Assignment
Answer both of the following sets of questions. Make sure your answers are complete id accurate and that they are expressed in clear, grammatically correct sentences.
As on our other assignments, be sure to cite the pages in our texts (or give more complete ferences if you are using sources other than our texts) indicating where you got your formation. If you are directly quoting from a source, be sure to use quotation marks to Jicate that the wording is not your own.
1. In the article in Bioethics: An Anthology entitled "When Care Cannot Cure: Medical Problems in Seriously Ill Babies," Neil Campbell discusses when treatment of seriously ill newborns might be futile - when it might be ethically permissible to withdraw or withhold treatment from them. Under what circumstances in general does Campbell think treatment might be futile? What sorts of specific conditions does he cite? Do you agree with him about when treatment might be futile? Why or why not?
2. What is Therapeutic Coning? What is the connection between cloning of this sort and potential medical treatments involving stem cells? How exactly is the morality of Therapeutic Cloning connected to the question of whether embryos have a right to life? What does Peter Singer say, in his piece entitled "The Moral Status of the Embryo," is the Standard Argument for the claim that a human embryo does have a right to life? Why does he think this argument is ambiguous and therefore unconvincing? Why does he think attempts to rescue the argument are "speciesist"? What exactly, according to Singer, is Speciesism, and why does he think it is an untenable prejudice? What criterion of personhood does Singer think is correct? What implications does his criterion have for the treatment of anencephalics? For the treatment of animals other than humans? Do you think he is right? Why or why not?