MCD BIO 60
Biomedical Ethics
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Examination of importance of ethics in research and exploration of how and why bioethics is relevant to reproductive screening, policy formation, public regulation, and law. Provides foundation in traditional ethics, consideration of subcategories of bioethics, neuroethics, and eugenics, and how to apply ethics to contemporary issues in research and technology. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 5.0
Units: 5.0
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Most Helpful Review
I took this course in Fall 2013, my first quarter in UCLA. This is the hardest course I've ever taken, although not the one I got the worst grade. The exams and the paper are hard, since you can't just memorize and you have to go far beyond what you've been taught and sometimes challenge your cherished beliefs. This course really helped a lot for critical thinking and greatly influenced my style of argument. However, there's one thing that I don't really like about the professor, is that she's a bit arrogant and makes fun of people who get wrong.
I took this course in Fall 2013, my first quarter in UCLA. This is the hardest course I've ever taken, although not the one I got the worst grade. The exams and the paper are hard, since you can't just memorize and you have to go far beyond what you've been taught and sometimes challenge your cherished beliefs. This course really helped a lot for critical thinking and greatly influenced my style of argument. However, there's one thing that I don't really like about the professor, is that she's a bit arrogant and makes fun of people who get wrong.
Most Helpful Review
Spring 2019 - People say Dr. Gallagher is a bit on the boring/dry side which is fair but she's also very clear and able to emphasize what she wants you to know. It's more that she can be somewhat repetitive and can have very long trains of thought, but nevertheless many of the topics should be at least decently interesting to the average person. Among her strengths are that her lectures are extremely organized and, again, she emphasizes the main points that she wants you to know in lecture. This is absolutely critical. If you can force yourself to sustain that attention in class, you can save yourself hours of reading outside of class. What I ended up doing, actually, was to focus my energy on getting everything I could from her lectures and THEN doing the readings AFTER lecture instead of before lecture as suggested because then the readings were a breeze and I could ensure that I was making the connections and reviewing the points she wanted me to know. The class grading is structured as follows: Weekly quizzes: 10% - drop lowest 2 out of 9 weeks Section attendance / participation: 15% - note that both actually count Midterm 1: 20% Midterm 2 :20% Final exam: 35% Quizzes were simple, 2 questions long and were there just to check that you did the bare minimum. People essentially almost always got 100%. For attendance/participation, she has a clustered grading scheme where absences are punitive. In other words, it's set up as "0 or 1 absences" "2 absences" and so on as well as outstanding vs excellent vs good vs satisfactory vs unsatisfactory participation. It's somewhat convoluted and she sends an email at the end about it but essentially 1 unexcused absence will not harm you in any way whatsoever, but 2 unexcused absences with "excellent" (outstanding not allowed for 2 unexcused absences) participation automatically sets you back to an A- grade for participation. Midterm exams were split into Part 1 and Part 2 sections, with Part 1 being multiple choice/short answer. I felt like these were quite straightforward and they were pretty lenient on grading. Part 2 was an essay with a prompt that they gave you beforehand. Going to office hours / review session is very helpful in getting a sense of the direction you want to take - otherwise it's easy to get off track and write an essay that may not meet what they're looking for or falls into some major philosophy traps. Final exam has an additional Part 3 essay section where you aren't given the prompt beforehand and you must take an ethical stance and defend it on the fly for a case that she sets up for you. I personally felt that the final's Part 1 multiple choice was trickier and I regretted not reading the slides in more depth, something I didn't expect to have to do given that I had already put in a significant amount of effort into knowing each author's arguments quite well and her main points. However, I also ended up doing much better on the final than I had anticipated despite my concerns, and so did others. Averages for the exams were as follows: Midterm 1: nearly 87 Midterm 2: 88 Final: 89 (I asked her, as she didn't send a follow-up email as she did for the midterms) All in all, Dr. Gallagher is a super fair professor and if you ever need help, she will be very patient in ensuring that you have your questions properly answered. This is definitely a decent class to take to fulfill your philosophy/linguistics GE and I also loved having Maddy as my TA :).
Spring 2019 - People say Dr. Gallagher is a bit on the boring/dry side which is fair but she's also very clear and able to emphasize what she wants you to know. It's more that she can be somewhat repetitive and can have very long trains of thought, but nevertheless many of the topics should be at least decently interesting to the average person. Among her strengths are that her lectures are extremely organized and, again, she emphasizes the main points that she wants you to know in lecture. This is absolutely critical. If you can force yourself to sustain that attention in class, you can save yourself hours of reading outside of class. What I ended up doing, actually, was to focus my energy on getting everything I could from her lectures and THEN doing the readings AFTER lecture instead of before lecture as suggested because then the readings were a breeze and I could ensure that I was making the connections and reviewing the points she wanted me to know. The class grading is structured as follows: Weekly quizzes: 10% - drop lowest 2 out of 9 weeks Section attendance / participation: 15% - note that both actually count Midterm 1: 20% Midterm 2 :20% Final exam: 35% Quizzes were simple, 2 questions long and were there just to check that you did the bare minimum. People essentially almost always got 100%. For attendance/participation, she has a clustered grading scheme where absences are punitive. In other words, it's set up as "0 or 1 absences" "2 absences" and so on as well as outstanding vs excellent vs good vs satisfactory vs unsatisfactory participation. It's somewhat convoluted and she sends an email at the end about it but essentially 1 unexcused absence will not harm you in any way whatsoever, but 2 unexcused absences with "excellent" (outstanding not allowed for 2 unexcused absences) participation automatically sets you back to an A- grade for participation. Midterm exams were split into Part 1 and Part 2 sections, with Part 1 being multiple choice/short answer. I felt like these were quite straightforward and they were pretty lenient on grading. Part 2 was an essay with a prompt that they gave you beforehand. Going to office hours / review session is very helpful in getting a sense of the direction you want to take - otherwise it's easy to get off track and write an essay that may not meet what they're looking for or falls into some major philosophy traps. Final exam has an additional Part 3 essay section where you aren't given the prompt beforehand and you must take an ethical stance and defend it on the fly for a case that she sets up for you. I personally felt that the final's Part 1 multiple choice was trickier and I regretted not reading the slides in more depth, something I didn't expect to have to do given that I had already put in a significant amount of effort into knowing each author's arguments quite well and her main points. However, I also ended up doing much better on the final than I had anticipated despite my concerns, and so did others. Averages for the exams were as follows: Midterm 1: nearly 87 Midterm 2: 88 Final: 89 (I asked her, as she didn't send a follow-up email as she did for the midterms) All in all, Dr. Gallagher is a super fair professor and if you ever need help, she will be very patient in ensuring that you have your questions properly answered. This is definitely a decent class to take to fulfill your philosophy/linguistics GE and I also loved having Maddy as my TA :).
Most Helpful Review
Summer 2021 - The professor is very wholesome, kind, and caring about her students. She is extremely smart and knowledgable about bioethics. As long as you read, the quizzes are easy. There is one 6-8 page research paper that is worth thirty percent of your final grade, three quizzes worth thirty percent, participation points, and homework points. Le Goff is an excellent professor!
Summer 2021 - The professor is very wholesome, kind, and caring about her students. She is extremely smart and knowledgable about bioethics. As long as you read, the quizzes are easy. There is one 6-8 page research paper that is worth thirty percent of your final grade, three quizzes worth thirty percent, participation points, and homework points. Le Goff is an excellent professor!
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She posted all of her lectures online, so there is no real need to actually go to class. She just reads off her slides the entire time anyway. However, she does add some clarifying tidbits that are not on her lecture slides, and also shows some videos near the end of the quarter. The readings in the course reader are not really that necessary either, as she goes over the meanings of the texts in class (and in plain English!). Discussions are mandatory and you are graded on attendance, but that was okay because it usually ended up being a very interesting debate. There are short essays (200-500 words) assigned throughout the quarter, but those are easy as well. The midterm and the final were straightforward (multiple choice and short essays). Overall, a very easy class (I got an A). I had never gone to her office hours, but I did email her a few times and she is very nice and quick at answering questions.
She posted all of her lectures online, so there is no real need to actually go to class. She just reads off her slides the entire time anyway. However, she does add some clarifying tidbits that are not on her lecture slides, and also shows some videos near the end of the quarter. The readings in the course reader are not really that necessary either, as she goes over the meanings of the texts in class (and in plain English!). Discussions are mandatory and you are graded on attendance, but that was okay because it usually ended up being a very interesting debate. There are short essays (200-500 words) assigned throughout the quarter, but those are easy as well. The midterm and the final were straightforward (multiple choice and short essays). Overall, a very easy class (I got an A). I had never gone to her office hours, but I did email her a few times and she is very nice and quick at answering questions.
Most Helpful Review
MCDB 60 is a relatively easy class. There was memorization required for both midterms and final, and he is a stickler for word-choice, but the tests themselves were very predictable. He gives you all the materials you need, and honestly, an evening of good study for each test will hold you in good stead. Creating a study guide helps with memorization of his mantras. There was almost no work, and the little work that we had was pretty interesting. Pham is a very passionate lecturer and encourages participation, and we had interesting discussions outside of class on topics such as race and intelligence. He is extremely compassionate, and while you may get very bored in lecture, you don't want to let him down. I'm a chemical engineering major, and I took this class for funsies my first quarter freshman year. It was honestly pretty easy. The juniors and seniors and pretty lazy, and the class isn't really curved so their performance one way or another doesn't affect you. For people who thought this class was hard or filled with work, they're probably the type of people who think that one hour of a homework spread out over a quarter is way too difficult.
MCDB 60 is a relatively easy class. There was memorization required for both midterms and final, and he is a stickler for word-choice, but the tests themselves were very predictable. He gives you all the materials you need, and honestly, an evening of good study for each test will hold you in good stead. Creating a study guide helps with memorization of his mantras. There was almost no work, and the little work that we had was pretty interesting. Pham is a very passionate lecturer and encourages participation, and we had interesting discussions outside of class on topics such as race and intelligence. He is extremely compassionate, and while you may get very bored in lecture, you don't want to let him down. I'm a chemical engineering major, and I took this class for funsies my first quarter freshman year. It was honestly pretty easy. The juniors and seniors and pretty lazy, and the class isn't really curved so their performance one way or another doesn't affect you. For people who thought this class was hard or filled with work, they're probably the type of people who think that one hour of a homework spread out over a quarter is way too difficult.
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