Current Challenges in Bioethics

The 17 th International Summer Course in Bioethics is organized by the School of Bioethics of the Pontifical Ateneo Regina Apostolorum. This course is offered for those who would like to have a greater comprehension of bioethics principles and different bioethical issues. After this introductory week on Bioethics from July 2-6, the second week course from July 9-13 is “Human Enhancement: Bioethical Challenges of Emerging Technologies”. The summer course is sponsored by the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics and Human Rights. What can I do? What should I do? No human action can escape these questions. The answers to them are not always clear; moral choices are often not at all easy. Complex situations arise when we face suffering or when we have to make life-or-death choices. Other cases may be difficult only because they raise new questions for which we feel unprepared. Bioethics addresses all these questions and, with an interdisciplinary methodology that combines scientific knowledge with philosophical and theological reflections, it guides us to the right answers. This Summer Course on Introduction to Bioethics offers an overview of bioethical issues in light of the basic principles that guide our practical choices. Some examples of such choices include whether to start a therapy that could have serious consequences, what a couple may ethically do in order to have or not have a child, what we should do with frozen embryos, how we should teach young people to respect their bodies and not play around with their lives, how we should deal with homosexual tendencies, and to what extent rapid progress in science and technology—cloning, neuroscience, nanotechnology—can “improve” man. The course will address these and other situations relevant to bioethics, with the help of multimedia materials, lectures by professors from Regina Apostolorum and other experts, and group work. Because human action is always interwoven with ethical questions, we will seek the right answers together, investigating the truth for the sake of life.

Topics: Bioethics Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow: history, models, and principles of bioethics • Expecting a Child: the horizon and meaning of human sexuality • Original origins: humanity in its embryonic state • The Five Test Tubes of Human Existence: criteria and orientations of assisted reproduction • GENDEReality: history, current debate, scientific facts of the so-called gender theory • Brave new experiments: bioethics, experimentations, consent • All in their proper places: humanity, family, society, ecology • Homo sapiens 2.0: genetics, neurobioethics, and the posthuman • From Bio-law to Personal Rights: healthcare in the age of medicine of desires • The Tail End of a Symphony: bioethics and end of life