Loretta Ford, ‘Mother’ of the Nurse Practitioner Field, Dies at 104

She transformed nursing by making it an area of clinical practice and research and recasting nurses as colleagues of doctors, not assistants.

Loretta Ford, who co-founded the first academic program for nurse practitioners in 1965, then spent decades transforming the field of nursing into an area of serious clinical practice, education and research, died on Jan. 22 at her home in Wildwood, Fla. She was 104...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/30/health/loretta-ford-dead.html?smid=em-share

Air safety is a bioethical issue

In response to Trump's comments, Buttigieg posted: "Despicable. As families grieve, Trump should be leading, not lying. We put safety first, drove down close calls, grew Air Traffic Control, and had zero commercial airline crash fatalities out of millions of flights on our watch. President Trump now oversees the military and the FAA. One of his first acts was to fire and suspend some of the key personnel who helped keep our skies safe. Time for the President to show actual leadership and explain what he will do to prevent this from happening again."

HCR

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-30-2025?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

DeepSeek

Just heard this timely discussion of AI and DeepSeek…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live:bbc_radio_fourfm?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

And this...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0027cv4?partner=uk.co.bbc&origin=share-mobile

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Questions Jan 30

I'll be coming from the library today (you're welcome to join us if you like), in case I'm a little late.

Perspectives (Basics 3); Premonition 3. Share your thoughts, questions (etc.) in the comments section below.

1. Chapter 3 begins by asking if our bioethical perspective ("vision") is skewed by _____... (a) cultural assumptions, (b) gender bias, (c) religious faith, (d) all of the above

2. What's the leading global cause of death among women of reproductive age?

3. (T/F) The "feminist critique" says bioethics has been dominated by culturally masculine thinking.

4. What ethical perspective did Nel Noddings (supported by Carol Gilligan's research) describe as the "feminine approach"?

5. What's a furor therapeuticus?

6. Does Campbell consider the outlawing of female genital mutilation culturally insensitive?

7. What's allegedly distinctive about "Asian bioethics"?

8. What western ethical preconception is "somewhat alien" in the eastern dharmic traditions?

9. What gives Buddhists and Hindus a "whole new perspective" on bioethical issues?

10. What does Campbell identify as a "tension in the Christian perspectives" on bioethics?

Premonition

1. What book "more of less" led to the invention of U.S. pandemic planning? Have you read it? Will its lessons again be forgotten before the next pandemic?

2. Who is Richard Hatchett? Do you think many people in health care possess the souls of poets?

3. What did Hatchett not know about "social distance"? Is that the best term for what it purports to describe?

4. What did Carter Mecher "notice" about most medical students? Would you expect a higher percentage of those who choose a medical career to be calm and collected in a health emergency than the general population, or better at learning from their mistakes?

5. What did Mecher think was a good way to reduce medical error?

6. What was the gist of Mecher's Lessons Learned report to the VA?

DQs:

• How do you think your own attitudes and assumptions about gender, religion, etc. influence your Bioethical perspective?
• What do Plato's Euthyphro and the Biblical story of Abraham & Isaac suggest to you about the place of religion in addressing biotethical issues? (61-2)
• What is Buddhism's bioethical relevance? (69)
• How should medical professionals treat and care for children whose parents object to medical intervention on religious grounds?
• Is it best for caregivers to try and limit their personal knowledge of patients' particular perspectives, beliefs, identities (religious, political, cultural etc.) so as to avoid conscious or unconscious bias in treatment, or does this unduly sacrifice the humane dimension of medical practice?
• Post your DQs

 

Lesson unlearned

The most important lesson from the last pandemic was that we were not prepared. You'd hope that lesson had been learned at the top of govt.

wapo.st/4gj124a

https://bsky.app/profile/peaseroland.bsky.social/post/3lgs7sk533s2u

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Agnes Callard

The U of Chicago prof and author of Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life, and our upcoming Lyceum speaker, interviewed by Zena Hitz, author of Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life. She defends arguing Socratically, not to be confused with arguing Monty Python-ishly...

 

And, another interview: 

Argue Your Way to a Fuller Life
Refute your friends and family, never be satisfied. Philosopher Agnes Callard on life lessons from Socrates...

Callard discovered Socrates in high school, and by the time she was a senior in college, she was obsessed. “I didn’t just want to interpret Socrates,” she writes. “I wanted to be Socrates.” She started hanging out on the front steps of the Art Institute of Chicago and would walk up to strangers and ask if they wanted to have a philosophical discussion. At first, they were intrigued, but then they just wanted to get away from her. “I’ve kind of spent my whole life since then trying to figure out how to do that but not make people run away from me,” she said with a laugh... (continues)

Questions Jan 28

Remember, you don't have to respond to my questions if you can come up with relevant comments on your own. But some of them will be on the exam, so you should still read the texts that address them. 

    [Catch up on last time's questions first...]

Moral Theories (Basics 2); Premonition 2

1. (T/F) In Anna's story, why did she wish not to be resuscitated?

2. Which theory has been dominant in bioethics and often used by many health professionals?

3. In deontological theory, what is the difference between hypothetical and categorical imperatives?

4. What ethical principle (and whose), in the name of rational consistency, absolute dutifulness, and mutual respect, "requires unconditional obedience and overrides our preferences and desires" with respect to things like lying, for example?

5. What would Kant say about Tuskegee, or about the murderer "at our door"?

6. What more do we want from a moral theory than Kant gives us?

7. What is the distinctive question in virtue ethics?

8. What Greek philosopher was one of the earliest exponents of virtue ethics?

9. What is the Harm Principle, and who was its author?

10. Name one of the Four Principles in Beauchamp and Childress's theories on biomedical ethics?

 [Premonition...]

11. What was Dr. Hosea's diagnostic style? (And of what classic Greek philosopher might it remind you?)

12. What misleading practice of self-promotion did doctors of orthopedic medicine engage in?

13. How did Dr. Dean learn to persuade elected officials to finance disease control?

14. What was the root of the CDC's reluctance to support Dr. Dean's decisions?

15. What famous ethical problem did the Casa Dorinda mudslide resemble?


DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

• In Anna's story, do you find yourself more concerned with the specifying and insisting on the respective duties of Anna, her physician, and the ethics committee dealing with her DNR request, or with its consequences? 
• Do you consider yourself more an ethical consequentialist/utilitarian, pragmatist, deontologist, virtue ethicist, or none of the above? Is it possible to be ethically responsible without first clarifying and claiming your own theoretical ethical commitments? 
• Do you agree with Peter Singer that the ethical choice which best serves the goal of minimizing pain and suffering requires ending lives?
• Is a felicific calculus such as Jeremy Bentham proposed possible, or practical?
• Would life in Huxley's Brave New World really be nightmarish and dystopian, if universal happiness were its result?
• Kant's categorical imperative requires always treating individuals respectfully, as ends in themselves and never as means to any other social or collective good. Can you imagine any scenario in which it would be ethically correct to violate that imperative, in the name of medical progress or social welfare?
• Is virtue ethics "elitist and utopian" in its quest to articulate the conditions of a good life and death for all? Are virtues and vices culturally relative? 36-7
• 
  

The Race for All-Powerful Pot

At Stiiizy, the best-selling cannabis brand in America, the goal is explicit: producing powerful and cheap marijuana.

Inside its Los Angeles headquarters, crews dust joints with concentrated THC, the intoxicating component of cannabis. They package pocket-size vape cartridges that promise "the highest potency possible." On its website, the company declares that "it has never been easier (or quicker) to get silly high for an affordable price."

Dispensaries operating under the brand of another leading company, Cookies, have promoted "powerful medical benefits," including "cancer fighting" qualities. A cannabis-infused chocolate bar was, until recently, described as containing properties "beneficial to those suffering" from glaucoma, bacterial infections and Huntington's disease, a devastating genetic illness.

More than a decade after states began legalizing recreational marijuana, businesses are enticing customers with unproven health claims, while largely escaping rigorous oversight. A New York Times review of 20 of the largest brands found that most were selling products with such claims, potentially violating federal and state regulations. And as companies compete, potency has gone up — with some products advertised as having as much as 99 percent THC — and prices have gone down...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/us/marijuana-thc-health-claims-potency.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

The Devastating Legacy of Lies in Alzheimer’s Science

Medical advances have beaten back many relentless assassins in recent decades, such as cancer and heart disease. A wide range of treatments share credit: surgery, medicines, radiation, genetic therapies and healthful habits. Mortality rates for those two diseases, the top causes of death in the United States, have fallen sharply. But in an aging population, Alzheimer's death rates have gone in the opposite direction.

The disease afflicts nearly seven million Americans, about one in every nine people over the age of 65, making it a leading cause of death among older adults. Up to 420,000 adults in the prime of life — including people as young as 30 — suffer from early-onset Alzheimer's. The annual number of new cases of dementia is expected to double by 2050.

Yet despite decades of research, no treatment has been created that arrests Alzheimer's cognitive deterioration, let alone reverses it. That dismal lack of progress is partly because of the infinite complexity of the human brain, which has posed insurmountable challenges so far. Scientists, funders and drug companies have struggled to justify billions in costs and careers pursuing dead-end paths. But there's another, sinister, factor at play.

Over the past 25 years, Alzheimer's research has suffered a litany of ostensible fraud and other misconduct by world-famous researchers and obscure scientists alike, all trying to ascend in a brutally competitive field. During years of investigative reporting, I've uncovered many such cases, including several detailed for the first time in my forthcoming book...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/opinion/alzheimers-fraud-cure.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Derek Humphry, Pivotal Figure in Right-to-Die Movement, Dies at 94

His own experience assisting his terminally ill wife in ending her life set him on a path to founding the Hemlock Society and writing a best-selling guide.

Derek Humphry, a British-born journalist whose experience helping his terminally ill wife end her life led him to become a crusading pioneer in the right-to-die movement and to publish “Final Exit,” a best-selling guide to suicide, died on Jan. 2 in Eugene, Ore. He was 94.

His death, at a hospice facility, was announced by his family.

With a populist flair and a knack for speaking matter-of-factly about death, Mr. Humphry almost single-handedly galvanized a national conversation about physician-assisted suicide in the early 1980s, at a time when the idea had been little more than an esoteric theory batted around by medical ethicists.

“He was the one who really put this cause on the map in America,” said Ian Dowbiggin, a professor at the University of Prince Edward Island and the author of “A Concise History of Euthanasia: Life, Death, God, and Medicine” (2005). “The people who support the notion of physician-assisted suicide absolutely owe him a big thanks.”

In 1975, Mr. Humphry was working as a reporter for The Sunday Times of London when Jean Humphry, his wife of 22 years, was in the final stages of terminal bone cancer. Hoping to avoid prolonged suffering, she asked him to help her die...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/24/health/derek-humphry-dead.html?smid=em-share

Information blockade

"…Trump's team has told the staff at Department of Health and Human Services—including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—to stop issuing health advisories, scientific reports, and updates to their websites and social media posts. Lena H. Sun, Dan Diamond, and Rachel Roubein of the Washington Post report that the CDC was expected this week to publish reports on the avian influenza virus, which has shut down Georgia's poultry industry..."

HCR 

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/january-22-2025?r=35ogp&utm_medium=ios

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

A little less crowded, maybe

I've set in motion the process of getting us officially moved to the larger classroom next door, which apparently stands empty at present. I think we could go ahead and do it unofficially now, though the authorities frown on that. But I'm willing, if y'all are. We can discuss it.

jpo

#13

 I was searching for a list of the "Top 20 Bioethics feeds" ... We're in it:

13. Bioethics RSS Feed

RSS Feed bioethjpo.blogspot.com/feeds.. Follow RSS Website bioethjpo.blogspot.com
Supporting the philosophical study of bioethics, bio-medical ethics, biotechnology, and the future of life, at Middle Tennessee State University and beyond. Follow this blog to know about bioethics.MOREFrequency 23 posts/year Since Apr 2012Subscribe RSS

https://rss.feedspot.com/bioethics_rss_feeds/

==

The NYTimes Health section often reports on bioethical issues...

Where else do you all find health news of interest? Respond in comments, please.

Introductions

Welcome, Bioethics class of '25! Let's introduce ourselves (my bio's in the right sidebar, scroll down 'til you see "JPO bio"). Who are you? Why are you here? What else, by way of introduction, would you like to share?

Looking forward to meeting everyone on January 21.

jpo (Dr. Oliver)

phil.oliver@mtsu.edu

Questions January 23

Questions pertaining to the assigned reading will normally be posted prior to each class. Always share your thoughts (not just the textual facts) in the comments space below each day's post (at least three comments per class, so you can shade the whole diamond on the scorecard when you come to class and receive full participation credit each time... more than that gets you extra credit). Give yourself a base on the scorecard for every question you posted a response to before class. (You can also respond to your own questions(s) or your classmates' posted comments. Again, respond not merely with the authors' textual statements but also with your own thoughts & reflections.) 

What is Bioethics? (Basics 1); Premonition Intro/prologue/1

1. "Bioethics" just means what?
2. What 40-year U.S. study denied information and treatment to its subjects?
3. What did Ivan Ilich warn about in Medical Nemesis?
4. In what issues has the WHO been very active?
5. How has Bioethics broadened its horizons?
6. Bioethics has broken free of what mentality?
7. With what must the main method of Bioethics be concerned?
8. Are there any important bioethical issues you think Campbell has neglected to mention in ch.1 

1. Lewis's previous book asked what question?
2. What did The Lancet point out about the COVID death rate in the U.S.?
3. Bob Glass learned what, that he'd had no idea of, in The Great Influenza? Did you know that, before COVID?
4. How did young Charity Dean cheer herself up?
5. (Your Premonition questions)

A Bioethics MOOC-

 

Some Bioethics TED Talks - https://www.ted.com/topics/bioethics

Michael Lewis on The Premonition-

In 2018, Michael Lewis published “The Fifth Risk,” which argued, in short, that the federal government was underprepared for a variety of disaster scenarios. Guess what his new book is about? Lewis visits the podcast this week to discuss “The Premonition,” (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/bo...) which recounts the initial response to the coronavirus pandemic. 

“It wasn’t just Trump,” Lewis says. “Trump made everything worse. But there had ben changes in the American government, and changes in particular at the C.D.C., that made them less and less capable of actually controlling disease and more and more like a fine academic institution that came in after the battle and tried to assess what had happened; but not equipped for actual battlefield command. The book doesn’t get to the pandemic until Page 160. The back story tells you how the story is going to play out.”

Fwd: olympic gymnist centenarian who just died

You can all post items like this directly, once you become authors on the site. Let me know when you want to.

Begin forwarded message:

This might be a good addition to your list on the Bio ethics blog.

Gary

From: "Gary L. Wedgewood" <gary.wedgewood@gmail.com>
Date: January 21, 2025 at 5:16:09 PM CST
To: Phil Oliver <Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] olympic gymnist centenarian who just died - Search

https://www.bing.com/search?pc=AMAZ&form=AMAZWB&q=olympic%20gymnist%20centenarian%20who%20just%20died&ptag=AMA1ZZZ411282

Agnes Callard’s Marriage of the Minds [“ethics of life” indeed!]

Her search for what one human can be to another

"Arnold Brooks, a graduate student at the University of Chicago, came to Agnes Callard's office hours every week to talk about Aristotle. At the last session of the quarter, in the spring of 2011, they discussed Aristotle's treatise Metaphysics, and what it means to be one—as opposed to more than one. "It was the sort of question where I felt it would be reasonable to feel ecstatic if you made some kind of progress," Arnold told me. Agnes was the only person he'd ever met who seemed to feel the same way.

Agnes specializes in ancient philosophy and ethics, but she is also a public philosopher, writing popular essays about experiences—such as jealousy, parenting, and anger—that feel to her like "dissociated matter," falling outside the realm of existing theories. She is often baffled by the human conventions that the rest of us have accepted. It seems to her that we are all intuitively copying one another, adopting the same set of arbitrary behaviors and values, as if by osmosis. "How has it come to pass," she writes, "that we take ourselves to have any inkling at all about how to live?"

She was married to another philosophy professor at the University of Chicago, Ben Callard, and they had two young sons. To celebrate the end of the term, Agnes had made cookies for her students, and she gave an extra one to Arnold, a twenty-seven-year-old with wavy hair that fell to his shoulders, who was in his first year of the graduate program in philosophy. As Arnold ate the cookie, Agnes, who was thirty-five, noticed that he had "just this incredibly weird expression on his face. I couldn't understand that expression. I'd never seen it before." She asked why he was making that face.

"I think I'm a little bit in love with you," he responded.

Agnes had felt that there was something slightly odd about her weekly sessions with Arnold, but she hadn't been sure what it was. Now the nature of the oddness became apparent. "I think I'm in love with you, too," she told him. They both agreed that nothing could happen. They leaned out her window and smoked a cigarette. Then Arnold left her office.

The next day, Agnes and her sons flew to New York to visit her parents. Ben had gone to Philadelphia to see his mother, who was recovering from surgery. On the plane, Agnes said, "it felt like I was having a revelation in the clouds." For the first time in her life, she felt as if she had access to a certain "inner experience of love," a state that made her feel as if there were suddenly a moral grail, a better kind of person to be. She realized that within her marriage she didn't have this experience. If she stayed married, she would be pretending…"

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/13/agnes-callard-profile-marriage-philosophy

Autonomy and dignity

Polio redux?

As Polio Survivors Watch Kennedy Confirmation, All Eyes Are on McConnell

Their numbers are dwindling now, the faded yellow newspaper clippings reporting their childhood trips to the hospital tucked away in family scrapbooks. Iron lungs, the coffin-like cabinet respirators that kept many of them alive, are a thing of the past, relegated to history books and museums. Some feel the world has forgotten them.

Now the nation's polio survivors are reliving their painful memories as they watch events in Washington, where the Senate will soon consider the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a fierce critic of vaccines, to be the nation's next health secretary. And they are keeping a close eye on one of their own: Senator Mitch McConnell, the former Republican leader.

It has been nearly 70 years since Dr. Jonas Salk's polio vaccine was pronounced "80 to 90 percent effective" against the paralytic form of the disease. Although the government does not keep official numbers, advocacy groups say there are an estimated 300,000 survivorsin the United States. Mr. Kennedy's nomination has prompted some to speak out...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/us/politics/kennedy-confirmation-polio-survivors.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

The Centuries-Old, Incredibly Male Quest to Live Forever

The longevity industry is coming off perhaps its best run on record. The expected span of an American life has increased by about three decades since 1900 — to around 78 as of 2023. But for many people, even 78 years just won't do.

The Methuselah Foundation, a biomedical charity, for example, wants to "make 90 the new 50," and scientists at one biotechnology firm have argued that, unencumbered by disease, the body could potentially make it all the way to age 150. Even more optimistic estimates put the number closer to 1,000.

​​Whatever the maximum human life span may be, people appear increasingly determined to find it — in particular men, who are more inclined to favor radically extending life, maybe even indefinitely. Last year, nearly 6,000 studies of longevity made their way onto PubMed, a database of biomedical and life sciences papers; that's almost five times as many as two decades ago.

Along with the creation of dozens of popular podcasts and a sizable supplement industry, that zeal has led to efforts to preserve organs, search out life-extending diets and even try to reverse aging itself. It's the same mix of solid science, quixotic experimentation and questionable advice that has, for much of recorded history, defined the pursuit...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/18/well/longevity-history.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

Disruptive avatar

That's another name for Philosopher, at least the sort fashioned in a Socratic mold. Agnes Callard's new book is out just in time for the start of our semester. (And she'll be our Lyceum guest in March.) Can't wait to resume my disruptive vocation on Tuesday. There will be questions, starting as always with "Who are you? Why are you here?" And why are we?

"Socrates did not write great books. And yet he is responsible for one truly great creation: the character of Socrates. Socrates made himself into someone that other people could be. He fashioned his very person into a kind of avatar or mascot for anyone who ventures to ask the sorts of questions that disrupt the course of a life."

— Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life by Agnes Callard

Syllabus 2025

(stay tuned)

[The syllabus is subject to revision. Always consult the "Next" section in the upper right corner of our Home Page, for recent changes and other announcements.]

PHILOSOPHY 3345 Bioethics                                                                                

Spring 2025

4:20-5:45 pm, JUB 204

Dr. Phil Oliver, phil.oliver@mtsu.edu - 898-2050, 898-2907 (philosophy dept.), 525-7865.

OFFICE HOURS: TTh 11-12:30 & by appointment, MWF 4-5 by appt. via Zoom. James Union Building 300 (but check the message board on my door on "nice" days and at lunchtime, or maybe call first ). I answer emails mostly during office hours, never on weekends. Best way to secure a quick response: call or come in during office hours.

• Bioethics: The Basics (Campbell) ”...the word ‘bioethics’ just means the ethics of life…”

• Beyond Bioethics (Obasogie) “Bioethics’ traditional emphasis on individual interests such as doctor-patient relationships, informed consent, and personal autonomy is minimally helpful in confronting the social and political challenges posed by new human biotechnologies…”

• The Premonition (Lewis) "The characters you will meet in these pages are as fascinating as they are unexpected. A thirteen-year-old girl’s science project on transmission of an airborne pathogen develops into a very grown-up model of disease control. A local public-health officer uses her worm’s-eye view to see what the CDC misses, and reveals great truths about American society..."

• WHAT WE OWE THE FUTURE (MacAskill) "argues for longtermism: that positively influencing the distant future is our time’s key moral priority. It’s not enough to reverse climate change or avert a pandemic. We must ensure that civilization would rebound if it collapsed; counter the end of moral progress; and prepare for a planet where the smartest beings are digital. If we make wise choices now, our grandchildren will thrive, knowing we did everything we could to give them a world full of justice, hope and beauty"... 

• THE CODE BREAKER: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race (Isaacson) "we are entering a life-science revolution... Should we use our new evolution-hacking powers to make us less susceptible to viruses? ...Should we allow parents, if they can afford it, to enhance the height or muscles or IQ of their kids? After helping to discover CRISPR, Doudna became a leader in wrestling with these moral issues..."

• Each student will also choose and report on additional relevant texts pertaining to pandemics, public health, or some other issue the course raises, thus enabling us to extend our study of the field by “crowd-sourcing” many more of the crucial issues it raises.

==

IMPORTANT DATES Spring 2025

• Jan 21 – Classes Begin

• Feb 4 -- Select midterm report presentation topic & date

• Feb 13 --  Mid-term report presentations begin

• Mar 6 – Exam 1

• Mar 10-15 – Spring Break – No Classes

• Mar 31 – Select final report presentation topic & date

• Apr 1 – Final report presentations begin

• Apr 29 – Our Last Day of Class. Exam 2

• May 2  -- Final report blog post (final draft) due. Post earlier for feedback

• May 8  – Last Day of Term

• May 10  – Commencement (Days and Times TBD), Official Fall Graduation Date

• May 11  – Deadline for Submission of Final Grades, 11:59 p.m.

* Deadlines. Due dates are firm. Extensions are possible in the event of illness or some other unavoidable or extraordinary circumstance, but must first be authorized by me. jpo

JAN

21. Introductions. Post your response to these questions, interpreted any way you like: Who are you? Why are you here? What do you think Philosophy has to do with Bioethics? What ethical/philosophical issues related to the pandemic occur to you? Do you have an easily-summarized personal philosophy? (Maybe something short like Charlie Brown's sister Sally's?--"No!")

23 What is Bioethics? (Basics 1); Premonition Intro/prologue/1

28 Moral Theories (Basics 2); Premonition Premonition 2

30 Perspectives (Basics 3); Premonition 3

FEB

4 Clinical Ethics (Basics 4); Premonition 4 Select midterm report presentation topic & date: indicate your 1st and 2d choices for date and topic in the comments space below midterm report presentations.

6 Research (Basics 5); Premonition 5

11 Justice (Basics 6); Premonition 6; Assign midterm report topics 

13 Beyond Bioethics Foreword, Introduction, 1; Premonition 7. Midterm report presentations begin.

18 Beyond 2-3; Premonition 8 Midterm report presentations begin.

20  Beyond 4-6; Premonition 9

25 Beyond 7-8; Premonition 10 

27 Beyond 9-12; Premonition 11/epilogue

MAR

4 Beyond 13-15; Codebreaker Intro & Part One-The Origins of Life

6 EXAM 1

SPRING BREAK

18 Beyond 16-17; Codebreaker Part Two-CRISPR

20 Beyond 18-20; Codebreaker Part Three-Gene Editing

25 Beyond 21-22; Codebreaker Parts Four and Five-CRISPR in Action, Public Scientist

27 Beyond 23-27; Codebreaker Part Six-CRISPR Babies

31  Beyond 28-31; Codebreaker Parts Seven, Eight-The Moral Questions, Dispatches from the Front. Select final report presentation topic & date

APR

1 Beyond 32-34; Codebreaker Part Nine-Coronavirus. Final report presentations begin.

3

8 Beyond 35-36; Future Part I-The Long View

10 Beyond 37-39; Future Part II-Trajectory Changes

15 Beyond 40-42; Future Part III-Safeguarding Civilisation

17 Beyond 43-50 Future Part IV-Assessing the End of the World

22 Beyond 51-54; Future Part V-Taking Action

24 Final report presentations conclude

29  Last class. Exam 2 (NOTE: Exam 2  is not a "final exam," it is the exam covering material since Exam 1.)

MAY

2 Final blogposts due (post early draft for constructive feedback)

EXAMS. Two objective-format exams based on daily questions, each worth up to 25 points.

REPORTS. Midterm presentation), final presentation & related blog post (1,000+ words minimum). Worth up to 25 points each. Indicate your topic/date preferences in comments below "Report Presentations" post.

PARTICIPATION. Participation includes attendance, your full and attentive presence in class, and posts, comments (etc.) to our Bioethics site prior to each class. No points formally allotted, but steady participation earns strong consideration for a higher final grade. Hypothetically, for instance: say you earned a total of 88 points (of a possible 100) on the exams and reports. If you did not participate consistently and well, your course grade would be B+. If you did, it would be A. In other words, strong participation earns you EXTRA CREDIT. (So please don't ask, at the end of the semester, how to get it. This is how: participate.)

==

SCORECARDS. Because your professor is a baseball fan, we'll track participation with baseball scorecards adapted to the purpose. Come to class to get on 1st base. Post a pertinent comment or question for discussion prior to class to advance to 2d base. Same to move to 3d. To come home, post a pertinent research discovery, something we wouldn't have known from the day's assigned reading.

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"Solvitur ambulando"... the art of walking

A NOTE ON THE BLOG POST FORMAT: final report blog posts should include appropriately-bloggish content: not just words, but also images, links, videos where relevant, etc.

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Watch this space for updated info on the university's and our department's FREE tutoring service... and learn how to study, get help with understanding difficult course material,  receive better test grades, or simply improve your grade point average.  Tutoring is available in study skills and learning strategies that includes sessions on time management, notetaking, when and where to study, and memory principles.  Tutoring is also available in over 200 courses including biology, history, computer information systems, physics, math, psychology, chemistry, economics, recording industry, and many more.  The central location for tutoring is the Tutoring Spot, located in Walker Library, but is also conducted at various other campus sites.  For available tutoring opportunities, visit http://mtsu.edu/studentsuccess/tutoring.php#on .  For questions, call the Tutoring  Spot at 615-904-8014.

Dr. Cornelia Wills

Director of Student Success

Middle Tennessee State University

P. O. Box 500

Murfreesboro, TN 37132

Telephone:  615-898-5025

http://mtsu.edu/studentsuccess/index.php

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Title IX

Students who believe they have been harassed, discriminated against or been the victim of sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence or stalking should contact a Title IX/Deputy Coordinator at 615-898-2185 or 615-898- 2750 for assistance or review MTSU’s Title IX website for resources. http://www.mtsu.edu/titleix/

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Writing Center

The Margaret H. Ordoubadian University Writing Center serves all MTSU students, from freshmen to PhD candidates, on writing from any discipline, and in any genre. [website...] We have a brand new  digital class visit, a brief introduction to the UWC, which can be embedded in any D2L shell for your students.  

Tutoring sessions begin August 24th, and this semester, students will have two choices for online writing support: ​

• ​Live Chat: students to use their mic and camera and meet tutors in real time to work on a shared document; 

• Document Drop: students upload their text and assignment sheet, identify specific feedback needs, and receive tutor feedback through email. 

​We also support writers through course-specific or assignment-specific workshops. The UWC administrative team has worked closely with faculty in diverse programs and departments, such as Biology, Anthropology, and Professional Studies, to create workshops and writing support for students in those courses. Please email Erica Cirillo-McCarthy, Director of the UWC, at erica.cirillo-mccarthy@mtsu.edu if you are interested in talking about ways the UWC can support writers in your class.