January 15, 2019, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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Racial disparity in emergency department triage.
Dealing with the realities of race and ethnicity
Race/Ethnicity and success in academic medicine
Race and trust in the health care system
Why bioethics has a race problem
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Gender. A discussion on who we are, who society sees, and who we want to be.
January 29, 2019, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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Doing gender
For whom the burden tolls
Performative acts and gender constitution
Resisting medicine, re/modeling gender
The restroom revolution: unisex toilets and campus politics
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Circumcision. A discussion on health, tradition, and mutilation.
February 12, 2019, 7PM 2185 LBME
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Male circumcision
Female genital alteration: a compromise solution
Female genital mutilation and male circumcision: toward an autonomy-based ethical framework
Rationalising circumcision
Current medical evidence supports male circumcision
Circumcision: case against surgery without medical indication
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Pain. A discussion on what we (don’t want to) feel.
February 26, 2019, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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The undertreatment of pain
Moral agency in pain medicine
Suffering and the goals of medicine
The unequal burden of pain: confronting racial and ethnic disparities in pain
Pain medicine and its models: helping or hindering?
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Mental health. A discussion on our internal (dys)functions.
March 12, 2019, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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The myth of mental illness
Distinguishing between the validity and utility of psychiatric diagnoses
Diagnostic issues and controversies in DSM 5
How stigma interferes with mental health care
Identification of a common neurobiological substrate for mental illness
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Eugenics. A discussion on who ought to be here.
March 26, 2019, 7PM, 2185
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Eugenics: its definition, scope, and aims
The second international congress of eugenics
CC Little renaming resolution
Buck v. Bell Supreme Court opinion
Moderate eugenics and human enhancement
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Replicability of medical studies. A discussion on the significance of our results.
April 9, 2019, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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Reproducibility in science
Estimating the reproducibility of psychological science
How many scientists fabricate and falsify research?
Is the replicability crisis overblown?
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Extinction. A discussion on our (inevitable?) ends.
April 23, 2019, 7PM, 2185 LBME
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The nature of extinction
Extinction risk from climate change
Extinction and overspecialization: the dark side of human innovation
The ethics of de-extinction
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