Bioethics - Should There Be Everybody's Problem?

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In these cases where we we as a society have given so much power to certain groups of people, part of the contract is, ok, then you have to do the things that society wants you to. That's exactly right. And if you really don't want to take on those obligations, you should look for a different kind of vocation where you don't find yourself in this kind of a conflict. In bioethics probably find ourselves talking about the parents having the right as autonomous, competent individuals to make decisions about their own health care or lack thereof. Now with people who engage in things like faith healing, there's no evil motive like there is with beating your child. But the

To paraphrase Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park, scientists tend to focus on whether they can do something, not whether they should. Questions of what we should do tend to wander away from the pristine beauty of science into the messy worlds of ethics and the law. But with the ongoing revolutions in biology, we can’t avoid facing up to some difficult should-questions. Alta Charo is a world expert in a gamut of these issues, working as a law professor and government official specializing in bioethics. We hit all the big questions: designer babies, birth control, abortion, religious exemptions, stem cells, end of life care, and more. This episode will give you the context necessary to think about a host of looming questions from a legal as well as a moral perspective. Alta Charo is currently the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She earned a B.A. in Biology from Harvard, and went on to receive her J.D. from Columbia University. Charo served as a bioethics advisor on the Obama Administration transition team, as well as working as a senior policy advisor at the Food and Drug Administration. She has been a Fulbright Scholar, is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, and was awarded the Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award at UW-Madison. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.