I took such a course in the philosophy department of my undergrad. It was titled "moral problems in medicine and biology." It was a great course because we studied most of the major issues today with regard to medicine and scientific research ethics. Basically there were three papers we had to write. It was hard to get an A but if you really tried you did well. Just because you disagreed with the professor or the TA did not mean you were docked points either. If you could support your position well enough then you could easily get an A. Also, on a couple of the papers we were forced to take a position against perhaps our own ethical principals. For example, I had to write a paper on why physician assisted suicide should be legal. Ironically it was the best paper I wrote that year. I should caution though that a lot of people did not like the course b/c the grading on the papers was tough but that was only because the prof wanted people to think rather than go through the motions by writing a paper at the last minute.
All in all I felt it was worth it and I learned about some things that don't exactly make the headlines but are certainly part of medical ethics. Things like the doctor-patient relationship and how it has changed over the years. There were also a lot of real life case studies that we dealt with as well. Another added bonus was that it served as great preparation for interview questions where you may be asked ethical type questions about medicine.
