International Law and Ethics of Human Subjects Research (HM 591-606 & DCL 627-301)
Gerald S. Schatz
Around the world, researchers in the biomedical and behavioral and social sciences study people in order to understand and counter the world's disease burden, especially in resource-poor countries, and to better understand people's troubles, beliefs, behavior, and hopes. Research on human beings incurs special ethical and legal responsibilities. This fall, the Center for Ethics and Humanities in the Life Sciences, in cooperation with the MSU College of Human Medicine and MSU College of Law, launched a unique joint interdisciplinary seminar in the International Law and Ethics of Human Subjects Research. The seminar brings together graduate students, faculty, and practitioners in medicine, science, law, and social and behavioral sciences to examine the interrelationships of ethics and international law in the protection of persons who are the subjects of transnational research.
The seminar was developed and is taught by Gerald S. Schatz, J.D., assistant professor in the Center and College of Human Medicine and adjunct professor in the College of Law. For further information: 517-355-3499, schatzg@msu.edu.
Ethics and Development (PHL 452)
Judith Andre
PHL 452, “ Ethics and Development” is the core course for the new graduate specialization in Ethics and Development. It’s essentially interdisciplinary, and attracts a great mixture of graduate and undergraduate students: former Peace Corps, World Bank, United Nations employees, Study Abroad veterans; majors in Philosophy, Crop and Soil Science, Agricultural Economics, and more. Discussions are intense and multifaceted.
The central questions addressed in the course are
Dealing with these questions requires tackling abstract questions about rights and duties, justice, citizenship and sovereignty, but always in the context of the concrete and particular. We look at the wrenching questions that face humanitarian agencies, at the devastating experiences of the sick and the starving, at the frustrations and confusions of those who try to help. Our ultimate purpose is to arrive at a deeper and more useful framework for thinking about all the various activities in “development.” (Or at least to get beyond the tempting simplicities which hamper good work.)
Ethical and Conceptual Issues in Organ Transplantation (PHL 870)
James Lindemann Nelson
PHL 870 is a philosophy graduate seminar with variable topics; this term, the focus is on ethical and conceptual issues sparked by organ transplantation practice and policy. The folks in the seminar are largely philosophy and BHS students, which is a good thing, as we’re trying to push hard at the deepest problems we can find in the transplant arena.
Class organization is pretty standard for such a topic—we started out examining the concept of death, have moved on to consider various strategies for procuring organs, and will conclude by exploring different ideas about fairness in allocating them. All these areas are very rich in philosophical problems, and we haven’t been shy about pursuing them. We spent a good amount of time and energy early in the term pondering different accounts of what it is about death that constitutes a harm to those who die, and why nonexistence after death is so much more dreaded that nonexistence before birth. This prepared us to ask whether the real issue in the pertinent organ debate isn’t “when is a person dead”—as is standardly thought to be the case—but rather “when has a person, even if still living, already lost whatever it is of value that death takes from her?”
As we turn our attention to the controversies surrounding whether organs for transplant should remain essentially gifts of individual people, or be transformed into commodities for market distribution, or social goods to be distributed for the commonweal, we’ll be exploring various conceptions of why and in what ways, human bodies matter. How, for example, are our bodies connected to our sense of our own identities? How do our and other’s bodies affect our relationships with others? Can a dead person be harmed or wronged in any sense by transplantation?
Finally, when we move to think about how these scarce, life-prolonging goods should be distributed, we’ll be delving into what it is that we as members of a moral community can expect from each other and from the social organizations in which we find ourselves. Organ allocation essentially is a process of deciding who will die soon who otherwise might have lived longer: how can that be done in a way that, while sad or even tragic, is not morally outrageous. In the seminar as a whole, we won’t only be asking “What does philosophy have to say to these problems?” but “What do these problems have to say to philosophy?” That, in my view, is what makes doing philosophy in ways closely engaged with real world, real time major controversies so rewarding.
The seminar this year is fortunate in a very special way: Professor Robert Veatch of the Kennedy Institute at Georgetown University, the author of our primary text, and one of the leading thinkers on transplantation issues, will be this year’s Martin Benjamin Distinguished Guest Lecturer. He’ll do an informal session with the seminar over lunch on Friday, November 18, the day of his talk.