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The root cause

The root cause

On April 16 2007  a solitary gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, killed 32 of his fellow students at Virginia Tech, and injured many more http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/index.html .  This came to mind again as I was listening to Radio 4’s Any Questions last Friday, when a questioner referring to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai asked whether we could ever put a stop to extremist violence.  In the subsequent debate difference of opinion began to appear between the panellists who spoke about the need for security and intelligence gathering and military operation, and Caroline Lucas of the Green Party who insisted that terrorism could never be ended by these means, and said several times that we needed to get to the root cause of the problem.  In starting to identify these root causes she mentioned the Palestinian situation, and the widespread feeling among Muslims that the so-called war on terror was really a war of the West against Islam.  (You can check the detail by going to the BBC i-player: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/ .)

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To Leak or Not to Leak?

Last Thursday, anti-terrorism police in the UK arrested the opposition minister for immigration, Damian Green (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/29/whitehall-damian-green-civil-servant). He is suspected by the police of ‘conspiracy to commit misconduct in public life’, having published documents leaked to him by a junior civil servant. That official was himself arrested on 19 November, and has been suspended from duty. We should expect that many other such officials are now asking themselves whether, if they come across some document which they believe is a matter of public interest, they should leak it.

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Universal AIDS testing: should we save the many at the cost of harm to the few?

In a paper published in the Lancet yesterday, a group of WHO scientists
have suggested that a radical change to HIV testing would be necessary
to combat the epidemic. The authors published details of a mathematical
model of “universal voluntary testing” and early drug treatment of all
those found to have HIV in a country with HIV levels similar to those
present in Southern Africa. They present striking and provocative
evidence that this approach could reduce dramatically the incidence and
mortality from HIV within a fairly short period. The major ethical
question raised in response to their proposal is whether such a
strategy would violate the rights of individuals, and impose harms on
them in order to secure greater benefits for others.

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The Future of Making Organs for Self-Transplantation

Scientists have been able to create a new windpipe using stem cells. They took a windpipe from a dead patient, removed all the cells, and placed stem cells from a patient onto the remaining scaffolding to create what was in effect a new windpipe, with the patient’s own cells. The patient had an irreparably damaged her windpipe from TB.

The significance of this is that it opens the door to creating whole organs, like kidneys, livers and perhaps even hearts and lungs. This is a radical advance because up until now, stem cells have only really been useful to replace tissue, or bits of the body without a complex organized structure. But this means we could potentially replace any part of the body with a person’s own stem cells. New livers for people with liver failure, new kidneys from those with kidney failure – and because the cells would come from the patient, there would be no rejection. Indeed, this patient has shown no signs of rejection.

Does this raise any ethical issues?

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Status quo bias and presumed consent for organ donation

Yesterday the UK organ donation taskforce released its report on a
presumed consent (opt-out) system for organ donation. To the
consternation of the chief medical officer and the Prime Minister the
taskforce advised against the introduction into the UK of such a system.

In an editorial in today’s Guardian, it was observed that both the low
rates of consent in the UK – and the taskforce’s response to the
question of presumed consent may represent an irrational preference for
the default position. They may both be examples of the status quo bias.

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Animal experimentation: morally acceptable, or just the way things always have been?

Following
the announcement last week that Oxford University’s controversial Biomedical
Sciences building
is now complete and will be open for business in mid-2009, the ethical issues
surrounding the use of animals for scientific experimentation have been
revisited in the media—see, for example, here ,
here,
and here.

The number
of animals used per year in scientific experiments worldwide has been estimated
at 200 million—well in excess of the population of Brazil and over three times that of the United Kingdom. If we take the importance of an ethical issue
to depend in part on how many subjects it affects, then, the ethics of animal
experimentation at the very least warrants consideration alongside some of the
most important issues in this country today, and arguably exceeds them in
importance. So, what is being done to address
this issue?

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Reliably sinful – how to maximise profit

Even in these changing times it would appear some things stay the same. One example would be our insatiable appetite for vice. Indeed, given the bleak financial situation the demand for a bit of instant gratification might well be on the increase. This is the business idea behind the Vice Fund and other similar enterprises. The perpetual flux aside, alcohol, gambling, cigarettes and arms never seem to go out of fashion. Some financial analysts say that as the demand for this type of products is comparatively stable and less sensitive to recession an investment portfolio consisting of ‘unethical stocks’ will fare better than its ethical counterpart. This idea is neatly illustrated in the catchphrase of the US based Vice Fund “When it’s good, it’s very, very good …and when it’s bad it’s better”.

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