Skip to content

Do we have a right to drink? On Australian thugs and French hedonists

Do we have a right to drink? On Australian thugs and French hedonists

It has been an interesting week awaiting the announced reforms on the alcohol laws in New South Wales, Australia. After another incident with alcohol fuelled violence where a young boy died due to an unprovoked single punch, the family of this young man, Thomas Kelly, submitted a petition asking for intoxication to be taken into account in sentencing as a mandatory aggravating factor, rather than a mitigating factor, which is now sometimes the case. While the government reflected on what to do about alcohol induced violence, the discussion in the media sparked up high.

1. Should intoxication be an aggravating or mitigating factor?

Read More »Do we have a right to drink? On Australian thugs and French hedonists

Marathon mice, enhancement and the will to work out

In his article in the Pacific Standard last week, author Bruce Grierson discusses the emerging scientific evidence that the ‘will to work out’ might be genetically determined. Grierson describes a ‘marathon mouse’, the descendant of a long line of mice bred for their love of exercise, and a 94-year-old woman called Olga, who is an athletic anomaly. Both the mouse and Olga love to work out. The mouse goes straight to his wheel when he wakes up, running kilometers at a time and Olga – a track and field amateur – still competes in 11 different events. Grierson suggests that cracking the code for intrinsic motivation to exercise would lead to the possibility of synthesizing its biochemical signature: ‘Why not a pill that would make us want to work out?’, he asks. Such a possibility adds an interesting dimension to the debate about enhancement in sport, and to enhancement debates more generally.Read More »Marathon mice, enhancement and the will to work out

The Texan flautist and the fetus

Imagine that when you woke up this morning, you found yourself lying next to an unconscious stranger. The stranger has a rare life-threatening illness, and unbeknownst to you he was plugged in to your organs during the night. You are now stuck to the stranger. If you disconnect the life support he will die. If, though, you remain connected to him for most of the next year his illness will have recovered, and he can safely ben unplugged. What should you do? Are you obliged to stay attached to the stranger? It might be generous of you to give up your body, and good if you choose to do so, but should we require you to remain connected?

Read More »The Texan flautist and the fetus

The incoherence of Obama’s position on marijuana

           U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent interview in the New Yorker was surprisingly interesting.  While some have noted his disapproval towards a (hypothetical) son playing pro football out of concussion concerns, the more remarkable comments concern marijuana:  he says it’s “not very different from…cigarettes” and “I don’t think it’s more dangerous than alcohol.”  He did not come out in favour of legalisation, however, and this makes his views (and, to a certain extent, the position of the executive branch charged with carrying out federal law) incoherent – by which I mean, his various positions taken together are inconsistent.  Obama may well ‘evolve’ further as he did with gay marriage, but any such evolution will likely come too late in his term to lead to an effective, permanent change in policy. Read More »The incoherence of Obama’s position on marijuana

Doctors: turn off your computer and listen to your gut

‘Between the NHS and social care, there must be total commitment to ensuring that interaction is paperless, and that, with a patient’s consent, their full medical history can follow them around the system seamlessly.‘ So said Jeremy Hunt,the Health Secretary, on 16 January 2013. And NHS England say that: ‘Our vision is for a fully integrated digital patient record across all care settings by 2018’.

It sounds like a good idea. It’s not. Or not in its present form. Many of the concerns that have been expressed relate to privacy/confidentiality. Those concerns are real. But even if they can be satisfactorily addressed, electronic health records have the potential to do great harm. They divert attention from the patient to the screen, and they cause clinical skills to atrophy.

David Loxterkamp recently observed that the computer in the consulting room is a Frankenstein-like creature: ‘….we have created a place in our exam rooms for a computer that needs our care and feeding. It now directs the flow and purpose of an encounter that once unfolded organically according to the particular needs of the patient.’ The electronic servant becomes the master. Read More »Doctors: turn off your computer and listen to your gut

Computer consciousness and ethics

Nature, the prestigious international science journal, often publishes short science fiction stories in a column called “Futures.” According to Nature, “Featuring short stories from established authors and those just beginning their writing career, Futures presents an eclectic view of what may come to pass.” (see here)

As many philosophers and ethicists have recognized, eclectic views of what may come to pass can be philosophically and ethically useful. They may, for example, suggest possible future scenarios that raise difficult ethical questions – questions we ought to begin to sort through now. They may also stimulate insight into important ethical and conceptual questions at the heart of current ethical debates. Consider, for example, a story recently published by Eric Schwitzgebel and R. Scott Bakker. I won’t spoil the story (do read it here), but I want to lift an element of the plot out of context, so I need to say something about it. It involves the creation of consciousness on a computer. More specifically, it involves the generation of a whole society of interacting conscious agents – people like you or me, living in a world they experience, pursuing goals and relationships and all the rest.Read More »Computer consciousness and ethics

Three Arguments Against the Belgian Child Euthanasia Bill Criticised

By Luke J Davies. Follow Luke on Twitter.

Last week the upper house of the Belgian Federal Parliament voted (50 to 17) that euthanasia should be legal for children suffering from a terminal illness that is causing severe physical pain. [1] The bill legalizing the practice requires that the child understand what euthanasia is, and that parents provide their written consent. Unlike the Netherlands, which allows euthanasia for children over the age of 12, there will be no minimum age in Belgium. (Find the story here, here, here, and here.)

The passing of this bill, which has yet to be turned into a law [2], has been met with severe criticism in Belgium and abroad, mostly from religious and conservative groups. From what I have read, there are three main lines of argument against allowing euthanasia for children. The first maintains that allowing euthanasia for children is the first in a long series of steps that will lead to some Third Reich-like eugenics program. The second maintains that children do not have the capacity to make a decision to be euthanized. The third maintains that the legalization of euthanasia for children would lead to parents or health care professionals putting pressure on children to opt for that choice. I believe that each of these arguments fails to demonstrate that the bill should not pass, and will spend the remainder of this post explaining why.  

Read More »Three Arguments Against the Belgian Child Euthanasia Bill Criticised

Kissing Grandparents and Consent

It has been reported that the co-ordinator of the Sex Education Forum in the UK has advocated that parents ought to refrain from forcing their child to kiss a grandparent against their will, since this could lead to confusion over sexual consent. Kate Emmerson claims that children should be taught that their bodies are their own from “age zero”, and that the practice of forcing children to kiss a relative against their will is in tension with this message.Read More »Kissing Grandparents and Consent

Oppressing smokers for fun and profit

According to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (Prabhat & Peto 2014),

Tripling tobacco tax globally would cut smoking by a third, and prevent  200 million premature deaths this century from lung cancer and other diseases. (here)

This should, of course, be instituted immediately. It is almost the perfect public policy: self-interest dressed up as sanctimony. Not only will we make the lives of non-smokers better at the expense of smokers, but we can do so whilst telling smokers we are doing it for their own good!Read More »Oppressing smokers for fun and profit