UPenn brings bioethics resources to classroom
UPenn brings bioethics resources to classroom
High School Bioethics’ is useful educational tool
They’re not just dissecting frogs anymore. Increasingly, high school students across the country are being asked to consider bioethical issues along with formulas and theorems in their biology and chemistry classes.
"We are discussing bioethical topics, and the topic that I have chosen is in vitro fertilization," reads a recent posting by a high school student on an Internet bulletin board devoted to bioethics discussion. "I tried to decide if it is an ethical form of reproduction and if it is worth the effort and money. In the end, I concluded that in vitro fertilization was an ethical form of reproduction and was worth it."
"I am writing a paper on the ethical issues of genetically programming fetuses so that when they are born, they will possess certain traits that their parents desire, i.e. hair color, eye color, height, etc.," reads another post. "It would be much appreciated to hear other people’s opinions on this matter."
(Editor’s note: The posts were taken from The Bioethics Discussion Pages, moderated by Maurice Bernstein, MD, and located on the web at: www.hsc.usc.edu/~mbernste/.)
The above postings are not unusual, says Dominic Sisti, MBe, a researcher and staff member at the University of Pennsylvania’s center for bioethics in Philadelphia.
"At the center, we get thousands of queries every month from high school students wanting help with papers, projects, asking questions, asking to interview scholars, etc.," he notes. "And it is interesting. They are actually doing some seriously cutting-edge work in high school biology classes now, including using PCR [polymerase chain reaction] and other interesting and timely lab activities. And all of those activities have interesting applications."
Web site dedicated to high school
As a response to the overwhelming requests for information, and because it is part of the center’s mission to educate the public about bioethical decision making, the center started the High School Bioethics Project — a cooperative arrangement between it and the U.S. Department of Education.
The main feature of the project thus far is a web site featuring information sections on the subjects of genetic privacy, genetically modified organisms, gene patenting, and reproductive genetics.
The sections give a brief background of the issues and technology involved and raise specific questions and ideas for the students to consider, as well as links to more information elsewhere on the web.
The site also provides an interactive "helpline" that allows visitors to directly send questions to the center staff and receive an e-mail reply.
Bioethics tutors from the center’s master’s program or the research staff answer the questions.
"It is actually pretty fun," he says. "There are students out there who really have some great questions. They are not as unsophisticated as you might think. They have come to us with some great novel questions and issues. I have done some teaching with adult community groups that don’t come up with the questions that the high school students do."
In addition to the web site, Sisti periodically goes out to give talks to high school classes, and groups of students and teachers visit the center as well.
The leaders of the center— director Arthur Caplan, PhD, and Glenn McGee, PhD, a senior fellow and its associate director for education — have long been interested bringing bioethics to the public, to "everyone, high school students, communities at large through the mass media," says Sisti.
"This was one way to do it, and we received notification from the government that they were interested in this area as well," he adds.
The center received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to develop materials to educate students about genetics and ethics, reports Sisti. And most of the student queries involved questions in these areas.
Ethics committees and the community
In addition to considering the individual consultations that arise and educating hospital clinicians and administrators about bioethics, committees need to work to educate their larger community, says Sisti.
"I think that is a responsibility that is often overlooked," he explains. "You can wax philosophically about ethical theory, but when the public doesn’t understand it, it doesn’t do you all that much good. What the High School Bioethics Project enables the students to do is discuss bioethics issues outside of their own value system, if need be. They can approach a situation and open their mind to other viewpoints and respect those viewpoints. I think it helps with tolerance for other points of view and gives them a way to resolve conflicts and, in a more general sense, bioethics is a good tool for that."
High School Bioethics can be accessed on the web at: www.bioethics.net/hsbioethics.
Source
- Dominic Sisti, Mbe, University of Pennsylvania, Center for Bioethics, Suite 320, 3401 Market St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-3308.
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