Syllabus

Course Meeting Times

Lectures: 1 session / week, 2 hours / session

Course Objectives

This course provides a space for medical students and MD/PhD students, as well as HASTS (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology, and Society) PhD students to discuss social and ethical issues in the biosciences and biotechnologies as they are being developed. Discussions are with course faculty and with leading figures in developing technologies such as George Daley or George Church in stem cell or genomics research, Bruce Walker or Pardis Sabeti in setting up laboratories in Africa, Paul Farmer and Partners in Health colleagues in building local support systems and first world quality care in Haiti, Peru, and Rwanda, and Amy Farber in building patient-centered therapeutic-outcome research for critical but "orphan" diseases. Goals include stimulating students to think about applying their learning in Boston to countries around the world, including using the experiences they have had in their home countries or research experience abroad. Goals also include a mix of patient-doctor care perspectives from medical anthropology, and moving upstream in the research chain to questions of how to move discoveries from basic research through the pipelines into clinical and bedside care.

Course Text

There is no textbook for this course. All required and optional readings are listed on the Readings and Lectures page. Suggested web resources are posted on the Related Resources page.

Assignments

Course assignments include group presentations in class, and a final paper on a topic covered in class, on research experience abroad, or on solutions to medical issues in resource-poor settings.

Grading

HST students are graded on a Pass/Fail basis. Graduate Students in other programs are graded on class participation and final papers.

Calendar