Critical Perspectives on Health Ethics
In this course, we will examine and critically evaluate the standard approaches to bioethics and public health ethics, understood (as they presently are) as distinct disciplinary, hence regulatory, fields, as well as the boundaries imagined to exist between them. Our efforts in these directions will be undertaken with an eye toward ascertaining what these fields, each, separately, or both, joined together, might look like if grounded firmly and finally in the principles of social justice each is, at times, said to avow. What are the social justice obligations of health professionals in each area? To whom are they owed? What are the social justice obligations of the community, the society, and the state to ensure the health of individuals, groups, and the population at large? What does social justice mean for bioethics and public health, when, as projects, they travel abroad? In terms of “the law,” how are social justice approaches to bioethics and public health variously constrained, blocked, and completely foreclosed by existing legal rules, some superficial, some better described as “jurisprudentially deep”? How should these conflicts, such as they are, be resolved? Can they be settled only with respect to health? Or is any reconciliation bound, for good or bad, to exceed its own limits? The final grade for the course will reflect class participation and performance on a take-home final exam, or, depending on class size, a final paper.