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Physician Assisted Suicide and the Conflict Between Autonomy and Non-Maleficence

Physician Assisted Suicide and the Conflict Between Autonomy and Non-Maleficence

In the run-up to the 6th November ballot in Massachussets concerning the prescription of medication to end life, two prominent US physicians, Dr. Ronald Pies and Dr. John Grohol, have been debating the pros and cons of physician assisted suicide (PAS). In his article, Dr Ronald Pies argues against the legalisation of PAS, claiming in the title of his essay that “medical ethics must sometimes trump patient choice”. Although Pies’ acknowledges that respect for autonomy is one of the four cardinal principles in medical ethics, he goes on to claim that “. . . medical ethics must set limits on a patient’s autonomous requests” in the light of another of these cardinal principles, namely the principle of non-maleficence. What are we to make of this claim?Read More »Physician Assisted Suicide and the Conflict Between Autonomy and Non-Maleficence

A Tale of a Designer Baby and Distributive Injustice

Melissa and Brad’s story is a heart wrenching one. Having to sell the family car in order to have a healthy baby.

From the government’s perspective, this is a bizarre situation. The care of a baby born with cystic fibrosis can cost over half a million dollars or more. Melissa and Brad both saved the government, and all of us, quite a lot, perhaps over half a million dollars. Yet they had to spend tens of thousands of dollars. They have, in effect, donated several hundred thousand dollars to the Australian public. Thanks Melissa and Brad.

This situation is profoundly immoral. People should have children born without disabling genetic disorders and they should be given support and encouragement to do so. If someone said to a person having IVF, “ We have two viable embryos, one is healthy and the other has a major disease. Would you like us to flip a coin, choose the healthy one or choose the one with the disease?” What should you do? What is the right thing to do?

Read More »A Tale of a Designer Baby and Distributive Injustice

Designer Babies

Tonight at 8.30 p.m. Australian Time, SBS will be airing a show on Deisgner Babies. I’ll be live tweeting during the show, and in the meantime, here are a few links to some opinion pieces, media and papers I’ve written on the topic. To join the live tweeting, use the hashtag #insightSBS Recent Opinion Pieces… Read More »Designer Babies

Why strongly encouraging or legally enforcing bike helmets is not necesserily a good idea

In Australia and New Zealand wearing bike helmets is compulsory. In the United States, bike helmets are strongly promoted. The message in these countries is clear – not wearing a bike helmet is stupid because it can significantly damage your health. The stigma attached to cycling without a helmet may even be comparable to that… Read More »Why strongly encouraging or legally enforcing bike helmets is not necesserily a good idea

Yamanaka Wins Nobel Prize for Ethics

by Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics & Director, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Yamaka and Gurdon have jointly won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent: that is, already specialized cells can be taken, and using iPS technology, transformed into unspecialized stem cells, which can be used for research and treatment. This technology may ultimately allow us to replace embryonic stem cells entirely in research and treatment thus avoiding ethical issues raised by the destruction of embryos for this purpose.

This is not only a giant leap for science, it is a giant leap for mankind. Yamanaka and Gurdon have shown how science can be done ethically. Yamanaka has taken people’s ethical concerns seriously about embryo research and modified the trajectory of research into a path that is acceptable for all. He deserves not only a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but a Nobel Prize for Ethics.

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Should you be prosecuted for feeding junk food to your child?

 By Charles Foster

Fast food permanently reduces children’s IQ, a recent and unsurprising study reports.

What should be done? The answer is ethically and legally simple. Parents who feed their children junk food, knowing of the attendant risks, are child-abusers, and should be prosecuted. If you hit a child, bruising it, you are guilty of a criminal offence. A bruise on a child’s leg is of far less lasting significance than the brain damage produced by requiring a child to ingest toxic junk. A child injured by a negligent or malicious parent can also bring civil proceedings against the parent.

The findings of the recent study mirror those in other jurisdictions. And now that they have been widely disseminated it will be hard for parents to plead ignorance.Read More »Should you be prosecuted for feeding junk food to your child?

What is the chance of an MP being wrong?

When MPs took a maths exam it showed that the members of parliament are pretty bad at elementary probability. When asked “if you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?” 47% of conservatives and 77% of the Labour MPs gave the wrong answer. About 75% of the MPs felt confident when dealing with numbers, although they generally though politicians did not use official statistics and figures correctly when talking policy.

How should a rational person react to this news?

Read More »What is the chance of an MP being wrong?

Banning conversion therapies

The Governor of California, Jerry Brown, has signed a Bill that will ban ‘conversion’ or ‘reparative’ therapies in that State. These are interventions that aim at ‘curing’ homosexuality or at least, controlling homosexual desires. There have been reported cases of exorcisms, shock treatment and aversive therapies not unlike those that were used in Stanley Kubrick and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.Read More »Banning conversion therapies

Driving Crazy

There has been discussion on a Polish news site about an extreme case of reckless driving. The discussion is not about the driver – his culpability and stupidity are in no doubt – rather, the discussion is about whether the passengers in the car should be punished in some way for the role they played; their role not only in failing to calm the driver and his driving, but most importantly in their active and enthusiastic encouragement of him and it.

The video of the drive, taken from within the car and uploaded to YouTube, shows five and a half minutes of speeding through red lights, overtaking despite oncoming traffic, using the curb as a ramp to ‘get air’ and, most disturbingly, only narrowly missing a pedestrian crossing the road. All this is accompanied by encouraging whoops and shouts and exclamations of “Karol, you are my God!” (Karol is the driver.) The passengers clearly want – and ask – Karol to take more and more risks.Read More »Driving Crazy