In Autumn 2018, I took a class on medical ethics from Professor Moon Draper. It was incredibly interesting and relevant to my field of study. We discussed the differences between ethics, morals, and mores, and how each of them influence the American health care system. We discussed the ethics of resource allocation from the small scale of ethical distribution of limited resources at the clinical level, to the large-scale allocation of funding at the national level. We grappled with contemporary, emerging ethical concerns such as the development of gene editing technology. Our final project for the class was to draft a law regulating (or not regulating, or banning, or whatever position you wanted) gene editing technology. We then gave a press conference defending our laws from scrutiny from Dr. Draper's colleagues who he invited.
Ethical Position Papers
Throughout the quarter, we could choose difficult and intractable ethical problems in the medical field to justify a position on. This was a very challenging but intellectually stimulating exercise that forced me to carefully interrogate my own morals and assumtions.