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“The medicalization of love” – podcast interview
Just out today is a podcast interview for Smart Drug Smarts between host Jesse Lawler and interviewee Brian D. Earp on “The Medicalization of Love” (title taken from a recent paper with Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu, available from the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, here). Below is the abstract and link to the interview: Abstract What is love? A…
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Drinking at Schiphol with the fount of bioethics
A couple of weeks ago, in an airport bar, I met the foundation of modern bioethics. I was crawling back to London: he was heading to JFK. ‘I usually fly First’, was his opening, as we sat on those vertiginous stools. ‘So I’m usually in the Lounge. But it’s good to be reminded how the…
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Vagueness and Making a Difference
Do you make the world a worse place by purchasing factory-farmed chicken, or by paying for a seat on a transatlantic flight? Do you have moral reason to, and should you, refrain from doing these things? It is very unlikely that any individual act of either of these two sorts would in fact bring about…
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Guest Post: Mental Health Disorders in Prison: Neuroethical and Societal Issues
Guest post by Barbara Sahakian, FMedSci, DSc, a professor in the department of psychiatry at the University of Cambridge, and president of the International Neuroethics Society. This article was originally published on the Dana Foundation Blog, and can be read here: http://danablog.org/2015/07/28/mental-health-disorders-in-prison-neuroethical-and-societal-issues/ More than half of all prison and jail inmates have a mental health problem.[i] In…
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Guest Post: The food environment, obesity, and primary targets of intervention
Written By Johanna Ahola-Launonen University of Helsinki Chronic diseases, their origins, and issues of responsibility are a prevalent topic in current health care ethics and public discussion; and obesity is among one of the most discussed themes. Usually the public discussion has a tendency to assume that when information about health lifestyle choices exist, the…
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Sex and death among the robots: when should we campaign to ban robots?
Today, I noticed two news stories: BBC future reported about the Korean work on killer robots (autonomous gun turrets that can identify, track and attack) and BBC news reported on the formation of a campaign to ban sex robots, clearly mirrored on the existing campaign to stop killer robots. Much of the robot discourse is…
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Behavioral Science, Public Policy, Ethics
The President of the United States has issued an executive order (see here) – government agencies are to use ‘insights’ from behavioral sciences to better serve the American people. In my view this is a good thing. Science is our friend. Obama’s heart is in the right place. Nonetheless, the order raises a number of…
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Judging a person by their friends.
Jim A.C. Everett www.jimaceverett.com In case any readers have been living under a rock for the last few days, the ‘hard-left’ candidate Jeremy Corbyn has been elected Leader of the British Labour Party (see here for the BBC profile on him). Just by his fellow Labour ‘comrades’ (let alone his Conservative opponents), he has been proclaimed…
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Guest Post: Self defence and getting sacked
Written by Dr Nicholas Shackel Cardiff University If you were attacked at a work party you would expect the person who attacked you to get sacked. In this case (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/11846084/London-Zoo-love-rivals-in-vicious-fight-over-llama-keeper.html) it seems to be the person attacked who got sacked, apparently because the boss doesn’t understand the right of self defence.