Healthcare Ethics on Film

Dr. M. Sara Rosenthal is Professor of Bioethics, Departments of Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, and Behavioral Science at the University of Kentucky. She is Founding Director of the University of Kentucky Program for Bioethics and the Markey Cancer Center Oncology Ethics Program. She is, Chair of the University of Kentucky Healthcare Ethics Committee, and Director of the University of Kentucky’s Clinical Ethics Consultation Service. She received all her training at the University of Toronto, including her graduate training in medical sociology and bioethics at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics. She has an undergraduate degree in English literature (minor in film studies), as well as a graduate degree in Education (Canada) and Teaching Certificate in English Literature and Politics.  Prior to her bioethics career, she was a medical journalist for many years, and has a well-recognized name in health trade publishing, having written over 30 health trade books. As an academician, Dr. Rosenthal has published numerous peer-reviewed papers, has served as bioethicist on several task forces and clinical practice guidelines committees, and chaired ethics committees for national medical professional societies. As a bioethicist, medical sociologist, and film buff, she has been using film to teach for over 20 years, teaches a popular cross-over course at the University of Kentucky called “Bioethics on Film”, and co-produced the self-guided web documentary The Moral Distress Education Project, which contains several hours of original interviews with experts on moral distress.

• Part 1: Films about Medical Harms.- Chapter 1. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: Miss Evers’ Boys (1997).- Chapter 2. “How Many Dead Hemophiliacs Do You Need?” And The Band Played On (1993).- Chapter 3. Physician-Assisted Death: You Don’t Know Jack (2010).- Chapter 4. Maleficence and Sports Medicine: Concussion (2015).- Part 2: Distributive Justice and Healthcare Access.- Chapter 5. The Unethical American Healthcare System: Sicko (2007).- Chapter 6. Nobody Puts Baby in a Corner: Reproductive Justice in Dirty Dancing (1987).- Chapter 7. Pandemic Ethics in Contagion (2011).- Chapter 8. Some Good Parts: The Transplant Films.- PART 3: Professionalism and Humanism.- Chapter 9. A Classic for a Reason: The Doctor (1991).- Chapter 10. Collegiality and Racism in Something the Lord Made (2004).