Perhaps the newest course relating to professional ethics is Currier 114, "Ethics and Public Policy," taugh by Donald P. Warwick, a fellow at the Harvard Institute for International Development and lecturer on Education. Each participant in Currier 114 chooses a topic and analyzes it in depth. Affirmative action, international population policy, illegal immigration, and priorities in cutting back electrical energy use are several problems currently being investigated.

Making students aware of practical ethics is very important, Warwick says, but his course aims "not so much at indoctrination as at analysis, and trying to bring about an understanding of the issues involved."

If enrollment in Warwick's course follows the apparent trend in ethical interest among students, he should expect to at least double enrollment next year. "This is quite a booming field," he says, "and probably more is being done here ar Harvard than at other schools."

The professors that are probably most aware of the apparent ethics boom among undergraduates are Dyck, and Stanley J. Reiser, assistant professor of the History of Medicine. Their course, Hum 130, on "Problems in Medical Ethics," has registered the most phenomenal growth in enrollment, drawing 315 students this year, compared to 180 the last time it was offered, in 1976.

Hum 130, a course begun at the Medical School in 1974, attempts to acquaint students with health care issues such as bereavement, abortion, illness and birth, through readings in philosophy, ethics and medicine, as well as through case discussions.

One of five courses and a seminar subsidized by the Kennedy Interfaculty Program in Medical Ethics, the course is part of an ongoing project begun in 1971 to present biomedical questions in the context of ethics, Dyck says.

Dyck says the popularity of Hum 130 among undergraduates is a result of a "tremendous surge of interest" in medical ethics that has been growing over the past several years.

Reiser says that in Hum 130, "Those who want to go into the medical professions get to see another dimension beyond science requirements. They see the stuff and substance of a doctor's life."

"After learning what it's like to be a doctor and a patient, whether they end up as a doctor or not, they will have a broader understanding of basic life questions," he says.

Students in Hum 130 enroll in the course for a variety of reasons, yet few of those questioned expressed ethical considerations as their primary motivation.

"I wanted to learn about the legal aspects of medicine," Paula A. Johnson '80, one pre-med student in the course, says. "I was more interested in the practical problems facing doctors than in the ethical ones."

Colette Edwards '79 says, "I was interested in seeing the kinds of decisions that doctors are expected to make."

Although Hum 130 is being offered to undergraduates for only the third time this year, it has been available to medical students since 1972. The Medical School version of Hum 130, "Ethics in Medicine," is also sponsored by the Kennedy Interfaculty Program in Medical Ethics.

Taught in alternate years by the Reiser-Dyck team, or Sissela Bok, lecturer on Medical Ethics, "Ethics in Medicine" covers the same material as Hum 130, but includes "ethics rounds" in addition to the class material. Held every other week at the Children's Hospital, these rounds bring students in contact with patients through informal groups led by nurses, doctors, or the students themselves.

For the past several years, enrollment in "Ethics in Medicine" has remained relatively steady at about 30 students a year, Reiser says. But next year, for the first time, two sections will be offered concurrently, a move which he says is prompted by "popular demand, and desire on the part of the professors involved."