The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has recently published a consultation paper entitled Give and Take? Human Bodies in Medicine and Research: https://consultation.nuffieldbioethics.org/fileLibrary/pdf/Human_bodies_in_medicine_and_research_consultation_paper.pdf The paper seeks responses from individuals or groups on a wide range of issues relating to the use of human bodies or body parts in medical treatment and research. Section 6 is on… Read More »For Sale: Body Parts?
Two abortion bills passed by the Oklahoma legislature made the headlines recently. The first of these bills requires a doctor to force a patient seeking for an abortion to first undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of the foetus while having the ultrasound monitor in front of her. The second bill prevents women who gave birth to a handicapped child to sue the doctor who purposely refused to provide her information about the foetus defects, fearing that this information would induce the pregnant woman to terminate the pregnancy.
Read More »Oklahoma pro-life measures: preventing abortions and promoting sadism
A controversial US-based charity that pays drug addicts to undergo sterilisation or long-term contraception has recently opened for business in the UK. Project Prevention pays drug users $300 if they provide a medical certificate of drug dependency and another certifying that they have had tubal ligation, vasectomy or a contraceptive implant. The founder of the charity points to the significant physical and psychological problems in children born to drug-using parents. Noone would deny that it would be good to avoid these problems. Drug counselling often includes advice about contraception, and encouragement of those who are interested to take up options including long term contraception or sterilisation – we don’t think that that is a particular problem. So what is wrong with Project Prevention?
Read More »Embrace the controversy: let’s offer Project Prevention on the NHS
A relationship counsellor, Gary McFarlane, 48, in Bristol was sacked in 2008 for refusing to provide sex therapy to a gay couple. He took action against his former employer, Relate Avon, arguing that it had failed to accommodate his Christian beliefs. He lost, appealed and his appeal has just been turned down by the High Court.… Read More »The end of conscientious objection?
In mid-April the airports of most major cities in Europe were closed for the better part of a week as a response to the presence of the volcanic ash cloud that spread over Europe as a consequence of the eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano in Iceland. The decision to allow planes to start flying again is sometimes portrayed as being a result of a reduction of the density of ash over European skies. However, this is only a small part of the story. The crucial decision that allowed planes to start flying appears to have been a decision to set a safe level of volcanic ash, something that the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) did not do until 20 April, several days after its advice had led to the closure of most of European airspace (See: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/apr/21/airlines-flights-ban-airspace).
It might seem incredible to many that the decision to close airports across Europe was made without any reference to a safe level of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. If we do not know what a safe level for flying is then how do we know whether we have crossed it or not? However, this will not surprise those of us who are familiar with the thinking that underpins much contemporary risk management, particularly in Europe. Broadly speaking there are two approaches to risk management that are commonly taken. One approach is to employ ‘cost-benefit analysis’. Under this approach one considers the risks of a particular course of action as well as the potential benefits of that course of action and attempts to weigh these. The course of action evaluated is then compared with alternative courses of action and the one with the most advantageous balance of costs versus benefits is selected. The other approach is to apply the ‘precautionary principle’. There are many different versions of the precautionary principle, however, the guiding idea behind it is that we should be ‘better safe than sorry’. In other words, we are to make decision about whether to bear significant risks or not without giving full consideration to the potential benefits that may result from us bearing those risks, focusing our attention on the potential for harm.
Read More »Did Eyjafjallajokull Kill the Precautionary Principle?
Stephen Hawking made some headlines when he recently argued that although it’s highly probable that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, it would be a grave mistake to try to actively try to establish contact with other intelligent beings. Reflection on our own history, on how European explorers dealt with technologically less advanced cultures they encountered, suggests that an encounter with technologically superior alien is likely to lead to a catastrophic outcome to us humans. So we should keep a low profile: enthusiastically sending signals to outer space (including statements by Kurt Waldheim!) is fatally foolish, and is also embarrassing, as it casts some doubt on our claim to be an intelligent life form.
Read More »What intelligent alien life can tell us about morality
By: Julian Savulescu
Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge physicist, has recently argued, in a Discovery channel documentary, that alien life forms probably exist somewhere in the Universe, but we should avoid contact with them. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8642558.stm). His reason is, apparently, that if they are anything like humans, they are likely to be aggressive and either exterminate us or pillage our resources.
"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet."
Kathleen
Taylor has got an interesting recent piece in the Guardian about the importance
of the emotion of disgust for our moral lives. “If you had a dog”, she asks,
“and it died a natural death, how would you feel about roasting and eating it?”
Most of us would be revulsed by such an idea. And yet by hypothesis we
would not be causing the dog any harm whatsoever; suppose also we made sure
that the meat was adequately prepared so that it did not pose a health risk to
us and our children. Why should eating the dog raise any moral issue at all?
The prospect of a hung parliament following the upcoming election has raised several interesting ethical issues. One such issue which has been discussed is what are the responsibilities of the party which holds the balance of power? Should members of that party support the party holding the majority of votes or follow their own party… Read More »Political Responsibility
A ruling by the Information Commissioner has ordered scientists at Queen’s University in Belfast to hand over copies of 40 years of research data on tree rings after a long battle with a climate sceptic. (PDF of the ruling) This is an important precedent for scientists, who have to comply with the strictest interpretation of the
Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. According to the Times: "Phil Willis, a Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the Science and
Technology Select Committee, said that scientists now needed to work on
the presumption that if research is publicly funded, the data ought to
be made publicly available." More and more, there are demands for public releases of research data.
Were the scientists right in trying to withhold data, or is the public interest stronger? Is there a moral obligation to publish not just the results of publicly funded research, but the underlying data?
