Focused on complex ethical issues in the life sciences, ranging from debates over human enhancement, the use of human cells in research, non-human animals in research, synthetic biology, genetically-modified organisms, and recent research in microbial biology.
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April 6:
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April 7:
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April 8:
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April 8:
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April 14:
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April 14:
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April 21:
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April 21:
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April 28:
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April 28:
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May 19:
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May 19:
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You can't drop your last class using the "Add/Drop" menu in DuckWeb. Go to the “Completely Withdraw from Term/University” link to begin the complete withdrawal process. If you need assistance with a complete drop or a complete withdrawal, please contact the Office of Academic Advising, 101 Oregon Hall, 541-346-3211 (8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday). If you are attempting to completely withdraw after business hours, and have difficulty, please contact the Office of Academic Advising the next business day.
Expanded Course Description
Research in the life sciences raises numerous ethical issues about the use of human cells and non-human animals in experiments; about the potential harms associated with development of biotechnologies such as CRISPR-Cas 9; about synthetic biology and the production of genetically modified organisms, or about the role of conservation biology in environmental debates, among many others.
In addition, this course will explore how recent findings emerging in microbial biology provide new ways for understanding ourselves. Are our physiological capacities the single product of our evolution? Are our psychological states and emotions, in a word our personality, nothing else than the expression of our organic properties? Today, microbial biology calls into question the most traditional understandings of human beings and, thus has a direct impact on our ethical conceptions of who we are.
