3.0

credits

Average Course Rating

Engineers confront problems and make decisions that hold long term social consequences for individuals, organizations, communities and the profession. For biomedical engineers, these decisions may relate to: inventions such as medical devices and pharmaceuticals; neural prosthetics and synthetic biological organisms; responsible and sustainable design; availability of biotechnology in the developing world. Using a combination of cases, fieldwork and readings, we examine the ethical issues, standards, theory and consequences of recent and emerging engineering interventions as a way to understand the profession and to form a basis for future decisions. In addition students will learn and practice multiple forms of communication, including oral, visual and written rhetoric. A particular focus will be communication targeted to different stakeholders including other professionals and the public. Students will apply good communication principle to the discussion of biomedical engineering ethics, develop their own ethical case studies and participate in group projects to aid ethical decision-making, and to improve communication of complex biomedical ethical issues to others.