In article <brownbrd.759900648 at pv0a17.vincent.iastate.edu>,
Grizzly Adams <brownbrd at iastate.edu> wrote:
>I have been reading the posts on human cloning and student questions with
>great interest. Both have melt with, to some degree, the question of moral
>and ethical behavior, and I would like to start a side discussion concerning
>bioethics in general.
>>Do you have a program - course work,
>seminars, whatever - that deals with these issues on a regular basis? If so,
>how does it work? If not do you think you should, do you think this is
>something that we should be working to institute at our universities and
>companies? Should we be focusing on ethical training for graduate students,
>or include post-docs and professors as well?
Briefly: at Harvey Mudd College we include one explicit discussion of
such matters part way through the one-semester introductory laboratory
required of our biology majors (and taken by premeds in other majors,
by biophysics majors in the physics department, and by a few other students).
This course has four units (intertidal ecology, enzymology, neurobiology,
and plasmids). The neuro unit is the only one in which we take knife
to animal--specifically, large earthworms (we used to use frogs).
Before each unit we have an introductory discussion; at the end of each,
we have a debriefing discussion. The introductory discussion for
neurobiology includes at least an hour talking about "life, death,
and biology." This can be rather wide-ranging, depending on where
the students take it; but we insist on talking about research on
animals and about the use of animals in undergraduate labs. At least
some of the students have identified this discussion as a high point
of their undergraduate work.
Almost all our upper division biology courses have large discussion
components, and most of our senior research groups meet regularly as
groups to discuss more than their research. While bioethics is not
a mandated topic for discussion, most of us try to get into such
topics from time to time.
We think it's a good idea. Our bio majors are virtually all either
pre-Ph.D. or premed, and both *should* talk about such things. And
so should we, as faculty and as biologists.
(bill)
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