-
Podcast: The Ethics of Infant Male Circumcision
In this talk (audio- MP3 and video -youtube) , Brian D. Earp argues that the non-therapeutic circumcision of infant males is unethical, whether it is performed for reasons of obtaining possible future health benefits, for reasons of cultural transmission, or for reasons of perceived religious obligation. He begins with the premise that it should be considered…
-
Three person IVF
It was announced yesterday that the government is moving towards allowing so-called three person IVF for the creation of embryos free of mitochondrial disease. The mitochondria are tiny organelles in the body of the cell, concerned with important energy functions, and which contain a small amount of DNA. They are present in the egg, but…
-
Ethics In Finance: A New Financial Theory For A Post-Financialized World
On Thursday 30 May, Dr Kara Tan Bhala from University of Kansas treated lecturees at St Cross to a crash course in Modern Finance Theory (MFT) and its limitations. Guiding listeners through weighty acronyms and weightier formulae spiked with Greek alphabetical symbols, she deftly dispatched MFT with the following: that economic agents are non-rational; that…
-
Why pet owners know as much as neuroscientists about animal minds
by Rebecca Roache Follow Rebecca on Twitter There has recently been a spate of news stories about animals grieving. The Huffington Post features a video of a dog burying a dead puppy, New York Daily News reports a dog and a cat mourning the death of a dog, and a video entitled ‘Bella (dog) mourns death of…
-
Podcast:Attention, Action, and Responsibility
On Friday 14 June, Carolyn Dicey Jennings – who is about to take up a post as Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of California, Merced — offered a fascinating Uehiro seminar (mp3) paper on whether action or responsibility require attention.
-
Announcement: New Open Access ‘Journal of Practical Ethics’ Available
We are pleased to announce the first issue of the Journal of Practical Ethics, a new open-access journal in moral and political philosophy (and related areas) published by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics. All the papers are free to read online or download and print. The first issue includes three papers: ‘Associative Duties…
-
What grounds paternal obligations?
Last week, Laurie Shrage caused a bit of a stir on the blogosphere with her controversial article on the Stone, a New York Times philosophy blog, entitled “Is Forced Fatherhood Fair?” In the article, Shrage challenges the prevailing notion that unwilling fathers should be forced by the state to pay child support. This is unfair,…
-
Are cyborgs the future of humanity?
Yesterday’s Observer features two pieces about human enhancement in the prospect of the FutureFest festival in London in September (see here and here). The articles mention Bertolt Meyer, a Swiss man born without a left hand who was recently fitted with a state-of-the-art bionic one (which he controls from his iPhone), and include quotes from well-know…
-
The Permissibility of Refusing the MMR Vaccine and the Issue of Blame
Since November 2012, there have been more than 1,100 cases of measles in the Swansea area. To put these numbers into perspective, in 2011, there were 19 cases of cases of measles in the whole of Wales. Measles can result in pneumonia, loss of hearing, and death. There are concerns that there will be another…
-
Empathy ethics: How to get a lung for your child
By Julian Savulescu & Brian D. Earp [updated version – as of 17 April 2016] Sarah Murnaghan is a 10-year-old from Pennsylvania. Suffering from cystic fibrosis, she was likely to die without a lung transplant. Her situation was deteriorating. But because of a rule that says that children under the age of 12 have the…