Students use a Bioethics Organizer worksheet (in the Bioethical Decision-Making Model PDF at right) to consider a bioethical dilemma from the perspective of a stakeholder.

Use the Decision-Making Model with either the Bioethics Scenario: Addiction Vaccine (print) or ethical dilemmas you and your class generate using the Challenges and Issues in Addiction webpage (online) in The New Science of Addiction: Genetics and the Brain module.

Bioethical Decision-Making Model

Bioethics Scenario: Addiction Vaccine (optional)

If your students are using the Bioethics Scenario: Addiction Vaccine, they should know that the reward pathway exists in the brain and that drugs affect it. If they are using the Challenges and Issues page, no prior knowledge is needed.

The Challenges and Issues in Addiction webpage discusses bioethical dilemmas about these issues:

. Treating drug addiction with drugs
. Medical and cultural use of illicit drugs
. Mental illness and drug abuse
. The Ritalin and cocaine connection
. Genetic profiles for addiction

Either have your students visit the page and choose their favorite bioethical issue or project it and decide on an issue as a class. Have them fill out the Bioethics Organizer with their chosen dilemma.

Class Time: 50 - 80 minutes depending    on how the activity is structured
Prep Time: 15 minutes

Should society treat drug addicts with mental illness differently than other drug addicts?

You can use the Seeds for Thought on the Challenges and Issues in Addiction webpage as ready-made bioethical dilemmas to use for this activity.

The Bioethics Organizer in the Bioethical Decision-Making Model PDF can be used with any case study, scenario or bioethical dilemma. Download the PDF.

The optional Bioethical Scenario: Addiction Vaccine involves a vaccine used to treat addiction. Use with the Bioethical Decision-Making Model to consider this dilemma. Download the PDF.