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Ethics in Sciences

Infectious diseases raise difficult ethical questions of their own. This is partly because the actions that might be needed to protect communities against infectious diseases, such as isolation or contact tracing or mandatory testing and vaccination, appear to conflict with basic human rights and liberties. On the other hand, research about communicable diseases and the development of biomedical or biotechnological protection tools, such as genome editing to enhance the human immune system, poses questions of human subject research ethics in unique ways. All these questions need to be discussed in different socio-political contexts. Global health requires adapted solutions that may differ between different countries and in different historical situations.

This interactive course provides a forum to discuss ethical questions of research and practice, which are most relevant in the fields of infection biology and public health. It tries to provide a solid foundation for critical thinking about ethical issues of the modern life sciences.

MA program Infection Biology / Summer term
4 Seminar days,  9:00 – 16:00

Teaching faculty:
Prof. Dr. phil. Christoph Rehmann-Sutter

Contents of teaching:

  • Societal and ethical implications of research in biomedical sciences and technologies, in particular in infection biology and public health
  • Basics of bioethics
  • Basics of philosophy and sociology of science
  • Ethics of human subjects research and animal experiments

Please see Moodle for full program details.

Module PS4611
(part of Module PS4611-KP07 Ethics in Sciences / Scientific Writing)