This blog is a place where we can discuss critical issues and ideas in the field of bioethics. Bioethics deals with ethical issues surrounding health care and medicine. We will discuss such topics as how we go about making ethical decisions, genetic engineering, embryonic and adult stem cell research, abortion, informed consent, advance directives, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, death and dying, pandemic, and other cool things that pop up in the news or in the headlines!
Often, we'll discuss things I teach in my Bioethics class at Sacred Heart University, or topics I encounter as an ethicist at various hospitals. The exciting thing about bioethics is that it is always changing. As technologies advance, ethics needs to keep pace. In other words, just because we "can" do something, does that mean we "ought" to do it? Bioethics addresses the "ought" of medicine.
As always, we may not arrive at the same answers, or even any answers, but we will learn to ask better questions!
Next week's topic: Embryonic and Adult Stem Cell Research
The field of bioethics ethics is a pretty polemic one
Posted by: cell functions | 03/18/2010 at 03:48 PM