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The Telegraphs proclaims that Anti-ageing drugs 'will fuel euthanasia'. The origin of the story was a lecture by Dr David Gems at UCL. He pointed out that if people were to live much longer healthy lives more would choose to end them themselves, and that centralized control of birthrates might become necessary. Francis Fukuyama argued at a conference in Aarhus last week that life extension also implies problems with age graded hierarchies and generational turnover. Some people, like Fukuyama, find these potential social consequences serious enough that life extension research should be discouraged. But are they strong enough?
We encourage readers of our blog, including those who do not have a background in philosophy or ethics, to respond to posts and to engage in debate with our authors, and with each other. Comments should be polite, concise and relevant to the topic. Authors will respond to comments where possible, though may not respond… Read More »Comments policy
Ilina Singh and colleagues argue that the use of drugs such as Ritalin among young people is becoming so common that family doctors should be able to prescribe them as study aids to school pupils aged under 18.(1)
While the Guardian article rather cherry-picks from the range of Singh’s arguments in her original article, I have made broadly similar arguments to those in the Guardian article supporting cognitive enhancement myself (see here for a selection on enhancement).
However, one might ask whether the prescription of enhancement for young children who are incapable of consenting for themselves raises unique issues.
Read More »How to Prescribe Smart Drugs to Children Ethically
Politics is the art of compromise, but rarely has compromise been so necessary a political virtue in Britain as it is today.
Very soon we’ll know who’s done a deal with whom. The Liberal Democrats are the king-makers: ultimately they’ll decide whether to prop up a Tory or a Labour-led government. Let us be exceptionally generous and take the politicians at their word: let’s assume that what’s currently weighing on their minds is not personal interest, or party interest, but national interest. They may disagree about what constitutes the national interest, and how it is best achieved, but they agree that it’s what really matters.
Political and moral theory has a lot to say about compromise. And one character it’s worth remembering is George.
by Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu
There are 8000 patients on transplant waiting lists in the UK. Every year 400 patients die while waiting for an organ to come available.
We are all far more likely to be in need of an organ transplant than to be a donor. Most of us expect that if we needed a transplant that someone would donate one. On the basis of the ethical golden rule – do unto others as you would want them to do for you, we should all think seriously about whether and how we could donate our organs if we no longer need them.
There is
a shrill, unpleasant new sound in the UK church. It is the sound of
conservative Christians saying that they are persecuted. It’s the voice of a
minority. And as Rowan Williams trenchantly observed: ‘The Church of England is
like a swimming pool: all the noise comes from the shallow end.’ The claim of
persecution is an insult to the vast numbers of Christians in the world who really
are persecuted. Please read the Bible and the history books before going on
prime time TV to say that you’re persecuted.
Tomorrow will see the closest election in the UK for many years and there is considerable debate about whether tactical voting is acceptable (see here, here, here). This is a particularly big issue this election as the Liberal Democrats (the UK's third largest party) have had a significant rise in popularity and the vote looks to be split fairly evenly among the three parties. A three-party race causes significant problems for the 'first past the post' voting system used in the UK and the US, as it means that a party can win a seat even if 60% or 70% of the people in the seat think that it is the worst option. For example, suppose that a seat has the vote split as follows:
40% — Conservatives
38% – Liberal Democrats
22% – Labour
The Conservatives would win this seat even if they were the third choice of all the Liberal Democrat and Labour voters. In such a case, the Labour supporters might realise that they have relatively little chance of winning and that they can avoid a worst-case scenario by voting Liberal Democrat. Voting for a party that is not your preferred party is known as tactical voting and is quite contentious.
Is it wrong for documentary film makers to film intimate moments in the lives of non-human animals? David Attenborough has used fibroptic cameras to obtain views of the inside of a platypus’ nest, providing never-before-seen images of the birth and feeding of a newborn platypus. But imagine that he had used similar technology to obtain pictures from a human home birth, or to take pictures of copulating couples in their homes? Brett Mills, a lecturer in television studies at the University of East Anglia has controversially suggested that animals may have a right to privacy that is breached by filming them without their consent.
Dominic is right thataddicts are competent to decide on sponsored sterilisation. I have argued that addicts can be autonomous and can consent to research trials involving drugs of addiction (Foddy, B., Savulescu, J.. (2006). ‘Addiction and Autonomy: Can Addicted People Consent to the Prescription of Their Drug of Addiction?’ Bioethics. 20 (1): 1-15 (Feb). DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8519.2006.00470.x). I have also argued that paying people large amounts of money to participate in risky experiments does not coerce them or unreasonably induce them (Savulescu, J. (2001) ‘Taking the Plunge’. New Scientist; 169:50) and elsewhere that it is reasonable to offer people money for their organs – the only real ethical issue being to settle on a fair minimum price.
So there is nothing intrinsically wrong with offering addicts money to be sterilised. The only issue is – why stop at addicts? The principle behind this would seem to be that addicts are unfit to parent. But what about paedophiles, the mentally ill, or intellectually disabled? It is hard to see how the principle would not extend to a form of passive eugenics, like what the Nazis imposed in more extreme forms.
The obvious way to avoid this is to offer the inducement to everyone. This has the lovely consequence that those who don’t really want to or value parenting would take the money. And they are not likely to be any more model parents that addicts are.
Read More »Response to Embrace the controversy: let’s offer Project Prevention on the NHS
