Philosophy 413 S
Honours Seminar – Global Bioethics
Winter 2005
Bancroft 315 Professor Gopal Sreenivasan
Fri 12-3:00 215 Huron Street, Room 921
(416) 978-2824
Reading Schedule
January 7 Introduction.
Jan 14 Singer, “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 1 (1972): 229-243;
Miller, “Beneficence, Duty, and Distance,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 32 (2004): 357-383.
Jan 21 Hardin, “Living on a Lifeboat,” Bioscience (1974): 36-47;
*Shue, Basic Rights,
second ed. (
Sen, “Fertility
and Coercion,”
Jan 28 Sreenivasan, “International Justice and Health: A Proposal,” Ethics and International Affairs
16 (2002): 81-90;
Pogge, “Eradicating
Systematic Poverty: Brief for a Global Resources Dividend,” Journal of
Human Development 2 (2001): 59-77.
February 4 *Shue, Basic Rights, ch. 1.
Feb 11 Perry,
“Are
human rights universal? The relativist
challenge and related matters,” Human
Rights
Quarterly 19 (1997): 461-509;
*Williams, Morality (Harper and Row, 1972): 20-25;
The East Asian Challenge for
Human Rights (
Feb 18 Reading week.
Feb 25 Kausikan, “Asia’s Different Standard,” Foreign Policy 92 (1993): 24-41;
*Chan,
“A Confucian Perspective on Human Rights for Contemporary
(eds.) The East Asian
Challenge for Human Rights (
Sen, “Human Rights and Asian Values,” Morgenthau Lecture, 1997.
March 4 “Introduction,”
to Hawkins and Emanuel (eds.) Exploitation
and the Problems of
Multinational
Clinical Research
(
Emanuel
et al., “What
Makes Clinical Research in Developing Countries Ethical?,” Journal of
Infectious
Diseases 189 (2004): 930-37;
“Life
by Luck of the Draw,”
March 11 *Levine, “Informed consent: some challenges to the universal validity of the Western model,”
Law Medicine and Health Care 19 (1991): 207-13;
*Ijsselmuiden and Faden, “Research
and informed consent in
Medicine 326 (1992): 830-34;
Gostin, “Informed
Consent, Cultural Sensitivity, and Respect for Persons,”Journal of the
American Medical Association 274 (1995): 844-45;
*Ekunwe and Kessel, “Informed Consent in the Developing World: Case Commentary,”
Préziosi et al., “Practical Experiences in Obtaining Informed Consent for a Vaccine Trial in Rural
Lynoe et al., “Obtaining Informed Consent in Bangladesh,” N. Engl. J. Med. 344 (2001): 460-1;
Fitzgerald et al., “Comprehension during informed consent in a less-developed country,” Lancet
360 (2002): 1301-02.
March 18 Crouch
and
Benatar and Singer, “A New Look at International Research Ethics,” British Medical Journal
321 (2000): 824-26;
Shapiro and Meslin, “Ethical Issues in the Design and Conduct of Clinical Trials in Developing
Countries,” N. Engl. J. Medicine 345 (2001): 139-142;
McMillan and Conlon, “The ethics of research related to health care in developing countries,”
Journal of Medical Ethics 30 (2004): 204-6.
March 25 Good Friday.
April 1 Wertheimer,
“Exploitation,” Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy;
Glantz et al., “Research
in Developing Countries: Taking
‘Benefit’ Seriously,”
Report 28 (1998): 38-42;
El Setouhy et al., “Moral standards for research in developing countries: from ‘reasonable
availability’
to ‘fair benefits’,” Hastings Center Report 34 (2004): 17-28;
April 8 Hawkins
and Emanuel (eds.) Exploitation and the
Problems of Multinational Clinical
Research, chh.
End
of lectures.
Assignments
Simple version: You will
submit a 600 word essay weekly; and your top 5 grades on these essays will
count 20% each toward your final grade.
There is no final exam.
More precise version: You
will submit a 600 word essay every week in the seminar, beginning in the second
week. However, I will only grade 5 of these essays. The selection of particular essays to be
graded will be up to me; and will be more or less random. (So, of any essay you submit, you should
expect it may be graded).
This policy is subject to the following adjustments:
(a) you have one free pass, to be used at your discretion. (In 11 weeks, you need only submit 10
essays);
(b) in week two, all the essays will be ‘graded,’ but the grade
will not count. It will serve to give
you an idea of what grades will be like.
(If you use your free pass in this week, you will lose this opportunity,
i.e. your next grade will count for real);
(c) at the end of term, you may re-submit the best (in your
opinion) of those of your essays that I did not grade for grading. I will grade the essay, but not write
comments on it. If the grade is higher
than your lowest grade (from the essays I already graded), I will substitute
the higher grade for the lower.
The essay topics will be given out each week in seminar for the
next week. The essays must be submitted
online through Turnitin.com (see below).
They are due before the start of the relevant week’s seminar.
Office
hours
Tuesdays 1-3. Room 921,
Late
penalties
Essays submitted after the start of seminar will be penalised one increment of a grade (e.g., from B to B-). Essays submitted after Sunday will be penalised a further increment. Essays submitted after Wednesday will count as F.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is a serious academic offence. It comes in various forms, all of which carry grave penalties. If in doubt about what constitutes plagiarism, ask. You should consult the Philosophy Department’s statement on plagiarism.
Students agree that by taking this course all required papers may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to Turnitin.com for the detection of plagiarism. All submitted papers will be included as source documents in the Turnitin.com reference database solely for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of such papers. The terms that apply to the University's use of the Turnitin.com service are described on the Turnitin.com web site.
Writing help
Help in writing is available from the Philosophy Department’s essay clinic. You are also encouraged to consult the Department’s guide to writing a philosophy essay.
25 February 2005