Course syllabus

Course PM

BBT010 Ethics in biotechnology lp1 HT19 (7.5 hp)

The course is offered by the department of Biology and Biological Engineering in collaboration with the department of Technology Management and Economics

The course PM can be downloaded here.

Teachers and examiners:

Calle:  Carl Johan Franzén  (BIO)          franzen@chalmers.se          772 3808

Karl:    Karl de Fine Licht  (TME)            karl.definelicht@chalmers.se

Guest lecturers:

Henrik Aronsson henrik.aronsson@bioenv.gu.se

Yvonne Nygård yvonne.nygard@chalmers.se

Johanna Andersson johanna.andersson2@chalmers.se

 

Course purpose

Aim

Biotechnology has enormous potential for improving human health and providing sustainable solutions for providing nutrition, energy and chemicals to society. At the same time, many of these technologies interact with basic processes of life, may affect the personal integrity of individuals, and may have unclear effects on the environment. A problem is that technological innovation and its effects are hard to predict in detail, so decisions will have to be made under uncertainty.

The course aims to develop the students' understanding of ethical aspects that appear when biotechnologies are developed and applied. Students learn a systematic and nuanced way to reason around and to reach well-founded answers to questions regarding how society and individuals should act during the development and application of different technologies. The main emphasis is on the analysis of a number of cases by, among others, theories in normative ethics. Additionally, the course aims at making students aware of laws and rules that regulate biotechnical research and development activities.

 

Course-specific prerequisites

Biochemistry, cell and molecular biology, and microbiology corresponding to a bachelor's degree in biotechnology, bioengineering, or similar.

 

Organisation and teaching modes

The course is organized in the form of lectures, seminars and group work.

Lectures are not compulsory but students are expected to be present.

Seminars and group work on Wednesday afternoons are compulsory. Most of the practical learning is expected to take place during the seminars, when students discuss specific cases in study groups and develop their analysis and argumentation skills. Study groups will be assigned by the teachers. If a compulsory seminar is missed, students will be given an individual assignment on the same topic.

 

Schedule

TimeEdit

Detailed course schedule

Wk	Day	Date	Time	Room	What	Title / Topic	Teacher
1	Wed	Sep 4	10:00-11:45	KA	Lecture 1	Course introduction, contents and design. Ethical thinking and applied ethics with examples. Argument analysis	Calle Karl
	Wed	Sep 4	13:15-17:00	SB-M022	Seminar 1	Ethical thinking and applied ethics with examples. Seminar on cases relevant to biotechnology	Karl / Calle
2	Mon	Sep 9	10:00-11:45	FB	Lecture 2	Ethical aspects of GMO crops	Karl
	Wed	Sep 11	10:00-11:45	KA	Lecture 3	Ethical aspects of genetic screening and diagnostics	Karl
	Wed	Sep 11	13:15-17:00	SB-M022	Seminar 2	Seminar. Case studies on GMO crops, genetic screening and diagnostics, incl stakeholder analysis and argument analysis. Intro to Assignment 1.	Karl / Calle
3	Mon	Sep 16	10.00-11:45	FB	Lecture 4	Technology: Plant Molecular Breeding and Biotechnology	Henrik Aronsson (GU)
	Wed	Sep 18	10:00-11:45	KA	Lecture 5	Theory: Normative ethics with examples.	Karl
	Wed	Sep 18	13:15-17:00	SB-M022	Seminar 3	Work on Assignment 1.	Karl / Calle
	Wed	Sep 18	23:59		Deadline	Hand-in of Assignment 1: Biotechnological case
	Fri	Sep 20	23:59		Deadline	Hand-in of peer review reports, Assignment 1.
4	Mon	Sep 23	10:00-11:45	FB	Lecture 6	Ethics of UN Sustainable Development Goals	Ulrika Palme (ESA, Chalmers)
	Wed	Sep 25	10:00-11:45	KA	Lecture 7	Theory: Ethics and risk	Karl
	Wed	Sep 25	13:15-17:00	SB-M022	Seminar 4	Follow-up on Assignment 1, incl argumentation analysis, peer reviews, and feed-back on students’ texts.	Karl
5	Mon	Sep 30	10:00-11:45	FB	Lecture 8	Technology: CRISPR-Cas9, technology and applications	Yvonne Nygård (IndBio)
	Wed	Oct 2	10:00-11:45	KA	Lecture 9	Ethical leadership: Conflict handling. Coaching, drivers, goal setting and “lethal leadership”.	Calle
	Wed	Oct 2	13:15-17:00	SB-M022	Seminar 5	Chalmers Committee on Ethics and Research Misconduct. Main point: Ethical leadership: Master-suppression techniques and how to deal with them. Intro to Assignment 2	Johanna Andersson (Chalmers) Calle
6	Mon	Oct 7	10:00-11:45	FB	Lecture 10	Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis	Matty Janssen (ESA, Chalmers)
	Wed	Oct 9	10:00-11:45	KA	Lecture 11	Theory of science. Science vs Pseudoscience. Popper, Häggström.	Calle
	Wed	Oct 9	13:15-17:00	SB-M022	Seminar 6	Multi-criteria decision analysis, UN SDG, competition for resources Work on Assignment 2	Matty Janssen (ESA, Chalmers); Calle
7	Mon	Oct 14	10:00-11:45	FB	Lecture 12	Research ethics. Academic conduct and misconduct	Calle
	Wed	Oct 16	10:00-11:45	KA	Lecture 13	Ethical aspects of CRISPR-Cas	Karl
	Wed	Oct 16	13:15-17:00	SB-M022	Seminar 7	Presentation by the Chalmers iGEM team 2018. Etichs in students’ Research Project Proposals. CRISPR-Cas9, applications and implications	Karl / Calle
	Wed	Oct 16	23:59		Deadline	Hand-in of Assignment 2. Research ethics and potential academic misconduct cases.	Student
	Fri	Oct 16	23:59		Deadline	Hand-in of peer review reports, Assignment 2.	Student
8	Mon	Oct 21	10:00-11:45	FB	Lecture 14	EU and Swedish regulations on laboratory work with GM microorganisms and plants, animals, humans.	Calle
	Wed	Oct 23	10:00-11:45	KA	Lecture 15	Engineer’s (and other) Code of Honour	Calle
	Wed	Oct 23	13:15-17:00	SB-M022	Seminar 8	Follow-up on Assignment 2, incl argumentation analysis, peer reviews, and feed-back on students’ texts. Introduction and hand-out of final exam cases. Q&A, Wrap-up of course.	Karl / Calle
	Fri	Nov 1	17:00		Deadline	Hand-in Final exam	Student

Course literature

The course literature consists of handouts, on-line videos, scientific articles and book chapters referred to during the course. Links and documents will be posted in a "Module" on the course homepage.

To avoid illegal copying, students must download required articles via the E-journals and E-books available at the Chalmers library homepage: http://www.lib.chalmers.se/.

 

Course design

The course is organized in the form of lectures, seminars and group work.

Lectures are not compulsory but students are expected to be present.

Seminars and group work on Wednesday afternoons are compulsory. Most of the practical learning is expected to take place during the seminars, when students discuss specific cases in study groups and develop their analysis and argumentation skills. Study groups will be assigned by the teachers. If a compulsory seminar is missed, students will be given an individual assignment on the same topic.

 

Changes made since the last occasion

• Different order of lectures and seminars.
• Updated content of some lectures and seminars.
• The “Engineer’s (and other) Code of Honour” lecture has been revised and ends the course, with active student involvement
• Organization regarding feedback on assignments has chanded. The deadline for the submission of peer reviews on initial assignments is already on Friday the same week as the assignment deadline. The motivation is that we want to enable more feedback from teachers on the assignments.
• We will discuss the ethical dimensions of some student project reports from another course (the Research Project Proposal in KBT090 Industrial biotechnology) in a seminar.
• List of literature, web resources and other sources of information has been updated.
• Moved course homepage from PingPong to Canvas learning platform.

 

Learning objectives and syllabus

After completion of this course, the student should be able to:

• identify and critically discuss ethical issues that occur in biotechnology, orally and in writing in English;
• adequately apply basic moral philosophical theories and concepts on existing ethical problems;
• assess the validity and relevance of arguments that are used in the debate on ethics and biotechnology, argue for different standpoints and take position in a well-founded and transparent way;
• account for generally accepted and generic policies and guidelines for research ethics and professional ethics;
• in a nuanced way reflect on her/his professional role from an ethical perspective;
• account for laws, statutes and established routines that regulate experimental and industrial use of biological samples, animals and humans.

Study plan

 

Examination

Students must submit two assignments, consisting of ethical analyses in the form of essays on a specific biotechnological topic, and on a topic within the scope of the professional role in research and engineering. These essays should be written by groups of four to six students, assigned by the teachers. Students will be provided with feed-back by the teachers on these texts and the ethical analyses therein.

For each assignment, each student is also required to submit an individual peer review of a text written by another group. Detailed instructions and an evaluation form will be given with the assignments. 

Grading is based on a final take home exam, consisting of two parts. The take-home exam must be written individually. The first part is an essay on an ethical problem relevant to a given topic within biotechnology. The second part is a multiple choice test on rules, regulations and academic (mis-)conduct.

Students are allowed to use all sources of information when writing the essay and doing the multiple choice test, except discussing the exam with fellow students and other people. Plagiarism is strictly forbidden; all essays will be assessed for plagiarism. All sources of information used in the essay must be adequately referred to.

To pass the course, students must answer at least 75% of the multiple choice questions correctly, and provide an adequate essay. Differentiation between grades 3, 4 and 5 will be done based purely on the essay.

Assessment criteria for the essay and expected style and format will be explained during the course.

The take home exam will be handed out on Wednesday, October 23, and must be submitted by 17.00 on Friday, November 1.