A Controversial Use of Taxpayer Funds

by Simon Rippon
November 25, 2009January 20, 2011

The health care reform bill currently being debated in the United States has re-ignited controversy there over abortion, and in particular over the availability of federal government funding to pay for the procedure. Earlier this month, the House of Representatives version of the health care bill passed narrowly, and with a last minute amendment that will restrict provision of abortions. The so-called “Stupak amendment” says that no health care plans receiving any subsidy from the federal government may offer abortions, except in the case where abortion is the result of rape, incest, or to save the woman’s life, and it maintains this restriction even if the government subsidies are kept separate from the private payments made into the plans, and no government subsidy is ever used to pay for abortions. The Stupak amendment represents a tightening over existing policy, according to which the federal government is prohibited from directly funding the provision of abortions, but may provide funds for hospitals, for example, that also provide abortions – so long as the hospitals pay for the abortions themselves by some other means.

The argument for Stupak’s additional restrictions on abortion funding is supposed to be that since money is fungible, the old prohibition does not really work to prevent federal funds indirectly playing a role in providing for abortions. Whatever the merits of this argument, it’s worth noting that many of its proponents in congress make it hypocritically; they are more than willing to accept generous campaign contributions drawn from the profits of health insurance companies that provide insurance for abortions as a component of their plans. But I want to focus here on the question of having any restriction of this kind at all. Can the federal government legitimately be prohibited from funding abortion?

Belgian coma confusion

by Neil Levy
November 25, 2009January 11, 2011

By now most readers will have heard about the case of the Belgian man, Rom Houben, apparently misdiagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state for 23 years. Rather than being unconscious, as persistent vegetative state patients are thought to be, he was apparently in the ‘locked-in state’. The locked-in state is not a disorder of consciousness at all; instead it is a state of paralysis. Because the patient is unable to give the behavioral manifestations of consciousness, they are often misdiagnosed. Genuine disorders of consciousness are notoriously hard to tell apart; the possibility of locked-in syndrome makes the diagnostic task even more difficult.

Happiness and the Dragon King

by Practical Ethics
November 24, 2009

By: David Edmonds
As so often, I’m with
King Wangchuck. The former King of
Bhutan, the fourth ‘Dragon King’, coined the term, Gross National Happiness
(GNH).   Governments, he thought, should
aim to boost the nation’s well-being, rather than target Gross National Product
(GNP).   He used the phrase after his
coronation, an event which, unfortunately, his citizens couldn’t follow on the
box – because, until a decade ago, Bhutan didn’t have TV.   The erstwhile King appears a happy man
himself – which may, or may not, be connected to his being married to four
queens.

Is your fingerprint part of you?

by Tom Douglas
November 20, 2009

In a report expressing concern about the increasing use of
biometric information to protect security and privacy, the Irish Council for
Bioethics (ICB) claimed earlier this month that “an individual’s biometric
information is an intrinsic element of that person”. Such claims are quite
commonly made in relation to genetic information, though the ICB’s extension of
the concept to other forms of biological information, such as that acquired from
fingerprinting, voice recognition software, and gait analysis, may be novel.

The claim that biometric information is an ‘intrinsic element of
the person’ seems designed to invoke powerful intuitions about our ownership of
our own body parts: we own our biological information just like we own our
kidneys. Indeed, the ICB go on to say that “the right to bodily integrity…. should
apply not only to an individual’s body, but also to any information derived
from the body, including his/her biometric information”. But both the
metaphysical claim that biometric information is an intrinsic element of the
person,and the moral claim that it is covered by rights to bodily integrity
are highly problematic.

Are some ethicists really really ethical?

by Dominic Wilkinson
November 19, 2009

In this blog recently Simon Rippon discussed the empirical evidence collected by Eric Schwitzgebel that suggests that perhaps ethicists are no more ethical in their behaviour than non-ethicists. A survey of academics in the US reveals that philosophers do not think that their peers specialising in ethics behave any better than those who do not study ethics. Self-described ethicists condemn meat-eating more than their peers, but their actual eating behaviour appears similar to non-ethicists. And, paradoxically, more ethics textbooks appear to go missing from libraries than non-ethics books.

As Simon noted, there are some reasons to avoid jumping from this evidence to the conclusion that the study of normative ethics is of no help in the living of a virtuous and ethical life. But even if we accept that on average ethicists are no better citizens than anyone else, it seems that at least in some cases deliberation about ethical issues leads individuals to make decisions that are highly laudable.

Should Psychiatrists Pray with Their Patients?

by Steve Clarke
November 18, 2009

In a recent interview in the Psychiatric Times (Podcast here: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/display/article/10168/1483619?verify=0) psychiatrist and ethicist Dr. Cynthia Geppert discusses the interesting issue of whether or not it is ethically acceptable for psychiatrists to pray with their patients. Geppert’s discussion is prompted by the case of a patient who had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer and who asked her psychiatrist to join her in prayer. It seems that many patients, particularly at times of crisis, ask their psychiatrists to join them in prayer. Furthermore, it seems that the majority of patients would like their physicians to be willing to pray with them, at least on some occasions.

Is Religion Good or Bad for Society?

by Russell Powell
November 12, 2009

Is Religion Good or Bad for Society?

As part of their promotional tour for the book "Is Christianity Good for the World?”, English-American journalist/prominent atheist Christopher Hitchens, together with American evangelical theologian Douglas Wilson, filmed a series of debates centered around the following question: “Is religion absurd or is it good for the world?” Posed as a disjunction, the question assumes (and by inference, these opposing authors assume) that religion cannot be both absurd, in the colloquial sense of illogical or laughably false, and good for the world, in the sense of furthering what humans rightly value. The fact that religion is absurd does not entail that it is bad for the world, and conversely the fact that a belief system is bad for the world does not imply that it is ill-founded. Even massively fictitious belief systems preoccupied with preternatural worlds can have beneficial social effects, so long as they motivate the right sorts of behaviors in the ‘real’ world. Indeed, this is precisely the claim made by adaptationist theories of religious belief and behavior.

Should parents decide? The case of RB

by Dominic Wilkinson
November 11, 2009

In the Family Court yesterday, a controversial case that has been widely reported in the media came to a premature close. The father of baby RB, a severely physically disabled 13 month-old infant, withdrew his opposition to the plan by RB’s mother and doctors to take him off life support. It is believed that in the near future doctors will stop breathing machines and allow RB to die. The court did not, in the end, make a judgement about this case, though a statement of endorsement by Justice Macfarlane yesterday suggests that it would have reached the same conclusion.

Science, drugs, policy and Hume

by Dominic Wilkinson
November 9, 2009

In this blog last week Anders Sandberg discussed the widely criticised sacking of Professor David Nutt from the government’s advisory council on the misuse of drugs. Professor Nutt had openly criticised government policy, in particular the decision by government to change the classification of cannabis and ecstasy against the advice of the government’s scientific experts. The government claimed that it was not his job to enter the political fray.

In defence of the government, some commentators have sought to distinguish the role of scientists and the role of the politicians. Expert scientists are there to synthesise analyse and present evidence. But politicians have to ultimately decide policy on the basis of values and ethical judgements. Ben Goldacre, writing in the Guardian this weekend replies to this argument by presenting further empirical evidence that is open to scientific enquiry – evidence about the effects of different drug policies on drug use, for example. Goldacre’s argument is that policy questions, as well as medical questions can be assessed scientifically. On this basis, then, perhaps the correct drugs policy can be determined by scientists?

God and Chance

by Roger Crisp
November 8, 2009

As Paul Ewart points out in an interesting recent Guardian article ‘Why God Needs Chance’ —
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/nov/03/god-chance-philosophy-atheism — chance events which result in certain individuals’ suffering undeservedly raise a version of the traditional ‘problem of evil’ for theists. If God, who is meant to be all-good and omnipotent, were to exist, how could he allow such chance events to occur?

Ewart goes on to argue that, if God is indeed to be omnipotent, chance may in fact be required. Here’s how I understand his argument. If the outcomes of our actions were entirely predictable, and we had free will, we could, in theory, force God to act to prevent some bad outcome. ‘So’, Ewart says, ‘God would no longer be in control – his actions would be determined by ours.’ But, because of chance, we can’t in fact predict the outcomes of our actions for sure, so we’re unable to distinguish what would be an act of God from a random event. So God remains omnipotent, because we can’t force him to act.