Bioethics was born of the problem of "lifeboat ethics," the situation in which resource limits insist some must die that at least some others might live. The idea of scarcity as a natural condition is fundamental to current economic theory and to the ethics that has driven bioethics since the 1960s. In this lecture, we consider this idea and its medical application in law and history and medicine. It begins with the problems of the lifeboat and the great index case of US v Holmes in 1842. The relation of assumptions of scarcity to medicine and in ethics are critiqued through a reinvestigation of that case. Those lessons are then applied, in the end, to the general problems which are assumed to be resource-defined in medical ethics today as an example.
The Failure of ”Lifeboat Ethics” and of Scarcity as a Natural Condition
Tom Koch, Geography, UBC; Bioethicist on the Canadian Down Syndrome Society Resource Council
Coach House, Green College, UBC
February 07 5:00 pm - 6:30 pm
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Mark Vessey has been invited to the University of Bristol to give the Blackwell-Bristol Lectures 2013 at the Institute of Greece, Rome and the Classical Tradition.
Dame Anne Salmond will give three talks on how different cultures define and communicate ways of being.
May 07, 2013The Global Civic Policy Society presents a Public Salon on Wednesday, June 5 from 7:30-9pm at the Vancouver Playhouse. A diverse range of speakers from very different walks of life will each spend 7 minutes speaking about something they are passionate about.- May 01, 2013Applicant Paul Yachnin (McGill University) and fifteen co-applicants including Green College Principal Mark Vessey received funding to begin their multi-disciplinary project entitled "Forms of conversion: religion, culture, and cognitive ecologies in early modern Europe and its worlds."
- April 26, 2013Green College resident Brittany Welsh describes how the daunting task of mounting four shows of Shakespeare's The Tempest helped and inspired her and her colleagues in ways she hadn't envisioned when she started down the Bard's path five months earlier.
January 04, 2013Seven Green College students volunteered at Lord Strathcona Elementary School in East Vancouver as part of UBC’s Community Learning Initiative TREK program, matching groups UBC students with elementary schools in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood, and helping with reading and writing lessons and tutoring students on a one-on-one basis.
