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Bagging the bag
Last month Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced that the British Government intended to compel supermarkets to charge customers for plastic bags. The Australian Government has threatened to take the attack on plastic bags even further. Late last year the new Australian Labor Government pledged to phase out plastic bag usage altogether. However, they have been
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The Transparency of Clinical Trials
An article in the current issue of Science examines the extent to which new policies regarding the governance of clinical trials promote transparency. It goes on to suggest further issues that remain unaddressed and require attention. The authors suggest that recent policy changes have improved the extent of public access to clinical trial data. In
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Methuselah’s planet: the population cost of longer life
Ageing is a mysterious process. There is a good deal of ongoing research aimed at trying to understand its biological cause, though much remains unknown. But should we try to make our lives longer? In an era of increasing environmental awareness, when the costs of human overpopulation are all too clear it might be argued…
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Placebos as cognitive enhancers?
A recent study on the efficacy of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) – antidepressants like Prozac – has been widely reported in the media. Unfortunately it has not been reported very well. Headlines like ‘Antidepressant drugs don’t work’ (The Independent) are misleading. What the study actually found is that the efficacy of SSRIs varies with
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Doublethink and double effect; donation after cardiac death
The case of Ruben Navarro is a tragedy on multiple levels. A young man’s death was prolonged, his mother’s desire that his organs be available to save other’s lives went unfulfilled, a number of people continue to wait on transplant lists for want of available organs, or have died waiting. And confusion about permissible intentions…
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The Transplant Case in Real Life
Philosophers have long debated about the moral permissibility of Transplant Cases such as the following one presented by Philippa Foot: A brilliant transplant surgeon has five patients, each in need of a different organ, each of whom will die without that organ. Unfortunately, there are no organs available to perform any of these five transplant
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Changing the Building Blocks of Life: Playing God and Being gods
All life on earth has the same simple basic structure. It is based on the genetic code contained in DNA. The differences in DNA between a toad and Albert Einstein are what determines their different properties. The active ingredients in DNA are also simple. They are 4 bases: cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine, or A,
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Stairlifts, wheelchairs, and radium-powered toasters
With life expectancy steadily increasing, and frequent talk of a ‘pensions timebomb’, it is unsurprising that the government feels the need to introduce measures to protect people from a bleak old age. Tackling the problem by legislating old-age-friendly features into new homes, however, seems surprisingly naïve, for several reasons.
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Come Mr Branson Mon, Tally me Biofuel
A Virgin Atlantic flight between Heathrow airport London and Schiphol airport in the Netherlands made history yesterday, becoming the first commercial flight to be partly powered by biofuel. While three of the 747s tanks contained conventional fuel the fourth contained 20% biofuel. The biofuel was a mix of babassu oil and coconut oil. The Guardian
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Neuro-babble
A study published in this week’s issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience finds that including irrelevant neuroscientific information in an explanation can make people more likely to believe that explanation. Three groups of subjects – neuroscience ‘novices’, neuroscience students, and neuroscience experts – were given descriptions of psychological phenomena followed by one of the