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A Lack of Olympic Spirit
This morning, the men’s Olympic under 80 kg Taekwondo competition takes place. However, the British competitor widely regarded as the world’s best fighter in that category will not be taking part. Instead, a competitor ranked 59th in the world will be fighting in his place. Neither the British Taekwondo Association, nor the British Olympic association,
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Organ donation is not all about the donors
Another article discusses the morality of different methods of organ transplant. Strangely absent from the discussion, is any indication of the scale of the problem – something that should be front and centre. The numbers are strangely hard to find, but seem to lie between 400 and 1000 deaths per year, with many more suffering from
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Advertising, Autonomy and Breastfeeding: Some Reflections.
In ethical discussions, we are often quick to lambast advertisements for the way in which they can subvert the consumer’s autonomy. It is certainly true, as other posts on this blog record, that some advertisements aim to intentionally deceive consumers, and to manipulate their preferences in a manner which can serve to undermine their autonomy.
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Giving priority to good people
It’s an axiom of healthcare prioritisation that all persons should be treated equally. Different theories of prioritisation give different interpretations of this idea; but the basic thought is the same across all plausible theories of prioritisation. All persons’ lives are of equal value, so if it’s one life against one thousand, one should save the
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The Philosophy of Bad Badminton: Another Look
Julian Savulescu brings an interesting and characteristically uncompromising philosophical perspective today to the Badminton scandal in which four pairs were disqualified from the Olympics for intending to lose their matches in order to obtain a preferred draw in the next round. The players were ejected for violating parts of the Players’ Code of Conduct that
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Philosophy and the Badminton Scandal
I was emailed by a journalist yesterday from Bloomberg for a comment on the Badminton expulsion scandal. Several teams have been expelled for deliberately losing to gain better places in the draw to increase their chances of winning. Here is the story that came out in Bloomberg Here is the actual quote I sent the
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Should Men and Women be segregated in professional Sports?
When I zapped into the Olympics opening ceremony on Saturday, I had the doubtful pleasure to see the German sportspeople entering the stadium in ridiculously gendered jackets – pink for the girls, light blue for the boys. This renewed an admittedly rather old question in my mind: Should men and women be segregated in professional
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Capturing Tragedy
When watching a news report on the recent tragedy in Colorado I was struck by the sight of people using mobile phones to film people leaving the cinema. The state of shock on the people’s faces and the freshness of the blood on their clothes signaled that the event was still unfolding. My first response
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On being yourself
‘I was always the life and soul of the party, flirting with everyone’, wrote Lucille Howe, in ‘Fabulous Magazine’, (22 July 2012), ‘but I wanted John to fall in love with the real, quieter me’. In the same article, Charlotte Ruhle notes how her psychotherapy helped her to recover from a broken relationship. ‘[My] friends
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The Rationalist Prejudice
Professional ethicists seem to love controversy. I myself have been too boring in this regard, but many of my colleagues have provoked heated debate. This often spills out of the safety of academia unto society at large, as many of the past entries in the Practical Ethics blog testify to. And professional ethicists rarely regret