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    Volume 2     No. 2                                                     Spring,2003                                         
Archived issues: Spring 2002

Institute Activities Fall and Spring August 2002- May 2003

Consultations for Students and Faculty via the web site and face to face interactions.

Brad Stocker and Clifford Young, faculty from the Kendall Campus, were sponsored to attend a conference entitled Conference on Philosophical Issues in Ethics Across the Curriculum at the University of Florida Jan 30-Feb 3, 2002.  Both faculty members presented a workshop at the Kendall Campus entitled Teaching Ethics in a Multicultural Environment on 11/20/02.  The workshop objectives were developed by Eric Weaver, another sponsored faculty member from MCC. 

The director served as a member of the College-Wide Screening Committee for Philosophy faculty positions..  The faculty will be responsible for teaching The Critical Thinking and Ethics Course, required for all Allied Health and Nursing Students.

The Ethics Teaching Primer is reaching its final stage.  All of the slides are completed.  Dr. Kass piloted the primer in her Dental Hygiene class.

Drs. Aronovitz and Petrozella attended the FIPSE conference in Washington, DC.

The Institute sponsored one of the concurrent sessions at Miami-Dade Community College’s Professional Development Day, March 6, 2003.  This session, entitled Ethical Dimensions of Human Cloning, was presented by Mark Neunder and Allen  McPhee. They philosophy faculty and Institute’s Advisory Committee members. CE’s were provided.

The Institute sponsored the following workshops in conjunction with Student Life and College Training and Development. 

OSHA & HIV/AIDS 2003 and Beyond 2/10/03

Curriculum Issues: Bio/Chem Terrorism 3/10/03

Institute Director classroom visitations were made during the Fall Term and are scheduled for the Spring Term 2002-2. The Fall term visitations included some of the HSC courses, three clinical nursing classes and all the nursing leadership classes.

All the nursing leadership classes and some HSC classes are scheduled for the Spring.  It is hoped that at the conclusion of the grant the faculty will continue to focus some of their class time on ethics and use the Institute as a resource.

Director attended the Honor’s College Student Meeting, (3/10/03) to acquaint students with the Institute and offer to serve as a faculty resource.

Future Workshops:
Integration of End of Life Care into the Health Care Curriculums 5/19/03
Hospice and Ethics (date to be determined)
Ethics 4 Everyone Eric Harvey ordered by School of Nursing.

The Institute for Ethics In Health Care  
Presents:

A Primer for Teaching Health Care 
Ethics Using A 
Multicultural/Interdisciplinary 
Approach

Ethics education has been infused in
each of the Allied Health Technologies
Programs although the extent of  that 
education has varied.  To help support faculty with
their delivery of ethics instruction, a 
group of representatives from the 
School of Allied Health of the Medical Campus of Miami-Dade Community College have been working on a
 two-part project that will serve as a 
multidiscipline approach to ethics education.   One group of faculty members are in the process of 
designing a PowerPoint
 (Ethics Primer) presentation that professors can
 use as a foundation for instruction 
and/or students can use as 
a self-instructional tool.  The second 
group of 
faculty has designed several case 
studies that highlight particular 
ethical dilemmas within a variety of
health professions.  The participants 
represented the following programs: 
veterinary technology, health 
information management, respiratory therapy, dental hygiene and medial laboratory technology.
The Dental Hygiene Program used the 
case study about a client with HIV that was developed 
through the FIPSE  grant.  Fifty dental 
hygiene students were given the case 
and asked to answer each step as they moved 
through the case study.  The students 
were instructed to avail themselves of
whatever outside resources they 
researched to support their responses.  The reaction from the students was overwhelmingly positive.  They
thought the exercise was extremely 
educational and thought provoking.  In fact, several students 
discussed it with their peers from the 
previous class and they inquired
as to why they didn’t get that same 
opportunity the year before when they 
took the class.

  NEED HELP IN TEACHING 
CLONING?

CNN Cloning presentation:
  http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/
02/27/bush.human.cloning/index.html

  Dolly dies:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/
02/14/cloned.dolly.dies/index.html

Copy cat:
http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/science/0
1/21/cloned.cat.ap/index.html

Clonaid hearing:
http://www.intellnet.org/news/2003/01/29/15981-1.html

  http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/americas/
01/23/clonaid.claim/index.html

  Consequentialism: Whether an 
action is right or wrong is solely 
determined by the overall value of 
its consequences.  An action
 cannot be wrong if it has the best
consequences.
       All the likely consequences of 
cloning would have to be 
assessed.  In other words, a 
cost/benefit analysis of cloning for society would be done.

       Deontology: Whether an 
action is right or wrong is NOT 
solely determined by the 
overall value of its consequences, but also, 
or primarily, by the intrinsic features of the 
action.  An action could still be wrong even 
if it has the best consequences.

         Rights and obligations are
often invoked by this theory.  For 
example, a deontologist may
examine whether any moral rights are 
violated in either permitting or 
prohibiting the cloning 
of humans.

Cloning humans - for 
and against

Printed with permission from 
Mark Neunder, M-DCC

While there are strong emotional
reactions to cloning human beings there are also good arguments to be made both for 
and against and these should be 
use dot inform our emotion 
reaction.

For:  

  • Would be used to counter 
    infertility and or genetic disease.
     (Robertson JA1)
  • It is little different from the birth of identical 
    twins. (Robertson JA1)
  • What is important is how a child 
    is treated after birth. (Robertson 
    JA1)
  • Preferable to donor eggs and/or 
    perm for the infertile.
  • It meets the deep human need to reproduce 
    somehow.
  • as of May 2001, it may be that t
    he survival rate of embryos (even in IVF) will rise to 75% 
    (Beebe & Wheeler 3)
  • a source of genetically identical
     body parts for transplant
     treatment of injured individuals. 
    (this is an argument for therapy 
    not cloning)  

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