To satisfy goal 12, I chose to take Biomedical Ethics, because it both interested me and was suggested for my major. I was really excited to take this class because I have always been interested in the topic of ethics. On the first day of class, our professor posted a discussion question that asked: “a trolley with five passengers is out of control and will crash unless you pull the lever to divert it onto a side track where it will come to rest without crashing. Unfortunately, there is a person on that side track who will be run over. Suppose you have just 2 options: (a) divert trolley: 5 are saved but 1 dies; (b) don’t divert trolley: 5 die but the 1 lives. Should you divert the trolley if the consequences will be that one is killed to save five?”

When it comes to ethics, I think that this is so fascinating. I went around and asked so many people the same question that day solely because I enjoyed hearing their answers and the reasonings behind them. Other topics of the class included stem cell theory, euthanasia, and cloning. This class gave me an interesting look into questions that doctors or medical professionals have to deal with on an everyday basis, and it was so exciting and different to be able to discuss both mine and my classmates’ opinions, on topics that one doesn’t really think about everyday.

Above is my final paper for the class. We were allowed to pick any topic that we had discussed in the class and find an existing argument about it, and either write in favor or against it. I chose to argue against an existing argument on “Death with Dignity”, or doctor assisted suicide.