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Enhanced Consequentialism: Up, Up… and Away?
Last week Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal featured a fun, and genuinely thought-provoking, cartoon. Click below to see the cartoon at FULL SIZE, then come back to hear my take on it: Poor Superman, trapped in a spiral of consequentialist logic! If one really is as powerful as Superman, then it’s no use pleading for a
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What is the point of being a doctor when conscience overrules professional duties?
A new study recently published on the Journal of Medical Ethics and reported by the newspapers explored the attitude towards conscientious objection of 733 medical students from four different UK medical schools (Cardiff University, King’s college London, Leeds University and St George’s University of London).The results of this survey are interesting and deserve to be
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The unexpected turn: from the democratic Internet to the Panopticon
In the last ten years ICTs (information and communication technologies) have been increasingly used by militaries both to develop new weapons and to improve communication and propaganda campaigns. So much so that military often refers to ‘information’ as the fifth dimension of warfare in addition to land, sea, air and space. Given this scenario does
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Announcement: An international conference on human embryo research
The following guest post is an announcement by David Albert Jones, director of the Ansombe Bioethics Centre, Oxford www.bioethics.org.uk How do we decide what protection to extend to the human embryo? On 8 September 2011 at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, the Anscombe Bioethics Centre is hosting a conference ‘Human embryo research: law, ethics and public
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The Need for a Progressive Neuroethics
Neuroscience is challenging previously maintained notions about the structure and function of nervous systems, the basis of consciousness, and the nature of the brain-mind-self relationship. Such developments prompt re-examination of concepts of ‘personhood,’ which forms the basis of the modern social sphere and its interpretation. Contemporary neuroscience also questions traditional socially defined ontologies, fundamental social
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“The Madness of Normality” – On why the DMS-5 is fundamentally wrong
The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the world widely recognized classificatory system of psychiatric disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It is currently under major revision; the release version DSM-5 is expected in May 2013. The “psychiatrist´s bible“ has overwhelming impact: Inclusion in the DSM carries weight far beyond
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When it’s unethical to be a well-published academic
Publishing pointless papers is unethical. There are four reasons: (a) It’s a form of plagiarism to translate old thoughts into new language and pass off the translated thoughts as one’s own. The very act of publication carries the implied (and usually inaccurate) representation that there is something new being said. (b) Writing pointless papers kills…
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The Ethics of Etiquette
It is of course nearly the ‘silly season’, but the amount of attention paid in recent days to Carolyn Bourne’s critical email to her future daughter-in-law Heidi Withers about her manners is remarkable. Most of the rules Bourne mentions concern the table manners of guests: 1) Don’t declare what you will and will not eat.
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Ban the beets?
The hot new performance-enhancing drug is…beetroot juice!? (original paper) Nitrates in food reduces the oxygen cost of some forms of exercise and improves high-intensity exercise tolerance. So the researchers gave half a litre of beetroot juice (which is rich in nitrate) or a nitrate depleted placebo to club-level competitive cyclists. The nitrate juice produced better