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Global Warming and the Hidden Costs of Aviation
A recent study reveals that aviation might pump 20% more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2025 as previously estimated. Vexing is not the possibly underestimated figure; but the fact that this study was only recently uncovered: As covered by The Independent or Spiegel Online, the British environmental association Aviation Environmental Federation now presents the
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Towards Ethical Foie Gras?
Often the source of our worries about eating animals and the basis of arguments against it seems to turn on the pain and suffering of the animal in question. With advances in biotechnology such as cloning and genetic manipulation it may at some point be possible to engineer animals that do not feel pain or
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Sleeping policemen and garden sheds
Big Brother, it seems, has been asleep on the job. Even though it is said that we in the UK are more subject to surveillance than any other society, peered at by cameras wherever we go about our innocent business, today’s headlines tell us that this intrusion is not even fulfilling its purpose of catching
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The Apeman and the Scotsman: the slippery slope to humanzees
In the Scotsman this week there is an interview with a scientist who has claimed that a loophole in the draft UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is likely to lead to the creation of hybrid human-apes or “humanzees”. In essence this argument is a slippery slope objection to the proposed changes in the powers…
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Genetic discrimination and the future of health insurance
The US Congress today passed legislation banning the use of genetic information by insurance companies, unions and employers. As Dominic Wilkinson noted in his post on 26 April, this legislation might have interesting implications for professional sport. The reform also raises questions about the future of insurance markets.
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The Choice to Have Artificial Blood: Less than the Best?
Controversy has erupted around whether experiments to test artificial blood should stop. Experimental blood substitutes raised the risk of heart attack and death, yet U.S. regulators allowed human testing to continue despite warning signs, says a scathing new report. Blood substitutes, or artificial blood, could be stored for years without refrigeration, and be used in
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Reverse Prostitution: cognitive biases and conditional cash transfers
Stuart Rennie writes a thoughtful blog on bioethics.net, Can you buy changes in health behaviours? on how the World Bank backs an anti-AIDS experiment paying young people to not contract sexually transmitted infections. The basic idea is not new, conditional cash transfer programs in poor countries have had successes in improving health and education but
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Football screens and genes: Should genetic discrimination in sport be banned?
There are several possible solutions to genetic discrimination in sport. Legislation, like that passed this week in the US could be used to prevent clubs from using genetic screening in recruitment. However that would still allow clubs to discriminate indirectly on the basis of genetic attributes, in the way that they do currently. Alternatively, in…
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New hope or false hope for vegetative patients?
A BBC documentary screening this evening on the ‘Inside Out’ program reports on what it describes as a breakthrough for patients in a vegetative state. It is based upon research by a group of neuroscientists in Cambridge, who have used sophisticated brain scans (functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)) to look for signs of consciousness in…
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The Dignity of the Carrot
What are you allowed to do to plants? At least in Switzerland you are not allowed to do research that deeply offend the dignity of plants. The Swiss federal Gene Technology Law stipulates that any scientific research should respect the "dignity of creation". All plant biotechnology grant applications must now state how they take plant