Short Course in Ethics and Genomic Analysis

Two short courses are being offered to doctoral, post-doctoral, and professional persons in the fields of ethics and genetics. The purpose is first to familiarize the ethicists with the fundamentals of genetics, and the geneticists with the fundamentals of ethics. The principal ethical and social issues raised by advances in molecular genetics will then be reviewed and analyzed. The course is designed to meet the following specific goals: 1) to introduce genetic scientists to methods and issues in bioethics relevant to the genome project and to introduce humanities scholars to the scientific and clinical features of the genome project; 2) to provide a forum in which both scientists and scholars can begin to communicate with each other about the ethical and social issues relevant to the genome project; 3) to describe and discuss certain major ethical, social, and legal implications of the genome project in terms of the actual and possible scientific capacities and in terms of the analytic techniques of moral philosophy; and 4) to provide participants with scholarly methods and bibliographical techniques that will allow them to continue study of these issues as they return to their respective activities.