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Democracy and false information: some bad news
A recent study by Nyhan and Reifler has received quite a bit of attention recently. The study aimed to assess how people’s beliefs change in response to evidence. The researchers gave participants mock news stories which contained mistakes (for example, they claimed that WMDs had been found in Iraq). They also included in some versions
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Facilitating, Condoning, and Preventing HIV
The Eighteenth International AIDS Conference is currently underway in Vienna, and one of the issues that has been under discussion is how to reduce HIV transmission within the various at-risk groups. One such group is the prison population, among whom HIV transmission occurs due to both illicit sexual activity and intravenous drug abuse. But prison
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Performance Enhancement – Athletes are Victims not Delinquents
As an elite sportsperson you’ve almost no opportunity to defend yourself against the prevailing key-players in the sports-industry system, especially in the case of doping. Otherwise you’re going to risk your career or even your status as a moral competitor. In the following lines, I’ll try to explain my position by disclosing the maladministration and…
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Greeks and geeks
At Harvard Medical School someone is screaming, reports the Boston Globe. ‘Death!’, he shrieks, ‘Why after all these years have you not appeared?’ He begs for euthanasia, tormented by his pain. Medical students listen to him. His lines were written by Sophocles, and the students are listening because they have to: it is part of
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Between Life and Death…
A powerful BBC documentary, “Between Life and Death”, screened this evening on BBC One. The documentary (which can be viewed online for the next week in the UK) examined the life and death decisions made for critically ill patients with severe brain injury. Neuro-intensive care provides a way to interrupt the process of dying for
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The Age of the Genome – on BBC radio tomorrow night
Genetic tests at birth, designer babies, synthetic life and resurrected mammoths. In the final part of this series, Richard Dawkins talks to Craig Venter and other leading scientists about the potential powers of genome science in the future. The program also includes an interview with Julian Savulescu and others about the ethical implications of these
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Artificial Performance Enhancement in Sports – Are we Overreacting?
Elite athletes are a kind of mirror for society, but simultaneously a role model for the young generation. According to the general opinion, being the one looking-up to implies a certain level of moral behaviour. Therefore cheating by abusing performance enhancing substances in sport is obviously a matter of social irresponsibility. Is that really the…
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The Costs of a Right to Demand Treatment
by Bridget Williams Who has the right to decide when life prolonging treatment should be withdrawn? Should doctors have the right to refuse to use costly and scarce resources to continue to treat a permanently unconscious, dying man? Is there a limit to the medical resources we can reasonably claim for ourselves and our families
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Special Guest Blog – The problem of militarism
by Tony Coady Israel’s decision to institute an inquiry into the military misadventure with the flotilla attempting to break its blockade of Gaza and its subsequent partial relaxation of restrictions on aid to Gaza represent grudging concessions to international outrage about the flotilla episode. Any recognition by Israel that its military policies are offensive to
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Critical Care ethics series – the ethics of maxiple pregnancies
by Dominic Wilkinson Quads, Quins, Sexts, Septs, even Octs! High order multiple pregnancies such as the Suleman octuplets in California generate enormous media attention. However, they also raise some unique ethical questions. In the second of a series of seminars on critical care ethics, the neonatal grand round today looked at ethical questions arising from