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A German MP on meth: Enhancement or not?
German MP Michael Hartmann was recently in the news because of his crystal meth use. The media was quick to compare Hartmann to other politicians who use other substances: the past marijuana use of Clinton and Obama, and the recent scandal around the crack addiction of Canadian mayor Rob Ford. The media also stresses that
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Bad news for “intelligence-genes”
Intelligence and its heritability has been a popular topic in scientific communities and public discussions for long. Recent findings give new insight to the debate: one of the largest studies on genetic influence to intelligence and other behavioral traits turned up inconclusive findings, as Nature News reports in a recent article “Smart genes” prove elusive.
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Petrov Day
Today, 31 years ago, the human species nearly came to an end. Lieutenant colonel Stanislav Petrov was the officer on duty in bunker Serpukhov-15 near Moscow, monitoring the Soviet Union early warning satellite network. If notification was received that it had detected approaching missiles the official strategy was launch on warning: an immediate counter-attack against the United
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Framing the Ebola epidemic
“CDC estimates Ebola epidemic could be over in Liberia and Sierra Leone by January!” So ran the headline of exactly no news outlets. Instead, a typical headline ran the following sort of dire prediction: “Ebola cases could reach 1.4 million within four months, CDC estimates.” Only a few went with what is arguably the fairest
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Trust and Institutions
Last week I attended part of a fascinating conference on Trust, organized by the Blavatnik School of Government in Oxford. In her opening paper, Katherine Hawley raised many interesting questions, including those of whether trustworthiness is a virtue and whether it can be a virtue of institutions.
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Not-so-lethal – the ethics and costs of extraordinary fetal intervention
By Dominic Wilkinson (@Neonatal Ethics) Late last month, a paper in the US journal Obstetrics and Gynecology reported the extraordinary case of Abigail Beutler. Abigail is now 14 months old. She was born without kidneys, a condition sometimes called ‘Potter’s syndrome’. Potter’s syndrome is normally universally fatal in the newborn period, because without kidneys the
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Practical Ethics Bites
This week at the centre we are excited to be launching a new series of podcasts “Practical Ethics Bites“ These podcasts have been recorded to support secondary school students (particularly A-level students) who are studying philosophy or religious studies and their teachers. They are available to download (free) from the podcast webpage, and you can
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Rationality and the Scottish referendum
One argument that has been put forward against voting for Scottish independence in the Scottish referendum is that it would be irrational for Scotland to break free of the rest of Great Britain. The grounds for this claim are that the Scottish economy would be significantly worse under independence. This is an empirical claim and
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Would it be bad if humanity were to become extinct?
That’s (roughly) the topic of a panel held at Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas. It is a topical question, in this age of potentially catastrophic climate change. There is no realistic risk that climate change threatens life on this planet, after all, but it could threaten human existence (not directly, but by triggering widespread conflicts over