Unit for History and Philosophy of Science

HPSC1000: Bioethics
HPSC1900: Bioethics (Advanced)
Associate Prof. Dominic Murphy, Coordinator
OVERVIEW
Bioethics examines the ethical and political dimensions of medicine and the biological
sciences, and explores the issues and possibilities raised by rapid technological changes in
these fields. These sciences have enormous impacts in the contemporary world and
contribute a heady mix of excitement, fear and controversy to the public sphere. This course
will give you a way of entering the bioethical debates surrounding these fields and
grappling with the issues raised. It aims to give you the intellectual and practical skills to
contribute to discussions on topical issues both in bioethics and beyond.
The course will begin by looking at some of the age-old conceptual underpinnings of
bioethics such as personhood, autonomy and rights, which are used broadly in debates on
abortion, euthanasia and other controversial topics. From this, we look more directly at
practical issues that are controversial today: abortion, the genetic selection and modification
of children, euthanasia, human cloning and stem cell research. In the latter half of the
course, we look at big picture issues relating to the development and progress of
biomedicine: research on humans and non-human animals and justice in health care.
Given that bioethics is the most developed area of ethics applied to science, and that there
are parallels between ethical issues in biology and other sciences, this UOS may appeal to
those who are interested in sciences other than biology, as well as to non-science students
with general interests in exploring social issues and philosophy.
The course does not assume any scientific background beyond School Certificate level. This
UOS provides an excellent grounding for intermediate HPS and senior HPSC UOS on
science and ethics, as well as for future work in science or arts subjects. It provides a broad
understanding of the public context of more technically oriented units of study in the
sciences.
COORDINATOR:
Dominic Murphy
Email: dominic.murphy@sydney.edu.au
Room: Carslaw 385
Office Consultation Hours: Monday 1-4pm, or by appointment, or call and drop by
(023953612)

CLASS MEETINGS
Lectures: Monday, 10-11am: Wallace Theatre
Tuesday: 10-11am: Eastern Avenue Auditorium
Wednesday: 10-11am: Wallace Theatre
TUTORIALS:
You will be assigned to a tutorial. They begin in week 2. You must attend 10 of
the remaining 12 unless you have a medical excuse or personal emergency. If you cannot
make a tutorial you must inform your tutor and try to find an alternative. Attending at least
80% of tutorials is mandatory. Dont say we didnt tell you. If you spend your time online or
texting or otherwise ignoring the tutor, your attendance will not count. Make sure you learn
your tutors name and contact details.
EMAIL
It is your responsibility to regularly check your University of Sydney email account or
establish a forwarding address on the Sydney system, because this is the primary means of
contact for us with you and more generally for the University about your unit of study. If
something goes wrong for you because you have not accessed your university email account
you will not be excused.
Also be sure to check into WebCT regularly for class announcements.

HPS AND UNIVERSITY RESOURCES

The HPS main office is located in Carslaw 389 and operates during the semester Mondays,
Tuesday and Wednesdays, from 9am-4.30pm. The HPS office is closed on major holidays.
Unit for HPS website: www.usyd.edu.au/hps
HPS Reference Guide:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/hps/undergraduate/resources/essay_guide.pdf
Learning Centre: http://www.usyd.edu.au/lc/
eLearning (WebCT) site: http://www.usyd.edu.au/elearning/index.shtml
ICT helpdesk: 9351-1600
WebCT/BLACKBOARD
The E-Learning platform, Blackboard (often called WebCT around Sydney Uni), is used in
this UOS. You will be automatically listed on the student list and have access to the site once
you officially register in the unit. Copies of relevant UOS materials and lecture presentations
will be available on this site for your consultation throughout the semester. Lecture slides
and notes will be available after the lectures. Lectopia recordings of the lectures will also be
available.
LEARNING OUTCOMES
Content-related goals
By the end of this unit of study, you should be able to:
(1) recognise and describe key ethical issues that arise in the biological sciences and in
medicine;
(2) pose critical questions about episodes in science where ethical issues are at stake;
(3) pose well-defended arguments (both written and verbal) in favour of particular positions
in current ethical debates in science
(4) evaluate the relative merits of competing ethical arguments and appreciate the
complexity of ethical situations
(5) critically reflect on how values influence your interactions with the biological sciences
and medicine, and your personal responsibilities as a future scientist, clinician, citizen,
patient, or consumer of science.
Generic skills
Skills developed during this UOS should include:
(1) Verbal: Engage actively and thoughtfully in tutorial discussions, including being able to
clearly develop and articulate your point of view and develop arguments for it.
(2) Analytical reading: Be able to gain a clear understanding of content and arguments
through analysis of scholarly material and critically discuss various points of view.
(3) Written: Develop an argument that directly responds to questions posed using clear
reasoning and language skills and use information literacy skills as required for university
level written work
(4) Collaborative work: Participate in small group exercises and activities in tutorial in a
constructive manner.

SOME GROUND RULES

Any topic that involves highly contested ethical issues inevitably invites discussion
and disagreement. To participate in this class it is important that all discussions are
conducted in an atmosphere of mutual respect. This course is designed to help you
explore your beliefs and their contexts, make you aware of alternative points of view,
and alert you to the potential dangers of having too much certainty about your ideas
and their frames of reference regarding the issues being examined. Discussions can
be challenging and respectful, and being alert to maintaining that balance is essential.
Unanimity, or even consensus, is not expected.
The University Code of Conduct prohibits any harassment, bullying or other
treatment by another student, inside or outside class, that makes it harder for you to
study or interferes with your education. This includes cyberbullying or unwelcome
texting. If you are being harassed, you should immediately let the unit co-ordinator
know, and we advise you to lodge a formal complaint.

PROBLEMS
If you have any problems regarding this unit of study which you feel you cannot
discuss with academic staff involved with teaching the course, please contact the
HPS administrator, who can put you in touch with other members of staff. If you
believe that your work has been graded unfairly or otherwise improperly, you should
in the first instance contact Dr. Murphy. Please do not do this over email: come to
office hours, and bring a copy of the essay together with a written statement
explaining what you see as the problems. If you are still unhappy, the work can be
remarked by another member of the HPS staff.

Assessment:
Assessment for this UOS is based on three papers, of 1250 words per paper, weighted
equally. All materials will be submitted online on the dates outlined in the schedule below.
Late essays will be penalized at 2.5% per day: i.e a paper that is ten days late will lose 25%.
(note this is percentage of your grade, not points)
The penalty will apply in the absence of a special consideration. Anything more than ten
days late will be marked pass/fail only. Unsubmitted work will get a zero.

You cannot pass the Unit if you fail more than one essay, regardless of your marks:

Due Dates:
Paper 1 due: 5 pm April 2nd
Paper 2 due: 5 pm May 8th
Paper 3 due: 5 pm June 8th
For information on texts, grading standards, plagiarism etc, see the section after the
schedule (below).

SCHEDULE:
WEEK 1: INTRODUCTION TO BIOETHICS AND TO THE COURSE (2nd March)

Khuse, H. and Singer, P. 1991. What is Bioethics? A Historical

Introduction, in H. Khuse and P. Singer, A Companion to Bioethics,
Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, pp.3-11

Kerridge, I., Lowe, M and McPhee, J. 2005. What is ethics? in Ethics

and Law for the Health Professions, 2nd edn, Sydney: Federation Press,
pp.1-7

John Harris, 1986 The Survival Lottery in P. Singer (ed) Applied Ethics
(Oxford); 87-96

WEEK 2: CENTRAL CONCEPTS: AUTONOMY, AUTHENTICITY, PERSONHOOD

(9th March)

Tooley, M. (1998). Personhood. In A Companion to Bioethics, ed. Helga

Kuhse and Peter Singer, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp.117-27.
Carl Elliott, (2003) Better Than Well pp. 28-53
Dworkin, Gerald, "Paternalism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Summer 2010 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =
<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/paternalism/

WEEK 3: THE MORAL STATUS OF THE HUMAN FOETUS ABORTION (16th

March)

Thomson, J. 1971. A Defense of Abortion, Philosophy and Public Affairs,

1:1, pp.47-66
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Marquis, Don. 1989. Why Abortion is Immoral, Journal of Philosophy,

86:4, pp.183-202

Singer, Peter, 1994 Rethinking Life and Death, pp.83-105

WEEK 4: ENDING LIFE KILLING, LETTING DIE AND INFANTICIDE (23rdh

March)

Rachels, J. (1975) Active and Passive Euthanasia, New England Journal

of Medicine, pp.78-80

Khuhse, H. (1998) Why Killing is not always worse and is sometimes

better than letting die, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 7,
371-374

Hardwig, J. (1997) Is there a duty to die?, The Hastings Centre

Report, 27: 2, 34-42

Churchill, L. Callahan, D. Linehan, E. Thal, A. Graves, F. Prendergrast, A.

Flory, D and Hardwig, J. (1997) To Die or Not to Die, The Hastings
Centre Report, 27: 6, 4-7

WEEK 5: NORMALITY, DISEASE AND DISABILITY (PART 1) (30th March)

Savulescu, J. 2002. Deaf lesbians, designer disability, and the future

of medicine, British Medical Journal, 325, pp.771-773

Parens, E and Asch, A. 1999. The Disability Rights Critique of Prenatal

Genetic Testing, Hastings Centre Report, 29:5, S1-S22

Chadwick, R and Levitt, M. 1998. Genetic technology: A threat to

deafness, Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, 1:3, pp.209-217

WEEK 6: NORMALITY, DISEASE AND DISABILITY (PART 2) (13th April)

Christopher Ryan, Out on A Limb: The Ethical Management of Bodily

Identity Integrity Disorder Neuroethics, 2 (2009): 21-33
Kitcher, P. The Lives to Come (1997), ch 9
Glover, J. 2006. Choosing Children, Oxford, ch. 1

WEEK 7: CHOOSING CHILDREN: SEX SELECTION, DESIGNER BABIES, etc.

(20th April)

Glover, J. 2006. Choosing Children, Oxford.chs 2 & 3

King, David. 1999. Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis and the New

Eugenics, Journal of Medical Ethics, 25, 176-182

Suvalescu, J. 2001. Procreative Beneficence: Why We Should Select the

Best Children. Bioethics, 15:4, pp. 413-426;

WEEK 8: MODIFYING HUMANS GENE THERAPY AND ENHANCEMENT

(27th April)

Harris, J. Wonderwoman and Superman: The Ethics of Human

Biotechnology, Oxford: Oxford University Press1992, pp.140-161

Sandel, M. 2004. The Case against Perfection, Atlantic Monthly, April,

pp.51-62

Fukuyama, F. 2003. Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the

Biotechnology Revolution, London: Profile, pp. 148-177

WEEK 9: THE BODY (4th May)

Stone, Sandy, 1991, The Empire strikes back: A posttransexual

manifesto, in Body guards: The cultural politics of gender
ambiguity, Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (eds.), New York:
Routledge, pp. 280304.

L. Shrage and S. Stewart, Is it wrong to sexually objectify

someone? unpublished manuscript

WEEK 10: ORGAN TRANSPLANTS (11th May)

Scheper, Hughes, N. 2005. The Last Commodity: Post-Human Ethics

and the Global Traffic in Fresh Organs. In Global Assemblages:
Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems. Ed. Ong, A.
and Collier, S. London: Blackwell, pp.145-164
Hughes, 1998 J. Xenografting: Ethical Issues. Journal of Medical Ethics,
24, pp.18-24

WEEK 11: HUMAN CLONING (18th May)

Brock, D.W. (1998) Cloning Human Beings: An assessment of the

ethical issues pro and con, Clones and Cloning: Facts and Fantasies
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about Human Cloning, ed. Martha Nussbaum and Cass Sunstein, New
York: WW Norton, 141-164

Kahn, A. Clone MammalsClone Man?, Nature, vol 386, March 13,

1997, p.119

Harris, J. 2004. On Cloning. New York: Routledge, pp.113-142

WEEK 12: STEM CELLS (25th May)

Maienschein, J. 2002, Whats in a name? Embryos, clones and stem cells.

American Journal of Bioethics, 2, pp.11-19
Green, R.M. 2002. Determining Moral Status American Journal of
Bioethics, 2, pp.20-29
Cyranoski, D. (2004) Crunch Time for Koreas Cloners, Nature, Vol 429,
6 May, pp12-14

WEEK 13: ANIMAL RIGHTS (25th May)

READINGS
Required Reading
1) Unit Reader, available from the University Print office. All students should
buy a copy of the reader. Some readings may be made available on e-reserve,
accessible through the library website.
2) Choosing Children, by Jonathan Glover. Available at the bookstore. Glover also
has a useful website: jonathanglover.co.uk
The reading for each week should be done in advance of your lecture and
tutorial, in order to allow you to participate fully in discussions and exercises.
You should bring a copy of the assigned readings with you to tutorials.
There are two recommended texts for the unit. You DO NOT have to buy these
books.
1) If you do not have a background in science, you may find this book useful:
Scott F. Gilbert, Anna L. Tyler, and Emily J. Zackin, Bioethics and the New
Embryology: Springboards for Debates (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates,
2005). It provides good summaries of the science in many of the issues we
discuss. If you already have a working knowledge of human biology, you may
not need to consult this book. There are copies available in the bookstore.
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2) This comprehensive anthology provides an excellent resource for further

reading in the topics discussed: Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (Eds.) Bioethics
An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2nd Ed., 2006.

Also note: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://plato.stanford.edu/). It

contains a number of excellent short essays on many of the topics we will discuss, as
well as general background topics in related areas of philosophy and extensive
bibliographies just search around and check out the table of contents.
Some books associated with the unit topics may be put in the special reserve
section of Fisher Library.
Some readings that are used for pedagogical purposes may types of potentially
offensive language. They in no way represent endorsement of such language or
views by the Unit for HPS, which promotes and requires critical and analytical
reading of all materials.

HPS Essay Guide:

http://www.usyd.edu.au/hps/undergraduate/resources/essay_guide.pdf.
Learning Centre: http://www.usyd.edu.au/lc/

Come to the lectures! Powerpoints will be posted online, but material will be
presented in lectures beyond that which is included in the readings.
Remember that philosophy is an activity done via discussion and debate, and
learning requires active participation. Accordingly, class attendance and
discussion especially in tutorials - is critical. Your grade will suffer if you do
not participate. If there is something you dont understand, ask a question.
Shy people may find this an ordeal, but you must do your best to learn to
speak up, which is important at university. If you need to, you may come and
discuss issues with Dr. Murphy, or with your tutor, if you feel unable to raise
your voice in class. Everyone is expected to engage respectfully with their
colleagues in class. Ridiculing or attempting to silence your fellow students is
not permissible, but respectful criticism is encouraged.

Submission of Written Work

All assessments will be assigned and submitted via the website. You will get
information on this when your first essay is assigned. You will receive
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electronic confirmation when you submit work and comments on your work
will be available on WebCT when it is graded. Please do not submit your
work as hard copies in class, by mailing or faxing it to the University, or
sliding it under an office door. The HPS Unit takes no responsibility for work
submitted in these ways! There are NO extensions for submission of your
written assignments. The only exceptions are for documented reasons as
outlined in the Units Special Consideration Policy according to the guidelines
of the Faculty and the University; it is your responsibility to make yourself
familiar with the procedures you must follow to pursue a special
consideration. If such circumstances arise, the Unit for HPS recommends that
you NOT submit work that is substandard or sit a test under adverse
conditions, but that you apply for an extension through the special
considerations process.

Guidelines on Marking

The Unit for HPS follows the Faculty of Science and University guidelines in
awarding a determined percentage of each grade. The Unit may scale marks
in order to fit these grade distributions; please note that all grades on
returned work are raw marks.
For a qualitative description of the marks awarded in our Units of Study, and
a guide to what is expected of you at each marking level, see:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/hps/undergraduate/general.shtml

Academic Honesty and Plagiarism

We encourage you to read widely, discuss your work with friends and so on. But it is
dishonest and unscholarly to present the work of other people as your own. The Unit
for HPS very strongly discourages plagiarism. For the HPS plagiarism policy see:
http://www.usyd.edu.au/hps/undergraduate/general.shtml. If you are concerned
about your own work, please see your tutor or unit co-ordinator.

If deliberate plagiarism is detected, you will receive a zero for the piece of work. You
can also be referred to the university registrar. To avoid this please bear in mind
when you submit work that:
1. Direct quotations should be in quotation marks, with reference to the source,
including page numbers.
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2. Indirect/paraphrased quotations and borrowed ideas should be acknowledged by

means of a reference at the relevant point in the text (i.e not just an entry in the
bibliography)
3. A full bibliography of work consulted and used should be appended to the essay.

Here is an example of what is, and what is not, plagiarism, prepared by Dr. Richard
Dennis of the Geography Department, University College London.

CLASS STRUGGLE
1. The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Society
as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great
classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. Masses of labourers,
crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. Not only are they slaves of the
bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the
machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer
himself. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to
win.
THIS IS PLAGIARISM. THERE IS NO ATTEMPT TO INDICATE THAT THESE
ARE NOT RICHARD DENNIS'S OWN THOUGHTS BUT ARE WORDS TAKEN
DIRECT FROM DIFFERENT PARTS OF THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO.
2. Marx and Engels noted that the history of all hitherto existing society had been the
history of class struggles. Society as a whole was more and more splitting up into
two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie
11

and Proletariat. They observed that proletarians had nothing to lose but their chains.
They had a world to win.
THIS IS STILL PLAGIARISM. ALTHOUGH THE IDEAS ARE ATTRIBUTED TO
MARX AND ENGELS, THERE IS NO INDICATION THAT THE FORM OF
WORDS IS NOT RICHARD DENNIS'S. JUST CHANGING IT INTO THE PAST
TENSE DOESN'T MAKE IT ORIGINAL.
3. In The Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels (1973 edn., p. 40) noted that 'The
history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles'. They argued
that society was 'more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two
great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat' (p. 41). 'Masses
of labourers, crowded into the factory' were 'organised like soldiers ... slaves of the
bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State' (p. 52). They concluded that 'The
proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win' (p. 96).
THIS IS NOT PLAGIARISM, BUT IF ALL YOUR ESSAY CONSISTS OF IS A SET
OF QUOTATIONS STITCHED TOGETHER, IT DOESN'T SUGGEST THAT YOU
HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT OR UNDERSTOOD THE CONTENTS OF THE
QUOTATIONS. SO RICHARD DENNIS WOULDN'T EARN VERY MANY
MARKS FROM ME FOR THIS EFFORT!
4. In one of the most famous first sentences ever written, Marx and Engels (1973 edn.,
p 40) began The Communist Manifesto thus: 'The history of all hitherto existing
society is the history of class struggles.' They went on to exemplify this claim by
showing how the structure of society had, in their view, developed into two
interdependent but antagonistic classes: bourgeoisie and proletariat. The latter
comprised factory operatives, who had been reduced to no more than slave labour;
but as they became concentrated geographically, in the great factory towns of the
industrial revolution, so they had the opportunity to organise themselves politically.
Hence, the authors' conclusion that a communist revolution was not only desirable,
but possible, leading them to issue their equally famous final exhortation (p. 96):
'WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!'
THIS MAY NOT BE A VERY PROFOUND COMMENTARY, BUT AT LEAST ITS
NOT PLAGIARISED!

Bibliographical References
Each piece of writing you produce should contain references to the works that you
discuss or rely on. Your references should enable the reader to identify these sources
with no scope for error. There are two basic approaches to references. One approach
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is to include full references in footnotes to the relevant passages of the text. The other
is to include a bibliography at the end of the text with full references and to refer to
these items in the relevant passages of the text using some systematic convention.
You should use the second of these approaches (bibliography and in-text references)
for your academic work.
There are many different systems in use for formatting bibliographies and references.
You should feel free to use any of the standard systems. Here is a description of one
of the most widely used systems.

A. THE FORMAT FOR A BIBLIOGRAPHY

For a bibliography of works referred to, set them out in alphabetical order (by
author's surname). Where more than one work by an author is listed, order them
chronologically. The year of publication is cited immediately after the author's name.
If there is more than one work by the same author in the same year, use 'a', 'b', 'c', etc.
at the end of the year to differentiate them. Titles of books and journals should be in
italics; titles of articles should be in single quotation marks. Place of publication and
publisher should be included (for books) as should page numbers of articles in
journals. The main types of entry are formatted as follows:

Journal article:
Wright, L, 1976. Functions. Philosophical Review 85: 70-86.
i.e. Author's surname [comma] author's initials [with full stops] year of publication
[full stop] article title in single quotes [full stop] journal title in italics followed by
volume number [colon] page numbers.

Authored book:
Quine, W. V. 1960. Word & Object. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press.
i.e. Author's surname [comma] author's initials [with full stops] year of publication
[full stop] book title in italics [full stop] place of publication [colon] publisher.
Editors, translators and edition can also be indicated after the book title, where
relevant.

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Edited collection:
Lepore, E. ed. 1986. Truth & Interpretation: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald
Davidson. Oxford: Blackwell.
i.e. like authored books, but adding 'ed.' after editor's name and initials (or 'eds.' if
there's more than one).
Article in collection:
Quine, W. V. 1975. 'Mind & Verbal Dispositions'. In S. Guttenplan, ed. Mind &
Language. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
i.e. Author's surname [comma] author's initials [with full stops] year of publication
[full stop] article title in single quotes [full stop] [In] Editor's initials [full stop]
editor's surname [comma] [ed. or eds., if more than one] book title in italics [full
stop] place of publication [colon] publisher.
If the article had already been published prior to the collection you are citing, replace
'In' with 'Reprinted in'.

B. HOW TO REFER TO WORKS WITHIN YOUR TEXT

References within the text to a work take the following form: (Rudwick 1985, p. 20).
If it is clear from the context which author is being discussed, the reference can be
abbreviated to (1985, p. 20); if it is also clear which work is discussed, all that is
needed is the page reference (p. 20).
Examples:
There has been much recent philosophical discussion of the emotions (Oakley 1992;
Taylor 1985). Philosophers have attempted to provide characterisations of the type of
mental entity that emotions are; in addition, they have offered analyses of particular
emotions, such as love, jealousy, pride and fear. Gabriele Taylor has made a study of
the 'emotions of self assessment', which include pride, shame and guilt (1985). In her
study she takes issue with Davidson's (1976) well-known cognitive theory of pride.
She rejects Davidson's account for its insistence on 'a form of rationality... which is
not necessary for an understanding... of the emotional experience in question' (Taylor
1985, p. 5).

This document copyright: Dominic Murphy

Jan 27thh 2015

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