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Current Topics and Problem Areas in Reproductive Ethics

Data

Official data in SubjectManager for the following academic year: 2024-2025

Course director

Number of hours/semester

lectures: 0 hours

practices: 0 hours

seminars: 12 hours

total of: 12 hours

Subject data

  • Code of subject: OAF-ARE-T
  • 1 kredit
  • General Medicine
  • Optional modul
  • both
Prerequisites:

-

Course headcount limitations

min. 5 – max. 25

Topic

The seminar provides an introduction into current topics and problem areas of reproductive ethics. In order to avoid the dead-end of the pro-life vs. pro-choice controversy, the course is designed to address ethical questions of reproductive ethics in a multidisciplinary manner with a special focus on parental responsibility. Students will be provided to chance to analyze challenges faced by parents, medical professionals and policy makers with regard to reproductive choices, note how medical developments and social changes interact. The issue-centered seminar should give students the chance to approach bioethical questions in a critical manner through an analysis of complex medical cases.

Lectures

Practices

Seminars

  • 1. An anthropology of genealogy - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 2. The moral status of the embryo in religious, philosophical and legal traditions - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 3. Reproductive ethics in context: a short history of reproductive medicine - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 4. Reproductive ethics in context: social theories of parenthood - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 5. The existential context of prenatal diagnosis and screening - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 6. Ethical questions of assisted human reproduction - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 7. Social egg freezing - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 8. Anonymous gamete donation - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 9. Surrogacy - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 10. Global reproductive tourism - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 11. Human cloning - Szolcsányi Tibor
  • 12. Genetic enhancements - Szolcsányi Tibor

Reading material

Obligatory literature

DeGrazia, David: Creation Ethics. Reproduction, Genetics, and Quality of Life, Oxford University Press, 2012.

Fenwick, Lyn: Private Choices, Public Consequences. Reproductive Technology and the New Ethics of Conception, Pregnancy, and Family, Dutton Adult, 1998.

Fisher, Anthony: Catholic Bioethics for a New Millennium, Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Mundy, Liza. Everything Conceivable: How the Science of Assisted Reproduction Is Changing Our World. New York: Anchor, 2008.

Nahman, Michal Rachel: Extractions: An Ethnography of Reproductive Tourism, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

Overall, Christine: Why Have Children?: The Ethical Debate, MIT Press, 2012.

Ryan, Maura A.: Ethics and Economics of Assisted Reproduction. The Cost of Longing, Georgetown University Press, 2001.

Literature developed by the Department

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Notes

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Recommended literature

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Conditions for acceptance of the semester

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Mid-term exams

Students are expected to 1) participate in classes in an active and constructive manner; 2) complete a short research on a topic of interest; 3) present the findings of the research in class and 4) in written form. Students will be evaluated on the basis of the fulfillment of the mentioned requirements (40% participation; 30% presentation; 30% written research report).

Making up for missed classes

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Exam topics/questions

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Examiners

Instructor / tutor of practices and seminars

  • Kovács Gusztáv
  • Szolcsányi Tibor
Rólunk