This course aims to help students investigate the ethical basis of health care policy and guides them to draw on both the Western and Chinese moral resources to address ethical and policy issues involved in health care systems, clinical decision making, and new biomedical technologies. Students will be stimulated to reflect critically on their own values and to formulate justifiable judgements of contemporary health care policy and bioethical issues. Specifically, the course will

(a) Explore and evaluate the basic values underpinning the organization and financing of health care allocation;

(b) Examine different models of clinical decision making and analyze their implications for upholding the values of professional accountability, patient interests and family integrity in doctor-patient-family encounters;  

(c) Investigate controversial ethical issues of new biotechnologies surrounding the beginning of life, sex selection, genetic engineering, stem cell research, and human cloning, and explore the moral justifications of different responses to these issues.