ENGL 110, Fernandez, Fall 2013: Personal Rights & Bioethics

Think your body is your own to control and dispose of as you wish? Think again. If you undergo surgery in many hospitals you must sign away ownership rights to your excised tissues, even if they turn out to have medical and fiscal value. Like the bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Deadly Monopolies reveals in shocking detail just how far the profit motive has encroached in colonizing human life and compromising medical ethics. It is sure to stir debate-and instigate change.

Chapters on

o Racial disparities in health status and accessing health care
o Underserved communities and health care reform

Chapters on
o Exploitation in health care
o Competence to consent
o Commodification
o Consent and informed consent
• Life Choices

Chapters on
o The human body and property rights. My body, my property / Lori B. Andrews
o An alternative to property rights in human tissue

The atrocities committed by Nazi physicians and researchers during World War II prompted the development of the Nuremberg Code to define the ethics of modern medical experimentation utilizing human subjects. The book sheds light on keenly debated issues of both science and jurisprudence, including the ethics of human experimentation and the doctrine of informed consent