Health Sciences
The sixteenth-century French humanist Francois Rabelais argued that “science without conscience is
but the ruin of the soul.” With the advent of spectacular advances in human knowledge, some ethicists have
speculated that our progress has outdistanced our ability to understand the moral implications of what we’ve learned.As the recent financial crisis – among other pressing issues – demonstrates, at no time in history has there ever been a more pressing need for moral wisdom. Given the increasing need to keep alive a sense of the ethical dimensions of our fields and professional lives, assignment 1 asks you to deeply consider a complex ethical issue within your discipline.
Think carefully about the different ethical dilemmas in your field or future profession: you should begin by spending some time thinking, brainstorming, and doing some preliminary research on a bunch of issues/ethical questions. Now choose one that is a particularly tantalizing dilemma, and continue to research it carefully from as many different perspectives as possible.
You need 6-10 sources, at least four of which should be scholarly (written by experts
on that specific topic for experts, and published in a peer-reviewed journal or reputed press)