Catch NYU Center for Bioethics Director S. Matthew Liao in the latest episode of the History Channel’s “In Search Of”, hosted by Zachary Quinto! You can watch the episode, “Life After Death,” by clicking here.
Congratulations to Alum Amanda Zink!
Congratulations to NYU Bioethics alum Amanda Zink for her recently published article “The Suspensions Are Killing Me: Why the NFL’s Approach to Off-Field Conduct Needs Rehab”. In it, she focuses on the NFL’s response to player personal conduct violations, and argues for a more solutions-oriented approach from a social responsiblity standpoint. You can read the article here.
Fall 2018 Course Registration Now Open
Registration for Fall 2018 courses is now open. The Center for Bioethics is offering the following courses for Fall 2018, plus electives by advisement. For more information, contact Program Administrator Cassandra Coste at cassandra.coste@nyu.edu.
Undergraduate:
UGPH-GU 15: Introduction to Bioethics
Tuesday/Thursday, 11:00AM – 12:15PM
Professor Daniel Fogal
This course provides a survey of contemporary issues in bioethics. Students will be introduced to a variety of ethical issues and questions arising in health care and the biological sciences, as well as with emerging technologies. Topics include the moral status of animals, personhood at the margins of life, abortion and infanticide, euthanasia and suicide, the nature of health and well-being, disability and mental illness, autonomy and addiction, paternalism and manipulation, genetic engineering and human enhancement, geoengineering and de-extinction, and the allocation of scarce medical resources.
UGPH-GU 95: Ethics and Reproduction
Tuesday/Thursday, 3:30PM – 4:45PM
Professor Daniel Fogal
This course surveys central issues in the ethics of human reproduction. Topics include the morality of abortion; whether we can harm people by bringing them into existence; moral issues raised by assisted reproduction; genetic selection and enhancement; the impact of our reproductive choices on future generations. The course will introduce students to philosophical conceptions of personal identity, fundamental moral notions (e.g., harm, interests, autonomy, respect), and the standards of bioethical debate.
Graduate:
GPH-GU 1005: Advanced Introduction to Bioethics
Wednesday, 6:45PM – 8:45PM
Professor Jordan MacKenzie
This seminar is intended to introduce students to the central methods and concerns of contemporary bioethics. We will consider topics including the grounds for respecting human (and other) life, the concepts of well-being and autonomy, decisions about future people, and justice in distribution of scarce medical resources. Students will develop familiarity with these concepts as well as the conventions and standards of bioethical debate.
GPH-GU 1008: Topics in Bioethics – Moral Intuitions
Monday, 6:45PM – 8:45PM
Professor Matthew Liao
Nonconsequentialism is a type of normative theory according to which the rightness or wrongness of an act is not determined solely by consequences. In particular, it holds that even when the consequences of two acts are the same, one might be wrong and the other right. In this course, we shall examine factors (prerogatives) that permit an agent to act in ways that do not maximize the good, and factors (constraints) that limit what an agent may do in pursuit of the good. We shall discuss topics such as the moral difference between harming and not-aiding; intending and foreseeing harm, i.e., the Doctrine of Double Effect; whether constraints are absolute; and how nonconsequentialists should address issues such as aggregation and the so-called paradox of deontology. We shall also investigate how one might be able to provide a plausible, theoretical foundation for nonconsequentialism.
GPH-GU 1210: Justice in Health & Healthcare
Tuesday, 6:45PM – 8:45PM
Professor Adam Lerner
This course surveys philosophical theories of justice, applying them to population bioethics with particular focus on environmental health justice. Case studies will include environmental racism and injustice in the United States as well as environmental and global justice dimensions of climate change, food systems, pollution, and infectious disease.
GPH-GU 1165: Research Ethics
Thursday, 6:45PM – 8:45PM
Dr. Claudia Passos
The course will examine the scandals that launched the field of research ethics and consider the ethical principles that arose in reaction. We will be especially concerned with the nature and limits of informed consent, as the central principle of research ethics. We will ask: what makes consent valid? What kind of understanding is required for consent to count as ‘informed’? How should we distinguish research and clinical care; what clinical responsibilities to researchers have, in designing and conducting studies? What does it take to justify research when consent is impossible; as in the case of children or incapacitated patients? When, if ever, is it acceptable to use deception in research? What else is required, beyond informed consent, to justify research? In particular, what sorts of social goals should research promote, and what social harms must it avoid?
GPH-GU 3555: Bioethics Practicum
NYU Center for Bioethics Director Matthew Liao to Give Keynote at North American Society for Social Philosophy Conference
This Thursday, July 19, 2018, the NYU Center for Bioethics Director Matthew Liao will be presenting the keynote at the North American Society for Social Philosophy Conference. Two of the Center’s MA candidates, Michael Corbett and John James, will also be presenting papers. For more information, see the North American Society for Social Philosophy website: http://www.northamericansocietyforsocialphilosophy.org/program/.
Guest Speaker Molly Crockett: The Value of Moral Action
Classical models of antisocial behavior propose that violence arises out of a failure of lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) to “put the brakes” on aggressive impulses originating in subcortical regions such as the amygdala and striatum. A new, alternative model proposes that LPFC does not directly inhibit aggressive impulses, but instead flexibly modulates the value of aggressive acts via corticostriatal circuits. This mechanism implies that the moral value of actions is flexibly guided by neural representations of social norms. If norms change, so then do the values that guide actions. Supporting this view, re-framing decisions to harm others as being in service of a noble cause eliminated moral preferences. Implications for models of moral responsibility will be discussed.
Dr. Molly Crockett is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Yale University and a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics. Prior to joining Yale, Dr Crockett was a faculty member at the University of Oxford’s Department of Experimental Psychology and a Fellow of Jesus College. She holds a BSc in Neuroscience from UCLA and a PhD in Experimental Psychology from the University of Cambridge, and completed a Wellcome Trust Postdoctoral Fellowship with economists and neuroscientists at the University of Zürich and University College London. For more, visit here.
4:00 PM-6:00 PM
5 Washington Place, Room 202 New York, NY 10003
Reception to follow