Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Bioethics

Code

10828

Academic unit

Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Department

Departamento de Ciências Sociais Aplicadas

Credits

3.0

Teacher in charge

Isabel Maria da Silva Pereira Amaral

Weekly hours

2

Teaching language

Português

Objectives

Increasingly, practitioners in research must understand and make decisions on complex ethical and moral dilemmas related to advances in biology, biotechnology, and biomedicine.

This course is intended to serve as a broad introduction to the field of bioethics:

  1. Leading students to ask themselves the crucial questions on the nature of the relationship between techno-science, bioethics and society, nowadays;
  2. Leading students to think about their future work as scientific professionals and about their rights and duties as citizens;
  3. Increasing the student’s capacity of decision and adjustment in a changing world.

Specific capabilities to be developed:

To understand and master the fundamental concepts of Bioethics, this specialized and cross-disciplinary knowledge spanning ethics, law, society, culture, public policy, philosophy, religion, economics, history, and even language, for the analysis of the interrelationship between biosciences, biotechnology and society.

General capabilities to be implemented:

  1. To understand the dynamics of the relationship between science, technology and society, in different geographic an geopolitical contexts, at a global scale;
  2. To develop the sense of ethics and social responsibility;
  3. To relate professional practice with the active citizenship.

Subject matter

1.  Introduction to Bioethics: nature and history

  • The life: forms, origins and sense

2. Overview of the current state of the art of global ethics

3. The major paradigms of western society (teleological, deontological and utilitarian models)

4. The canon of bioethics: classic works then and now: the bioethics committees

5. The Euthanasia and the abortion debate: an interdisciplinary approach

6. Experimentation in animals – animal bioethics

7. The place of bioethics in humankind: coercion, exploitation, and manipulation

8. Should we do what science and technology make possible?

 Contemporary issues on bioethics – study cases:

  1. Sexuality and human procreation  (infertility and  “surrogate”)
  2. Manipulation and genetic selection (prenatal diagnosis, enhancement technologies,  genetic therapy)
  3. Research in human embryos (Fertilization in vitro, cloning and research in steam cells)
  4. GMOs and biotecnhological agriculture
  5. Human transplantation

Bibliography

Bibliografia


Caplan, A.L & Arp, R. (2014), Contemporary Debates in Bioethics, Wiley Blackwell: West Sussex

Cristina Beckert (2012), Ética. Lisboa: CFUL 

Donna Dickenson (2012), All that Matters, Mc Graw Hill: London 

Donna Dickenson (2013), Me Medicine we Medicine: Reclaiming Biotechnology for the Common Good, Columbia University Press: New York

Ben Mepham, (2008), Bioethics- an introduction for the biosciences, Oxford University Press: Oxford 

Helga Kruse & Peter Singer, (2006), Bioethics, an Antology, Blackwell Publishing: Oxford

Holland, S. (2012), Arguing About Bioethics, Routledge: Oxon

Courses