Paper and Presentation:
This project has two parts, a group presentation and an individual paper.

Part I.

  1. You and a colleague (or two, or three) will be randomly assigned a case and a date. Your group will act as the ethics consultation team for this case. Using the first five steps of the six-step approach, you will analyze the case prior to the assigned date.
    A. Gather relevant information
    B. Identify the type of ethical problem(s)
    C. Use Ethics theories or approaches to analyze the problem
    D. Explore the practical alternatives
    E. Complete the action (Make a recommendation)

  2. On the date your presentation is due, your group will present your recommendations to the class and moderate a class discussion, explaining how you came to your recommendation and encouraging the class to evaluate your recommendations. This should take approximately 20 minutes.
  3. At the end of your talk, hand in an outline summarizing your findings for the first 5 steps. Please list any references used in a reference list at the end, using APA format. In order to ensure that all group members participate, please indicate who worked on each step.

Part II.

    Each individual is required to hand in a paper a week later. The paper will be based on step 6 (evaluate the process and outcome). Identify and explain the original recommendation and the major comments, concerns and criticisms that were brought up by the class. In light of these, re-examine your group’s original recommendation. Do you, as an individual, still support it? Would you modify it in any way? Why or why not?

    A. The paper should be typed, double-spaced and roughly three-pages long (not including title and references). The paper should have a title page and a reference page, using APA format for citing your references within the text and listing them on the reference page. You should use one inch margins.

    B. Your paper is due, in class, the week after your presentation.

Sample Outline:
The case of CC the kitten
Abby Bates
Connor Ducat
Mario Lemeau

  1. Information
    a. Technical - Nuclear transfer technology
    b. Statistics - success rates, mutations,
    c. Risks
    ___ i. Animal
    ___ii. Owner
    ___iii. Lab
    d. Motivation - replace lost pets with clones, money
    e. Justice and Due Process - informed consent, overpopulation issues, grief
    f. Identity - Is genetic make-up the essence of who you are?
    .
  2. Problems -
    a. Is it ethical to clone cats?
    b. Is it ethical to advertise that a cloned animal will replace a lost pet?
    .
  3. Analysis - Utilitarian approach with some contractualism
  4. Alternatives
    a. Allow cat cloning - risks/benefits
    b. Make cat cloning impermissible - risks/benefits
    c. Allow cat cloning for research, not profit, until the process is deemed safer and more reliable. - risks/benefits
  5. Recommendation - The cloning of cats should be impermissible.
    a. Pain and distress caused to animals via the cloning process (and failures thereof).
    b. Cloning will not bring back a pet.
    c. Too expensive and the need is too trivial, especially in light of the current overpopulation of cats.

References:

Campbell, A., Cranley Glass, K., & Charland, L. C. (1998). Describing our “Humanness”: Can genetic science alter what it means to be “human”? Science and Engineering Ethics, 4(4), 413-426.

Caplan, A. L. (2002, February 28). Miss Cleo, meet CC the kitty clone: pet cloners, T.V. psychics both prey on human weakness. Bioethics on MSNBC, Retrieved May 15, 2005, from http://www.bioethics.net/articles.php?viewCat=2&articleId=33

Genetics Savings and Clone, Inc. (2005) Code of Bioethics. Retrieved May 15, 2005, from http://www.savingsandclone.com/ethics/code.html

Singer, P. (1993). Practical Ethics (3rd Ed.) New York: Cambridge University Press.

United States’ Department of Energy, Office of Science, Human Genome Project Information. (2004, July 9). Cloning Fact Sheet. Retrieved May 15, 2005, from http://www.ornl.gov/sci/techresources/Human_Genome/elsi/cloning.shtml

University of Utah, Genetic Science Learning Center. (2005). What are the risks of cloning? Retrieved May 15, 2005, from http://gslc.genetics.utah.edu/units/cloning/cloningrisks/