BIH623: Medical Ethics and Borderline Situations

The module Medical Ethics and Borderline Situations occupies a distinctive place in the teaching curriculum and engages with a variety of interesting topics. The primary objective of its teaching is to familiarise students with the conceptual content and significance of 'borderline situations'. 'Borderline situations' constitute an emergent term, used primarily within the broad framework of Applied Ethics. It concerns issues of the latter, such as environmental ethics, as well as of Bioethics and Medical Ethics. Its thematic content is connected to the teaching subjects studied within the preceding modules. It thus examines aspects and specific facets of issues such as abortion, euthanasia, transplantations, genetic enhancement and the environmental crisis, adopting a different perspective. As regards the content of the module, it includes various aspects of Medical Ethics, such as the weight of the borderline moments experienced, both psychologically and existentially, by terminal patients and their loved ones. Issues such as the meaning and approach of death at the end of life will also be discussed, as well as the intense ethical dilemmas that arise when, for example, a father wishes to sell a vital organ not for financial gain but in order to pay the high medical bills for his child's treatment. The capacity of philosophy to provide adequate normative guidance in the contemporary world, given the intractable ethical dilemmas that arise, will also be extensively discussed, as will the perspective of patients with regard to pain, illness and dignity. Here too, the concept of the limit will be central to the approach. Where is the limit of the individual's endurance, beyond which the demand for euthanasia becomes compelling? What is the limit of human dignity in the face of pain and when can we say that an illness or the loss of fundamental capacities violates human dignity? Such, and other related, topics will be examined in the teaching of the module.