This 15-credit Graduate Certificate in Bioethics provides broad interdisciplinary background in the core concepts, methods, and topics in bioethics. Courses include:
- Bioethics
- Theoretical Foundations of Applied Ethics
- Philosophy of Medicine
- 2 electives
The Certificate provides a foundation for ethical analysis of issues in various fields including:
- biomedical research
- clinical care
- health policy
- health law
- technology development
The Certificate is designed for three groups of students, who benefit from interacting in classes:
- Post-baccalaureate healthcare professionals and those working in related fields—including social work, mental health, health law or policy, health-related research, chaplaincy, and biotechnology or bioengineering—who want to explore ethical issues arising in their work and the social implications of advances in their fields.
- Post-baccalaureate students who want to explore bioethical issues related to future careers in healthcare, health research, law, or biotechnology.
- Graduate and professional students from a variety of disciplines who want to address ethical issues associated with their primary academic or professional program. (Within many programs, Certificate courses may serve as electives. Those enrolled in a University of Pittsburgh degree program should contact their advisor and the Certificate’s director at bioethics@pitt.edu to discuss the blending of the two programs.)
Prospective students are invited to contact bioethics@pitt.edu for more information, or to apply online.
Certificate Core Courses
Bioethics
BIOETH 2664
This seminar introduces students to foundational topics, classic texts, key methods, and normative assumptions of the field of bioethics. In addition to being exposed to these aspects of the field, students are asked to think critically about them. The course proceeds topically and, in some respects, chronologically. It begins with an examination of informed consent, which has become a cornerstone doctrine of bioethics, and proceeds by considering other topics in relation to this doctrine and the assumptions and values that ground it. These topics include:
- End of life decision-making
- Medical assistance in dying
- Rationing
- Organ procurement and allocation
- Genetic Enhancement
- Professionalism in health care
- Conscientious objection in health care
Theoretical Foundations of Applied Ethics
BIOETH 2661
This text-based, discussion-oriented course surveys major ethical theories and their relation to applied ethics, especially bioethics and health policy. Students examine ethical theories such as consequentialism, duty-based theories, rights-based theories, contractarianism, virtue ethics, and casuistry. Readings include selections by Mill, Kant, Rawls, Williams, Smart, Jonsen and Toulmin, Pellegrino and Thomasma, and Baier. This course addresses various questions about ethical theory and applied ethics, such as:
- What are the major ethical theories?
- What are the criteria for assessing competing ethical theories?
- What is the relation between ethical theory and applied ethics?
Philosophy of Medicine
BIOETH 2658
This seminar examines the aims and practices of medicine and medical science within broader cultural contexts. It integrates such fundamental concepts as health, illness, disease, pain, and care; examines relevant modes of reasoning and paradigms of knowledge; explores the role of narrativity, argument, and image systems in the internal and external understandings of medicine; and considers ways that medical knowledge and understanding relate to other domains of knowledge and culture. It considers:
- What tensions arise when medicine is viewed as both a domain of patient care and a field of research?
- How does medicine address both individual and social responsibilities?
- How does medicine understand and minister to both body and mind?
There are common readings and short writing assignments for each class meeting, as well as a final paper.