PHLB09H3 Biomedical Ethics

How PHLB09H3 is assessed

All five weights come from the Fall 2026 syllabus and total 100%. Both ethics consultation simulations happen in lecture, so in-person attendance on both dates is required; a missed simulation with a legitimate, documented reason is handled by the head TA, who arranges one further sitting using a different case. Your TA schedules the oral exam during the exam period.

Current PHLB09H3 dates

Dates are as published in the Fall 2026 course syllabus. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.

What PHLB09H3 covers

Eleven chapters follow the weekly schedule from arguments and principles through truth telling, consent, justice, public health, assisted death, abortion, research, screening and enhancement.

The syllabus frames good medicine as an ethical challenge as much as a scientific one, because a diagnosis and a treatment plan still leave open what should happen. What does the patient want, what is in their interest, and how should their needs be balanced against the needs of others? There is no textbook.

You read the assigned articles each week, attend lectures, and then think hard about the arguments before you try to communicate them.

Three kinds of skill

The learning objectives name knowledge of ethical theory and of the ethical problems that come up in medicine and research, the ability to criticise and defend other people's ideas while proposing your own, and communication: summarising difficult arguments clearly and building coherent positions with reasonable support.

Every graded task tests some mix of the three, and each is done alone, live and without aids.

How the assessments differ

The online quiz checks recall and comprehension through multiple-choice and short-answer questions. The two ethics consultation simulations hand you an unseen case at the start of lecture and give you one hour to write a structured note by hand.

The oral exam is a conversation with your TA about two of five topics you receive in advance, and it rewards preparation, accuracy, depth and clarity under follow-up questions. Tutorial participation is graded on the quality of informed, respectful contributions rather than the amount of talking.

How to use this guide

Each chapter follows one week of the schedule.

It reconstructs the assigned authors' arguments in your own working vocabulary, separates what an author claims from what a critic would say, and closes with practice that mirrors either the consultation note or the oral discussion. The five oral exam topics receive drill-style chapters so that you can rehearse a one-minute opening and then answer the follow-up questions a TA is likely to ask.

Worked example · free

Draft a confidentiality consultation note

Key terms

Therapeutic Privilege

Therapeutic privilege is a narrow exception to the rules of informed consent that lets a physician withhold information only when disclosure itself would pose a serious psychological threat to the patient.

Informed Consent

Informed consent is a patient's authorisation of a treatment or research procedure given with adequate understanding of its material risks and benefits.

Circle of Care

The circle of care is the group of providers involved in a patient's treatment with whom identifiable health information may be shared to benefit that patient.

Substitute Decision-Maker

A substitute decision-maker is the person who makes health decisions for a patient who has lost capacity, guided by that patient's prior wishes or values.

Advance Directive

An advance directive is an instruction written while competent that states how a person wants to be treated if they later lose decision-making capacity.

Voluntary Active Euthanasia

Voluntary active euthanasia is the intentional ending of a patient's life by a physician at the patient's own request.

Future Like Ours

A future like ours is the set of experiences, activities and projects a being would otherwise have had, which Marquis treats as what killing takes away.

Minimally Decent Samaritan

A Minimally Decent Samaritan is Thomson's term for someone who gives the modest help morality requires, short of large personal sacrifice.

Coercive Paternalism

Coercive paternalism is the use of legal force to stop people making choices that would set back their own goals, defended by Conly as a response to cognitive bias.

Expected Harm

Expected harm is the size of a possible harm weighted by how likely it is, the quantity Savulescu says ethics committees must judge to be reasonable.

Expressive Objection

The expressive objection is the claim that screening for disability sends a hurtful message to people who already live with that disability.

Positional Good

A positional good is a good whose value to its holder depends on other people not having it, such as relative height.

Impact Bias

Impact bias is the tendency to overestimate how strongly and how long a future event will change one's well-being.

Duty of Confidentiality

The duty of confidentiality is a physician's obligation to keep identifiable patient information private unless the patient consents or the law requires disclosure.

PHLB09H3 FAQ

Questions students ask in each PHLB09H3 chapter

What is the difference between a valid and a sound argument?

A valid argument has a structure that guarantees its conclusion if its premises are true, even when those premises are false. A sound argument is valid and also has true premises. In bioethics most disputes concern soundness: people agree that a conclusion follows from certain premises, but disagree about whether a premise such as a claim about autonomy or harm is actually true. Chapter 01 · Arguments and the Principles of Bioethics

What is therapeutic privilege?

It is a narrow exception to ordinary informed consent requirements. On the standard view Wynia reports, a physician may withhold information about diagnosis or treatment only when disclosing it would pose a psychological threat so serious that it is medically contraindicated. It is not a way to secure agreement to treatment or to avoid giving bad news. Chapter 02 · Truth Telling, Therapeutic Privilege and Privacy

What are the components of autonomous choice in Blumenthal-Barby's account?

She uses Faden and Beauchamp's three components of formal autonomy: understanding the relevant information, acting intentionally according to a plan, and acting free of controlling or alienating influences. She adds effective autonomy, which asks whether a person's actual choices match their authentic preferences. Each component comes in degrees, so what counts as enough depends on the context. Chapter 03 · Informed Consent, Biases and Heuristics

What does the CMA Code say about patients who cannot decide for themselves?

It asks physicians to respect the values and intentions a patient expressed while capable, through advance care planning or a substitute decision-maker. Where those intentions are unknown, physicians act on the patient's discernible values, and failing those, on the patient's best interests. It also asks physicians to support cognitively impaired patients' participation in their own care where possible. Chapter 04 · Advance Directives and Dementia

Does Allhoff think alcoholics should be deprioritised for liver transplants?

Not on medical grounds. Abstinent patients are no riskier as a class, and individual comorbidities rather than alcoholism determine expected benefit. Morally, he says the answer depends on whether alcoholics are responsible for drinking: if alcoholism is a disease, deprioritisation is unjustified, and if it is not, a blame-based ranking might be legitimate. Chapter 05 · Justice, Organ Payment and Transplant Priority

Why does Conly reject nudges?

She argues that nudges are manipulative, because they work by exploiting bias rather than engaging reason, so they do not satisfy the liberal ideal either. They are also less effective, since people with strong but irrational motivations simply take the option the nudge left open. She concludes that coercion is no less respectful than manipulation and works better. Chapter 06 · Public Health, Paternalism and Autonomy

What does Keown mean by saying autonomy needs a moral framework?

He argues that autonomy is valuable because, through our choices, we promote our own and others' flourishing. A choice therefore earns respect only when it is consistent with that flourishing and with human dignity. A choice to murder is autonomous but deserves no respect, and he holds that a choice to kill oneself, or to have oneself killed, is similar. Chapter 07 · Physician-Assisted Death

What does the violinist case show?

It shows that the standard argument against abortion is faulty. In the case, every premise of that argument applies: the violinist is a person with a right to life, and you have rights over your body. Yet it seems outrageous to say you may never unplug him. So a right to life does not by itself give anyone a right to use another person's body. Chapter 08 · Abortion: Thomson and Marquis

Why does Savulescu think the Gelsinger trial enrolled the wrong people?

The committee preferred consenting adults with the mild form over newborns with the lethal form, who could not consent. Savulescu argues that the newborns, already dying, would lose almost nothing if the trial killed them, while a healthy young adult would lose decades of life. Their expected harm was therefore far lower, and choosing more harm over less because of consent is irrational. Chapter 09 · Research Ethics and Clinical Trials

What is the difference between the welfare and mere-difference models of disability?

On the welfare model, a disability is in itself bad for the person who has it, lowering their well-being other things equal. On the mere-difference model, a disability makes a person different without, in itself, making them worse off. McMahan's paper discusses disabled writers, such as Harriet McBryde Johnson, who reject the assumption that disabled people are worse off. Chapter 10 · Genetic Screening and Disability

Why do Bostrom and Roache doubt the therapy and enhancement distinction?

They argue that normal health is an arbitrary point on a bell curve, that capacities change across a lifetime, that standard medicine already includes preventive and cosmetic care, and that some interventions such as vaccination are hard to classify. Even if the distinction could be drawn cleanly, a separate argument would be needed to show it matters morally. Chapter 11 · Human Enhancement

How to study for the exam

Work week by week and read before each lecture, as the syllabus recommends. For every reading, write a two-sentence summary of the thesis, then list the argument's premises and the strongest objection the author answers. Build a one-page sheet for each of the five oral exam topics that you can talk through in about a minute, then practise follow-up questions aloud with a classmate or by recording yourself and listening back.

For the consultation simulations, time yourself writing the four-part note on cases you invent or ask an AI tool to generate, and check that your recommendation actually answers the question you posed. Treat any AI output as a sparring partner and verify claims against the readings.

Before each assessment, review where two authors disagree and how each would answer the other, because both the oral exam and the simulations reward engaging the opposing view.