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Tony Coady on Religion in the Political Sphere: Part 1

Tony Coady on Religion in the Political Sphere: Part 1

In the last twenty years, there has been great interest in the dangers religion presents to liberal democracies, in particular as a result of terrorist attacks, and the political success of the religious right in the United States. Religion is difficult to define and its appropriate role in the public domain is frequently disputed. Violence is frequently attributed to religious absolutism however, in the first of the annual 2012 Leverhulme Lecture Series entitled ‘Religion and Politics’, Professor Tony Coady discusses why this sweeping claim can ultimately be rejected. The first lecture occurred on November 15 (you can listen to the podcast here), with two further lectures on November 22 and 29.

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Treating ADHD may reduce criminality

Pharmaceutical treatment of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with reduced criminality according to a study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study of over 25,000 Swedish adults with the disorder found that men undergoing pharmaceutical treatments had a 51% chance of committing at least one crime in a 4-year period compared to 63% for those not in treatment. The risk of criminality for women with ADHD was 25% for those taking medication, and 31% for those not in treatment. It’s possible, of course, that the reduction in criminality associated with treatment was due not to the treatment itself, but to other factors, such as desire to improve behaviour, which could have both motivated treatment and reduced criminality. However, even when the investigators adjusted for likely confounders, they found that treatment was associated with significantly reduced criminal offending. Thus, their findings are at least suggestive of a causal relationship between medication and reduced crime.

It will be interesting to see how such a relationship, if it can be further supported, will be viewed by the general public and medical profession. Will it be seen as strengthening or weakening the case for ADHD treatment?

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Armstrong the Good Giraffe and the Moral Value of Effort

Let me introduce you to Armstrong the Good Giraffe. Appearing in the news last week due to his goodness (and probably his giraffeness), Armstrong is a man in a costume who goes around voluntarily doing good deeds. Throwing himself into helpful tasks – such as providing free water and bananas to runners, picking up litter from beaches, and cleaning cages at cats and dogs homes – Armstrong clocks up an impressive number of non-trivial good deeds. Most impressively of all, he reportedly enjoys it.

He comments that doing these good deeds makes him feel ‘happy’ and ‘cheery’ and that this is why he does them. At first glance, this may make us think he is particularly remarkable: he not only goes about investing more time and energy into being helpful than most would reasonably expect of a person, but he also relishes it. But, I want to ask, are people like Armstrong really at the top of the moral ranks? Is there not something about effort – about having to try – that we value?Read More »Armstrong the Good Giraffe and the Moral Value of Effort

A Dyslexic boy in a Trojan horse

‘Come in’, said the Well Known Educational Psychologist. We did. ‘Please sit down’, she said, and we did. She didn’t waste time, and quite right too. We wanted to know.

‘Tom and I have had a very interesting afternoon.’ That sounded bad.

‘He’s a very able child indeed’. That sounded worse, because it came with the emphatic pause that always indicates a big ‘but’.

In the pause I wondered why we’d done this. Why we’d taken a little boy out of the woods and out of his playground to have someone fumble inside his head with blunt tools: indices, probes, inventories, and assumptions about normality.

‘He’s quite dramatically dyslexic, I’m afraid.’ My wife shared her fear. There was a lot of it sloshing around. ‘But his IQ is so high that he’ll be able to use lots of coping strategies. And he’s still very young: there’s lots that can be done.’ And she told us what it was. Regulations could be invoked, tribunals could be convened, cards could be flashed, phonemes could be chanted. He could be imprinted like other children. It would just take longer. It would be hard work, for Tom and for us, but there was every reason to be hopeful of a ‘good result’.

And what the hell did that mean? I asked myself. I was too polite to ask her. I didn’t want a result. I wanted my son.Read More »A Dyslexic boy in a Trojan horse

FGM and the Golden Rule

When Binta Jobe [not her real name] was nine, she was taken into the Gambian bush where she suffered female genital mutilation at the hands of an amateur surgeon without anaesthetic. She is now a 23-year-old asylum seeker in the UK, trying to prevent her three-year-old daughter from a similar experience if she is forcibly returned to the Gambia.Read More »FGM and the Golden Rule

Janet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex

            In the last two centuries, there has been a massive shift in the legal, social and institutional norms surrounding sex – both in terms of women’s rights and regulation of sexual activity.  And, undoubtedly, there will be more such shifts in the future – the sexual norms that emerge in the future may well make even the most strident liberals of today blush.  What to make of this complex and sometimes confusing landscape?  This is the subject of the 2012 Annual Uehiro Lecture Series, entitled ‘Sex in a Shifting Landscape’ and delivered over the next three weeks by Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards.  The first lecture occurred on November 14 (you can listen to the podcast here and here), with two more to follow on November 21 and 28.  Read More »Janet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex

The Bad Seed: Facts and Values in the Study of Childhood Antisocial Behaviour

Podcast of Uehiro Seminar given by Gwen Adshead ‘The Bad Seed’ was a popular 1954 novel in which a well brought up young girl begins to manifest behaviour characteristic of a criminal psychopath. As the plot develops, the girl’s mother discovers that her own mother was a serial killer who was executed when she was herself a… Read More »The Bad Seed: Facts and Values in the Study of Childhood Antisocial Behaviour

Abortion and the Senseless Death of Savita Halappanavar

On Wednesday morning, several media outlets, including the Irish Times, the BBC, and the CBC, reported that Savita Halappanavar, a Hindu woman living in Ireland, had died from blood poisoning after doctors in a Galway hospital refused her request to abort the fetus that she was told she was miscarrying.

We do not yet know all of the facts of the case. Several inquires are being conducted. We do, however, learn this much from media reports. Ms. Halappanavar was 17 weeks pregnant. On October 21, she presented at a hospital in Galway complaining of back pain. Upon examination, she was told that she was having a miscarriage, and that it would soon be over. This did not happen. Instead, her ordeal continued for several more days. After a full day of “severe” pain carrying a child that was certain to die, Ms. Halappanavar asked that her pregnancy be terminated. Physicians were reported to have said that since they were in Ireland and the fetus had a heart beat they could not terminate the pregnancy. (In Ireland, the unborn have a constitutional right to life.) Ms. Halappanavar continued to suffer for a further two and a half more days before her fetus died and was removed from her body. By this time she was quite ill. She was then transferred to an Intensive Care Unit but she did not recover, dying some days later on October 28of complications due to septicaemia (blood poisoning.)Read More »Abortion and the Senseless Death of Savita Halappanavar

This company is employing children? Let’s boycott their products! Or better not?

Picture taken form the Library of Congress

Regularly, media reports reveal that Western companies have children working in their manufactures in Third or Second World countries – may it be for clothing, furniture or, as recently, technical gadgets. Such reports are often followed by people calling for a boycott of the company’s products.

‘Work done by children’ is an extremely broad expression. There is nothing else than to vehemently fight against ‘work’ that goes along with gross abuse like forced labour, prostitution, involvement in drug trafficking, carrying heavy weights or any other activity putting a child’s physical or mental wellbeing in danger.
But also in cases where no such exploitation is taking place, we have good arguments against children doing work. We fear they might be ‘the cheapest to hire, the easiest to fire, and the least likely to protest.’ And we don’t want them to be deprived of the opportunity to get a proper education.
So what should we do if we read media reports about a company employing minors? Even if we don’t know the exact circumstances: joining a boycott of this company’s products can’t be wrong, can it?

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