Preparing Ethical Engineers for the Future: Integrating Modern Case Studies and Design Fiction in Biomedical Engineering Ethics

Abstract

Numerous studies and philosophies underscore the importance of cultivating ethical attitudes and social responsibility in engineering formation. Despite public welfare being central to the Codes of Ethics for most engineering societies (e.g., NSPE, BMES, ASME, ASCE), it comes as a shock that current education practices often diminish engineering undergraduates’ sentiments towards serving humanity. Erin Cech’s seminal work highlights the ‘culture of disengagement’ across diverse undergraduate engineering programs, with students deriving less value and identity towards serving the public welfare compared to before entering college. This indicates a pressing need to reform pedagogy to develop more socially aware engineers. Subsequent work continues to stress the deficiency of ethical and social dimensions in engineering graduates. How we teach ethics to engineers remains a contested question for our community. While this author embraces an embedded ethics model, many universities still rely on a capstone-focused or a stand-alone general engineering ethics class that cover the principal canons of public safety and welfare. General engineering ethics textbooks emphasize professional conduct and risk, with a particular focus on historical case studies that may not share the same relevance to the current generation of engineers. For example, the Ford Pinto case study is heavily discussed in these classes, but current estimates of American teenagers driving sit at under 40 percent compared to 64 percent in 1995, which lowers the relevancy of this scenario to future professional practice. Therefore, it is important to develop relevant case studies in engineering ethics classrooms that acknowledge the complex present and disruptive future that emergent technologies possess. I have developed a major-specific ethics course in biomedical engineering ethics that covers the foundational philosophical schools of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics directly applied to the discipline. This occurs while adopting modern case studies in biomedical engineering that emphasize the role of ethical foresight in emergent and emerging technologies. Students are confronted with ethical futures in human genome editing and brain-computer interfaces, while facing the emerging technologies of machine learning and artificial intelligence in health care decision making and stem cell technologies. Biomedical engineering students strengthen their argumentative writing skills, as is often emphasized in ethics courses but gain experience in creative expression through an exercise called design fiction. Also known as speculative design, students creatively explore ethical dilemmas by imagining utopian and dystopian technological futures, deepening their understanding of how today’s engineering decisions shape tomorrow’s world. This paper will address how ethical foresight, design fiction, and modern case studies in emergent biomedical engineering technologies fosters an improved sense of reasoning in past, present, and future ethical dilemmas. Examples of successful strategies in discipline-specific ethics courses augment the need for both general and specific knowledges applied to professional practice, formation of ethical engineers, and an improved awareness of ethical decision making connected to technical knowledge. By incorporating modern case studies and speculative design, this course provides biomedical engineers with the critical thinking and ethical reasoning skills necessary to navigate the challenges of emergent technologies in professional practice, and can be adapted to any engineering discipline.