During Summer and term 3, the School of Biomedical Sciences offers the following general education courses to undergraduate students. For timetable, please click .
Serial killers, psychopaths, violent, and sexual offenders receive significant attention in the media, creating a particular fascination for people; they also consume significant resources in terms of their policing, prosecution, treatment, and punishment.
This course is aimed at those with a general interest in the forensic area who may wish to pursue a professional career or research in this fascinating field. This course will be taught in an intensive mode by some of Australia’s leading forensic psychiatrists, clinicians, and researchers from the forensic mental health services, police, corrective services, law, and forensic medicine. This foundation course will provide participants with unique insights into the psychopathology of this high profile offender group. Taking a lifecycle approach, it examines the antecedents of offending, genetic influences, and the detection, prosecution, treatment, and punishment of this group. Real case examples will be used to illustrate offender groups such as Fred West, Jeffrey Dahmer, Peter Sutcliffe, Ted Bundy, Dr Harold Shipman, Ivan Milat, and Michael Bryant.
The acceleration in new technology and genomic science over the last few years has had profound effects on modern medicine and has the potential to revolutionise healthcare. The promise of “personalised medicine” will likely yield significant benefits for patients yet raises several serious ethical and legal issues for clinicians, patients, and the wider society. This General Education course will provide students with a framework to understand this rapidly growing field. It will also provide the opportunity to debate the national and international healthcare issues that will arise in parallel with the advent of this genetic revolution.