From Bedside to Battlefield: Clinicians' Ethical Duties in Medicine, Law, and War

Wednesdays from 4:00 pm - 7:00 pm at the Emory University Center for Ethics (ground floor of 1531 Dickey Drive).

About BIOETH 505: From Bedside to Battlefield: Clinicians' Ethical Duties in Medicine, Law and War (Summer 2026)

Bioethics starts in the academy but ends up at the bedside and beyond. As a practically oriented discipline, it must solve real-world problems for the clinician, the patient and family, the institution, and the state. This class will consider and ethically analyze actual cases drawn from the professor's 31 years of direct experience as an ICU physician and policy advocate. In the hospital setting, we will discuss a variety of issues, including do-not-resuscitate orders, abortion, involuntary hospitalization, organ donation, consent and capacity, brain death, and the good, the bad, and the ugly of ethics committees. Beyond the hospital, we will discuss the clinician as an arm for or against state power and consider the death penalty, medical assistance in dying, and the intersection of law and bioethics. At a still broader level, we will discuss the clinician’s duties and obligations in war, including torture and enhanced interrogation, force feeding, and bioethics of the clinician/soldier.

Suitability for a Range of Students & Working Professionals

While the course is offered as part of Emory’s MA in Bioethics program, as a standalone elective it is also suitable for a range of other students. This course is available to students seeking graduate degrees at Emory or other universities, non-degree seeking students and working professionals (including faculty and staff in all of Emory’s Schools). Because it is a graduate course, anyone applying to take this course must have previously completed at least a bachelor’s degree. Students who are not currently pursuing a graduate degree at Emory University will need to apply to be non-degree seeking students in special standing with the Laney Graduate School.

For those seeking graduate degrees at Emory, it is important that you discuss this course’s suitability to meet your degree requirements with your academic advisor and/or director of graduate studies. This is a three credit hour course that counts as an elective in the MA in Bioethics program. The MA in Bioethics program is not responsible for the degree requirements of other programs at Emory.
For those seeking degrees at non-Emory universities, it is important that you discuss this course’s suitability to meet the degree requirements from your home university. Emory University is not responsible for the degree requirements of other universities.
For those not seeking a degree at Emory, the tuition rates are determined by the Laney Graduate School. The Laney Graduate School charges $2,711 per credit hour. As the course is three credit hours, the tuition costs $8,133. Students who successfully complete this standalone course may apply to transfer these 3 credit hours to the MA in Bioethics program should they later apply to and be admitted to the MA in Bioethics program. The MA in Bioethics program requires 30 credit hours of coursework for completion.
For Emory faculty and staff, the tuition costs for this course may be covered by the Emory Courtesy Scholarship. For more information, please visit the Courtesy Scholarship webpage and contact HR.

In order to apply to take this course without being an Emory MA in Bioethics degree student, you will have to apply as a non-degree Laney Graduate School student. For the Summer 2026 term, the non-degree student enrollment deadline is May 4, 2026.

For more information about this course, please email: mabioethics@emory.edu.

Meet the Course Leader

Joel Zivot is a practicing academic physician and associate professor of Anesthesiology and Surgery in the Emory University School of Medicine. He has held academic leadership and practice positions at the University of Michigan School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University, George Washington University, and the University Of Manitoba. Zivot earned his MD at the University of Manitoba, he did further training in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine at the University of Toronto and the Cleveland Clinic. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and is board certified in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. Zivot also earned an MA in Bioethics and an MA in Law (JM) both from Emory University.

Zivot has been a former adjunct in the Emory Institute of Liberal Arts and the Emory School of Law. Zivot is a recognized international expert in Capital Punishment litigation, has been to death row in 9 states, has lectured around the world, written, and testified on the subject. His testimony has been considered by the US Supreme Court. Zivot is also an expert in opposition to physician assisted dying. He has testified before the Senate of Canada and his research was cited in the UK House of Commons on an assisted dying bill. Zivot is widely quoted in the media including The New York Times, The Washington Post,, and the Wall Street Journal on a number of subjects related to the intersection of medicine, law, bioethics, and policy. As well as extensive contributions to the peer reviewed medical and legal literature, Zivot is a prolific opinion writer in the public space and has authored over 130 opinion pieces.

Zivot also spent several summers teaching biology to Tibetan monastics in India and did research on depression in Tibetan diaspora communities. Zivot told a joke to His Holiness the Dalai Lama (He laughed).