Bioethics Reading and Discussion Group

The Bioethics Reading and Discussion Group for physicians and physicians-in-training (pre-medical and medical students, residents, and fellows) is aimed at grounding physicians in a sound philosophy of medicine, while thoughtfully engaging contemporary issues in biomedical ethics.  We begin from the conviction that medicine is aimed at the health and healing of patients, and therefore medicine has its own internal morality proper to it and shaped by these ends.  Any interventions that undermine or contradict the aims of health and healing—such as the intentional killing of patients—have no proper place in the practice of medicine.  By reason of who we are and what we do, we believe physicians should be held, and should hold ourselves, to a higher professional ethic and to robust standards of excellence.

Through assigned readings and monthly discussions via Zoom meetings, this group will explore the moral foundations of medicine and contemporary bioethical issues.  Readings are drawn from the works of key thinkers in philosophy and modern bioethics, such as Leon Kass, Paul Ramsey, Hans Jonas, Edmund Pellegrino, Alasdair MacIntyre, C.S. Lewis, and Gilbert Meilaender.  While we begin from shared Hippocratic principles and commitments to medicine as a healing enterprise, we encourage vigorous debate and discussion regarding the application of these principles to contemporary challenges and problems in medicine, medical research, and biotechnology.  As a community of shared practice, we also encourage one another in navigating the challenges of medical training and medical practice in today’s complex environments.  As Aristotle says in the Nicomachean Ethics, “Our discussion does not aim at abstract study: our purpose is not to know what virtue is, but to become virtuous.”

This group meets on Second Tuesdays & Fourth Thursdays, 4:00 p.m. Pacific and is led by Professor Aaron Kheriaty, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, UCI School of Medicine and Director, Medical Ethics Program, UCI Health.