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Oxford Debates — Performance-Enhancing Drugs Should be Allowed in Sport — Moderator’s Opening Statement
Oxford Online Debates by Roger Crisp Taking drugs to improve one’s sporting performance seems, on the face of it, a paradigmatic example of a wrong action. It combines two activities usually considered shameful: the use of banned substances, and cheating. But on closer inspection the issue is more complicated. The use of some drugs, such
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Oxford Debates – Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport – Opposer’s opening statement
Oxford Online Debates by John William Devine In just over two years the world’s elite athletes will descend on the U.K. for London 2012. Should these athletes be permitted to use performance enhancing drugs or should the fight to eliminate such drugs from sport continue? The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) maintains that the use of
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Oxford Debates – Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport – Proposer’s opening statement
[This is the first post in the Trinity term Oxford University Online Debate. Feel free to comment on any of the debate either at this blog or over at the official debate website. Votes can be cast after the concluding statements – between 5th and 9th July] by Julian Savulescu Two great sporting events are
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Is it any of your doctor’s business whether you text and drive?
by Dominic Wilkinson "Absolutely!" is the answer of Boston physician Amy Ship writing in the New England Journal of Medicine, and interviewed over at the LA Times blog. She includes questions about seatbelts and phone use while driving in her routine questions for patients
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Torture, but do no harm
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration redefined acts that were previously recognised as torture and thus illegal as ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ (EITs). From then on subjecting detainees to, for example, forced nudity, sleep deprivation, waterboarding and exposure to extreme temperatures could be legal. The line between torture and EITs is a fine
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Drugs in Sport debate and special edition
Over the next month Oxford Online Debates will be tackling the motion "Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport". We will try to collect together relevant materials and blog posts below in this special edition.
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The ethics of geoengineering – comments welcome
Should we encourage or avoid large scale environmental manipulation, for example in order to reduce climate change? Measures such as carbon dioxide capture or ocean iron fertilisation have the potential to mitigate global warming, but what ethical issues are raised by these technologies? How should we take into account the potential risks of such measures,
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Ethics commentary – Fraught with peril
One issue emerging from the recent media circus over Craig Venter’s apparent creation of a synthetic life form is the potential danger … of ethics commentary itself.
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The Brainy or the Rich: who should inherit the Earth?
Does it matter if Britain is ruled by toffs? Nineteen British Prime Ministers attended one extremely expensive boarding school for boys on the far western outskirts of London, an astonishing statistic. David Cameron is the latest Old Etonian Prime Minister. Tomorrow the nominations close for the Labour Party leadership and commentators (many of them Oxbridge-educated)
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Paying people to lose weight
Winton Rossiter, of London weight-loss firm ‘Weight Wins’, was in the news this week, following the completion of a trial in which obese patients were paid to lose weight.