Ireland
Summer, 2016: “Science, Technology, and Regulation” (PUBP 4440)
Georgia Tech’s Biomedical Engineering Galway Summer Program, held on the campus of the National University of Ireland – Galway (NUIG). The West of Ireland has become the European capital for the healthcare and medical device industries and the Galway area has a large number of international medical device companies (e.g. Medtronic, Boston Scientific, Cook Medical, Abbott, etc.). The course will cover regulatory history, markets and market failures, administrative law and procedures, public and expert inputs, and behavioral and social science-based approaches to regulation. This version of the regulatory policy course will focus on FDA and other agencies that regulate aspects of the biomedical arena, often using comparisons between US, Irish, and EU approaches.
New Zealand
Spring 2014, Spring 2011: “Science, Technology, and Human Values” (PHIL 3127)
Taught on the campus of the University of Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand, this course begins with an overview of major perspectives on individual ethics, focusing on a particular type of real-world decision that requires combining science, technology and values. Second, our knowledge of the present and the future is always uncertain, so how can we make wise and fair decisions? How do we balance potential benefits against potential risks when our knowledge is incomplete and tentative? An approach that is widely accepted in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand is “the precautionary principle.” Our approach to balancing uncertainties about scientific facts and moral values has broad implications. In the second part of this course we will focus on precaution, with applications to issues such as the risks of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in New Zealand. We conclude by examining our obligations to posterity using constitutional/legal, political, economic, and ethical perspectives. For example, is progress so certain that we really don’t need to worry about our posterity? Or are we—including future professional engineers, managers, scientists, etc.— responsible for ensuring that future generations enjoy the same quality of life we want (or better)?
Oxford, England
Summer 2012, Summer 2010, Summer 2009: “Government of the US” (POL 1101) and “Science, Technology, and Human Values” (PHIL 3127)