units

ATS1264

Faculty of Arts

Monash University

Undergraduate - Unit

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2014 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

print version

6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

Refer to the specific census and withdrawal dates for the semester(s) in which this unit is offered, or view unit timetables.

LevelUndergraduate
FacultyFaculty of Arts
Organisational UnitCentre for Human Bioethics
OfferedCaulfield Second semester 2014 (Day)
Clayton Second semester 2014 (Day)
Coordinator(s)Dr Ryan Tonkens

Notes

Previously coded CHB1020

Synopsis

The unit investigates how the law and public policy should respond to advances in medicine and biotechnology and covers: whether employers and insurance companies should be permitted to discriminate among applicants on the basis of their genetic profile; whether the law should protect individuals' genetic privacy or whether we have a duty to share our genetic knowledge; whether the law should act paternalistically to prevent people from harming themselves; whether people who are partly responsible for their own bad health should receive lower priority of care in hospitals, or whether advances in knowledge in the biological bases for behaviour give us reason to doubt individual responsibility.

Outcomes

On successfully completing this unit, students will have:

  1. familiarity with the key philosophical approaches to discrimination, autonomy, responsibility and equality as they apply to debates within bioethics;
  2. skills enabling them to think critically about key ethical, policy and legal issues raised by recent advances in medicine and biotechnology;
  3. the ability to make informed judgements about those ethical, policy and legal issues.

Assessment

Written work: 60% (2500 words)
Exam: 35%
Tutorial performance: 5%

Chief examiner(s)

Workload requirements

2 one-hour lectures and 1 one-hour tutorial per week

This unit applies to the following area(s) of study

Prohibitions

Additional information on this unit is available from the faculty at: