This story was initially published on Northeastern Global News.
Should doctors take over the care of an 18-year-old refusing care for anorexia nervosa? What does it mean to keep a sick baby experiencing pain alive on life support? What happens to chimpanzees after the government bans testing on them? Is it OK for the government to track a person’s DNA?
These questions and more were tackled by Northeastern University students over the last semester, leading up to the nationwide spring Bioethics Bowl hosted by the school.
“I imagine that what they’re doing with us can be relevant regardless of what they go into,” says Benjamin Yelle, an associate teaching professor of philosophy at Northeastern University. “What we’re doing has relevance to a whole sort of different careers that students might be going into.”
About six years ago, Yelle, alongside Katy Shorey, an associate teaching professor of philosophy, began recruiting for the Ethics Bowl program, a similar ethics competition that happens every fall.
