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Bioethics and enhancement – an interview with Julian Savulescu
Interview by Olga Campos, Mª Ángeles Arráez, Miguel Moreno, Francisco Lara, Pedro Francés, and Javier Rodríguez Alcázar in Dilemata No 3 2010
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Putting GM in a Lead Coffin
by Julian Savulescu It is time to put the GM debate in a lead-lined coffin. To lay it finally to rest. And get things in perspective again.
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Philosophers’ Carnival CIX
by Dominic Wilkinson Roll up, roll up for the 109th Philosophers' Carnival… There weren't a huge number of submissions, so the following is partly drawn from my own wanderings across the blogosphere. Thanks for all those who did submit posts. Main tent – fight club In the big top this month we have a series
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A Sting for Absolutes
Sam Harris can sting. Well known for his sharp criticisms of religion, this social gadfly has picked a new target: moral philosophy. His recent TED talk and later articles about the science of morality (here and here) have caused a bit of a ruckus in philosophical circles as well as a feisty response from the
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Reminder – carnival next week
A quick reminder that Practical Ethics News will host the 109th Philosophers' Carnival on 7th June. Don't forget to nominate your favourite (recent) philosophy blog post via this link. Posts need not be on the topic of practical ethics, although they should be accessible to a popular audience. Posts relating to current affairs are especially
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Mining your past to justify your terminal care: the idea of a ‘retrospective QALY’
There is no end to human suffering. There is a distinct end to the amount of money that governments will spend on reducing it. Someone has to make decisions about healthcare resource allocation. I am very glad it’s not me. Many tools are used in the decision-making process. Not many emerge well from a viva
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Creating Headlines, Artificial Life, Ethical Concerns, and Ontological Perplexity
Synthetic biology has been catapulted into the public sphere after an article in Science reported that Craig Venter and his collaborators had managed to make a synthetic cell by inserting a fabricated genome into a bacterium. The achievement made headlines and was widely presented as a case of creating artificial life. Already there has been debate about
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Should Believers Trust Atheists?
The Science and Religious Conflict Project team here at Oxford has recently finished hosting a major international conference on Religion, Tolerance and Intolerance (For details see: http://www.bep.ox.ac.uk/archive_events_data/religion_and_tolerance_conference_may_2010). The conference involved a large number of very interesting papers by eminent scholars across a range of disciplines. One that particularly peaked my interest was a paper on
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Views and interviews on addiction
Nigel Warburton interviews Walter Sinnot Armstrong and Julian Savulescu on addiction Addiction – Sinnot-Armstrong and Savulescu
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Are addicts addicts?
by Nick Shackel I think it would be fair to say that, insofar as people think about it at all, most people think that being an addict is a property some people have. Just like people can be tall or friendly or wealthy, people can be addicts. Some people even think that being an addict