Teaching Bioethics for Undergraduates: Is It Necessary?

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Teaching Bioethics for Undergraduates Is It
Necessary?

• Nahed Moustafa- MD
• Prof. Head of Forensic Medicine Clinical
  Toxicology Unit, FOM-SCU, Egypt
• Certified Trainer of Research Ethics- USA

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Objectives

• Bioethics for undergraduates
• Why?
• How?
• When?

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Definition

• Bio means life
• Ethics means the development of principles,
  rules that give standards of good and bad, right
  and wrong.
• Bio-shock might just be the word to describe
  the advances being made by science and technology

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Why Bioethics?

• 1- Identify the major structural components of
  the country health care system
• 2- Identify ethical responsibilities of the
  physicians that serve the community
• 3- Identify several ethical principles
  regulations that are relevant to practice of
  medicine

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Why Bioethics? (cont.)

• 4- Develop strategies for resolving
  conflicting responsibilities( margin mission)
• 5- Need of information about both the
  science the ethics

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Why Bioethics? (cont.)

• As a part of a liberal education, an
  undergraduate course in bioethics should aim to
  prepare students for life as an engaged citizen
  in a free society by developing skills in
  critical thinking and encouraging engagement in
  the deliberation of issues in the area of
  medicine and biotechnology

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Why Bioethics? (cont.)

• Fortunately, continuing development in medicine
  biotechnology offer an abundance of ethical
  issues to debate
• So
• Teaching bioethics in the undergraduate setting
  is about paying attention to these debates and
  having a stake in their outcome

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Basic Issues of Bioethics

• 1- Physician patient relationship
• 2- Confidentiality
• 3- Informed consent
• 4- Certificates
• 5- Medical responsibility

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Controversial Issues of Bioethics

• 1- Death end of life
• 2- Euthanasia
• 3- Assisted reproduction surrogacy
• 4- Abortion
• 5- Stem cell research
• 6- Human cloning (therapeutic
  reproductive)

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Controversial Issues of Bioethics

• 7- Organ transplantation
• 8- Genetic information bio-banks
• 9- Animal experimentation
• 10- Research ethics

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Teaching Bioethics When?

• Early or late?
• Separated or integrated?
• The traditional method
• first the theory, then the case
• The case based approach
• first the case, then the theory

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Teaching Bioethics How?

• There are numerous methods that can be used to
  study bioethics. Here are some suggestions
• 1- Case studies.
• 2- Debate.
• 3- Student led seminars.
• 4- Journal article writing.

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)

• 1- Case studies resources such as
• newspapers, law journals can be
  fictional cases designed by the
  teacher.
• Student may work in small groups.
  

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)

• Choice of the case
• of current interest
• authentic but anonymous
• suitable for the age group
• ethically provocative

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Case Study

• The 41-year- old womans brain was heavily
  damaged following momentary heart failure in
  1990,leaving her in a persistent vegetative state
  for 15 years able to breathe on her own but
  reliant on an artificial feeding tube. Her
  husband (legal guardian) decided to remove his
  wifes feeding tube but her parents refused.

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)

• 2- Debate
• Choose a statement to be debated and assign
  students aside to argue
• e.g. Resolved genetic screening for the purpose
  of sex selection should not be permitted

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)

• Cloning Is there a significant difference
  between cloning sheep for pharmaceutical
  production cloning humans?
• Fetal tissue transplantation Does a fetus have
  rights? If so, what are they who is responsible
  for representing the interests of the fetus?

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)

• Euthanasia What is the right to die? How does
  withdrawing or withholding treatment differ from
  physician assisted suicide?
• AIDS Should developing countries be able to
  benefit from AIDS research when their citizens
  serve as research subjects?

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)

• 3- Student-led seminars
• Small groups of student research a particular
  topic then lead a one or two day class
  discussion. May need one day teaching about the
  technology involved.
• Then exploring the ethical questions

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)

• 4- Journal article writing
• Have students write their thoughts down rather
  than voicing them in class

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)Outlines of the
process

• Regardless of the methodology chosen, certain
  steps are common to bioethical discussion
• 1- Articulate the dilemma
• phrased as statement or question, should
  summarize the problem clearly.

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)Outlines of the
process

• 2- Identify the stakeholders in the
  decision
• Who has a vested interest in the outcome?
• Encourage students to think of as many
• stakeholders as possible.

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)Outlines of the
process

• 3- Present possible solutions
• Again, there is always more than one solution to
  an ethical dilemma.
• Students should be encouraged to describe as many
  possible outcomes as they can.

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)Outlines of the
process

• 4- Rank the possible solutions from the best
  to worst.
• Choose the one which seems to make most sense to
  you as an individual

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Teaching Bioethics How? (cont.)Outlines of the
process

• 5- Explain ( WHY) your choice seems
• like the best to you.
• WHY OR WHY NOT?

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Conclusion

• 1- It is very important to relate teaching
• bioethics to real life by basing it on cases
• the students can recognize from their
• experience or which they might encounter
• later on in their professional life.

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Conclusion (cont.)

• 2- Great emphasis have to be put on the
  importance of group work and practical exercises
  rather than just lectures.
• This would be applied both when teaching
  bioethics when teaching how to teach bioethics.

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Conclusion (cont.)

• 3- The future teachers of bioethics should
• put themselves in the position of the
• students and see how the exercises
• worked in practice

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THANK YOU