Moral Argument Pape

Instructions

Paper topic:  You will pick one of the following scenarios, and in your paper you will explain and defend your own argument from analogy or argument from principle that explains what a person in that scenario should do.   When making your argument, you should be sure to address the strongest objections to your view. 

· Should professional guinea-pigging be allowed?  (For an interesting article about this, see http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/01/07/guinea-pigging)  

· Should a surgeon amputate a limb for a patient who has no medical need for amputation but wants it done?  (Read this article about the issue: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/a-new-way-to-be-mad/304671/)  

· Should students be required to have the HPV vaccine before being admitted to public middle or high school?  (For more information on the HPV vaccine, see http://www.webmd.com/children/vaccines/hpv-vaccine-what-you-need-know)

· Should children who were conceived through donated sperm or eggs have a legal right to learn the identity of their genetic parents?  

· Should hospitals honor the requests of racist patients to be treated only by white doctors and nurses?  

· When medical resources are scarce, should elderly patients be denied care in order that more resources can be directed to young patients?

· Is it morally permissible for parents to intentionally have a savior sibling: a child conceived using pre-implantation genetic diagnosis and in-vitro fertilization so that they can be a donor match for their already existing sibling?  Start to read about it here: https://bioethics.georgetown.edu/2015/10/is-it-ethical-for-parents-to-create-a-savior-sibling  

· Suppose there were unethical studies done on people (similar to the Nazi hypothermia experiments) that have provided information that might be useful for legitimate medical purposes (helping people, curing and treating diseases, etc.).  Should medical researchers be willing to use data from those unethical studies performed by others?  

· Is it morally permissible for parents of children with severe disabilities to medically stop their children’s growth so that they’re easier to care for?Learn about the topic here: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/should-parents-of-severely-disabled-children-be-allowed-to-stop-their-growth.html?_r=0 

· Should people be allowed to donate their kidneys for money? (Read about the Iranian system here:  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1819484/)  

· Should the NIH lift the ban on research using human-animal chimeras?  (Read about the issue here: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/08/nih-moves-lift-moratorium-animal-human-chimera-research)