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This spring 2016 course is co-taught by UNC moral philosopher Rebecca Walker and visiting Keohane Professor Susan Lederer (U Wisc, historian).

Course Description: Human and animal experimentation are frequently discussed separately—each arena is governed by its own regulatory system and scientists typically focus their research either on humans or on particular animal species. However, both historically and in modern biomedical research, animals have served to ‘model’ human diseases or processes with an eye to ‘translating’ interventions to research using human subjects. Indeed, the history of animal and human experimentation is intertwined in multiple ways and the philosophical and ethical issues raised by each overlap significantly. This is a course about both the history and ethics of animal and human subject experimentation. Issues to be addressed include: the history of the animal ‘model’ in science; contentions in sorting the balance of harms and benefits of research; changing conceptions of role obligations, virtues, and identity of the ‘good researcher’; the development of the ‘vulnerable’ research subject; and contentions over human and animal moral standing and rights.

This course will meet Tuesdays from 4:40-7:10 pm in Caldwell 208 (UNC)

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