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Political Change and the Olympic Games
by Luke Davies The upcoming Winter Olympics in Sochi has been in the news a lot recently. The controversy, as you will already know, is a result the introduction of another law discriminating against the LGBT community in Russia—Article 6.21 of the Code of the Russian Federation, the so-called “gay propaganda” law. [1] This law
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Is unwanted pregnancy a medical disorder?
by Rebecca Roache Follow Rebecca on Twitter Abortion is often in the news. Yesterday, The Atlantic Wire reported a poll of Americans’ moral views, which found just under half of Americans believe abortion is morally wrong. Today, The Sun is running an article on the devastating effects on women of having abortions. And, a couple of weeks
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Let’s Talk About Death: Millennials and Advance Directives
Sarah Riad, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Massachusetts Boston Melissa Hickey, School of Nursing, Avila University Kyle Edwards, Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford As advances in medical technology have greatly increased our ability to extend life, the conversation on end-of-life care ethics has become exceedingly complex. With greater options both
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Safety First? How the Current Drug Approval System Lets Some Patients Down
Andrew Culliford, whose story is featured in the Daily Mail, is one of the estimated 7 in 100,000 people living with Motor Neuron disease, a progressive degenerative disease which attacks muscles, leaving those affected eventually unable even to breathe unassisted. For Andrew, a young father who has a severe form of the disease, it means
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Can Facts Be Racist?
Here is the sequence of events. 1. Richard Dawkins tweets that all the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College Cambridge. 2. Cue a twitter onslaught – accusing Professor Dawkins of racism. 3. Richard Dawkins writes that a fact can’t be racist.
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Jane Austen’s Ring: Should We Care?
Ed Vaizey, the culture minister, recently put an export ban on a ring once owned by Jane Austen, bought legitimately by the US singer Kelly Clarkson at auction last year. Why? Because, apparently, the ring is too important a part of our literary history to go abroad.
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Would you hand over a moral decision to a machine? Why not? Moral outsourcing and Artificial Intelligence.
Artificial Intelligence and Human Decision-making. Recent developments in artificial intelligence are allowing an increasing number of decisions to be passed from human to machine. Most of these to date are operational decisions – such as algorithms on the financial markets deciding what trades to make and how. However, the range of such decisions that can
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Dangerous dogs and proportionate sentencing
The government is currently consulting on whether the maximum sentences for aggravated offences under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 should be increased. This offence category covers cases in which someone allows a dog to be dangerously out of control and the dog injures or kills a person or an assistance dog. Respondents to the survey
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Not all philosophers are equal
Not all ethical issues are equally important. Many ethicists spend their professional lives performing in sideshows. However entertaining the sideshow, sideshow performers do not deserve the same recognition or remuneration as those performing on our philosophical Broadways. What really matters now is not the nuance of our approach to mitochondrial manipulation for glycogen storage diseases,
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I’m Too Unsexy For My Shirt
Follow David on Twitter @David Edmonds100 Thinking only of your career prospects now, is it better to be sexy or unsexy? This person was said to be too sexy and lost her job. But at Abercrombie & Fitch the allegation is that you can’t get a job unless you’re good looking. The A&F image of