Bio Ethics

I had my first class for this quarter yesterday. I have mixed feelings about the class, but I think it should turn out okay. I do have a lot of concerns though. The class in question is called bio ethics, which basically touch ethical topics in regards to medical issues such as questions about abortion and euthanasia.

First of all, my professor is a lawyer. There is understandable reasoning behind the decision of having a lawyer teach the class. The most reasonable reason is that many issues that arise within bio ethics involve legal issues. For example, someone may want to keep his wife on life support even though his wife has a document stating that she wishes the opposite. To do so, he would have to convince a judge that his wife was under psychological duress or similar when signing that document.

My professor has a lot of experience in the field and specifies within medical legal issues. She would, for example, represent a certain hospital in the case that hospital gets sued by someone. Therefore, I respect my professor greatly and I am sure that she can bring very interesting perspectives into the class.

One of my concerns is, however, the fact that she is a lawyer. Lawyers tend to surround themselves with rules and regulations. I took one ethics class before at Berkeley College and that professor was very liberal in terms of thought. I feel that this quarter will be different.

For example, my current professor said that ethical theories must be backed up by logic. I understand this. However, there are sometimes when things cannot be explained by using logic and it just feels wrong. We talked a lot about this in my previous ethics class and that there is almost always no right or wrong answer.

Another thing that I feel extremely dissatisfied about is that many students seem to very uninterested in the class. Everyone presented themselves to the class yesterday and 90% of students probably took the class because it fit their schedule or because it was a requirement.

In addition, the professor treats students as if it was their first quarter. This is something that I really dislike. The professor advanced very slowly and explained basic rules of conduct like not using the cell phone during class. This is a 400 level course and if students do not know how to behave, prepare, or study for the class, they have themselves to blame.

I hope that we will be able to progress faster in the future. My opinion is that the class could have been finished in thirty minutes instead of two hours if the professor had only discussed the relevant material, and also if more students had paid attention in class. I simply do not want to waste my time.