Columbia University offers two innovative undergraduate science-based bioethics courses for student majoring in biosciences and pre–health studies. The goals of these courses are to introduce future scientists and healthcare professionals to the ethical questions they will confront in their professional lives, thus enabling them to strategically address these bioethical dilemmas. These courses incorporate innovative pedagogical methods, case studies, and class discussions to stimulate the students to think creatively about bioethical issues emerging from new biotechnologies. At the end of each course, each student is required to submit a one-page strategy detailing how he or she would resolve a bioethical dilemma. Based on our experience in teaching these courses and on a qualitative analysis of the students’ reflections, we offer recommendations for creating an undergraduate science-based course in bioethics. General recommendations include: 1) integrating the science of emerging biotechnologies, their ethical ramifications, and contemporary bioethical theories into interactive class sessions; 2) structuring discussion-based classes to stimulate students to consider the impact of their moral intuitions when grappling with bioethical issues; and 3) using specific actual and futuristic case studies to highlight bioethical issues and to help develop creative problem-solving skills. Such a course sparks students’ interests in both science and ethics and helps them analyze bioethical challenges arising from emerging biotechnologies.

Vol. 12, No. 4

December 01, 2013

577-723

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Downloads: 352

Citations: 22

History

Submitted: 29 January 2013

Revised: 20 July 2013

Accepted: 22 July 2013

Information

© 2013 J. D. Loike et al. CBE—Life Sciences Education © 2013 The American Society for Cell Biology. This article is distributed by The American Society for Cell Biology under license from the author(s). It is available to the public under an Attribution–Noncommercial–Share Alike 3.0 Unported Creative Commons License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0).

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors thank Dr. Deborah B. Mowshowitz, Chair of the Undergraduate Committee and Director of Undergraduate Programs and Laboratories, Department of Biology at Columbia College; Dr. Andrew Laine, Department Chair and Professor of Biomedical Engineering and of Radiology (Health Sciences); and the Department of Biomedical Engineering for the opportunity to teach these courses. We acknowledge Jennifer E. Miller, Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Harvard University, for her thoughtful comments, and my students (Ayelet Evrony, Lena Bell, Alyssa Scheiner, and Helena Wu) who helped edit this article. In addition, we thank all the superb students who have made these educational courses challenging and successful.

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