Applied Ethics

The study of ethical issues arising in medicine, healthcare, and the biological sciences, including topics such as informed consent, end-of-life care, genetic engineering, organ allocation, and reproductive rights.

The principle that individuals must be given adequate information about risks, benefits, and alternatives before agreeing to medical treatment, participation in research, or other significant decisions affecting them.

A thought experiment in which a person must decide whether to divert a runaway trolley to kill one person instead of five, used to explore the moral distinction between actively causing harm and allowing harm to occur.

The ethical obligation of businesses to consider the social, environmental, and economic impacts of their operations beyond mere profit maximization, including duties to employees, communities, and the environment.

The branch of applied ethics that examines the moral relationship between humans and the natural environment, asking whether non-human entities such as animals, ecosystems, and species have intrinsic value.

A doctrine holding that it can be morally permissible to cause a harmful side effect in pursuit of a good end, provided the harm is not intended, is not the means to the good, and the good outcome outweighs the bad.

The ethical concern with how benefits and burdens are fairly allocated across members of society, including debates over equality, equity, need, merit, and rights-based distribution.

The act of reporting unethical, illegal, or harmful practices within an organization to internal authorities or the public, raising tensions between loyalty to an employer and duty to the broader public good.

The study of moral issues raised by the development and use of technology, including artificial intelligence, data privacy, algorithmic bias, surveillance, autonomous weapons, and the digital divide.

The view that no single ethical theory can adequately address all moral situations, and that multiple frameworks such as utilitarianism, deontology, virtue ethics, and care ethics each capture important moral truths that may need to be balanced against one another.