A new, mini-course created in connection with the Kavli Center and offered through the School of Public Health will give students the skills to identify and analyze ethical challenges in innovation (with an emphasis on public health topics). This course is case-based yet takes an unusually systematic approach. Each week introduces one of four major ethical theories relevant to public health, showing how the theories relate to each other. Students will learn how to identify the core ethical issues at stake in real examples and which theoretical approach to take for which types of challenges. These four theories are: respect for persons/autonomy, utilitarianism, distributive justice, and human rights. The real cases we analyze include: Planned Parenthood’s intervention study which involved paying girls to avoid pregnancy, Oregon and other health systems rationing of healthcare, an international trial testing an intervention to reduce maternal transmission of HIV which involved a placebo arm, the emergence of germline gene editing, experimental invasive neuro-technologies, and a range of uses of AI in health.
See the course listing in the School of Public Health. Offered Spring 2025.