Apologies for the drop-off in blogging rates recently: I’ve been snowed under with real work and stuff. I – or Søren or David – wi’ll be back on track in the near future. 🙂 […]
Category: Uncategorized
The Anti-Abortion Appropriation of Consent
By far the biggest response that this blog has had came when I had a bit of a rant about Nadine Dorries a couple of weeks ago. I’m back on her case today; she’s the gift that keeps on giving. This video* provides footage of her speech to the Commons on Tuesday night; there’s a transcript available […]
Can you Insure the DNA Dozen?
There’s an interesting piece that’s been floating around some of the newspapers (Telegraph coverage here; The Australian here) over the last few days about the “DNA Dozen” – 11 scientists and one lawyer who’re having their genome published online in order to demystify the process and tame some of the public’s perception. Fair dos to […]
Housekeeping…
The comments moderation system here has changed over the last few days and I don’t know how to work it yet. If a comment you’ve tried to make since about Friday has disappeared, could you let me know via the email address in my profile? I worry about this because we usually get 5 or […]
Pharmaceutical Prohibition: as Successful as Ever
An item on Sky news the other day caught my attention. It concerned a new wave of legal highs being manufactured in China. The thrust of the report is that, in the wake of mephedrone having been banned a few weeks ago, enterprising Chinese chemists are working on a new set of chemicals designed to […]
Latest Statistics on Abortion in England and Wales…
… available here. […]
On the Lack of Socialised Healthcare
It’s very easy for a European to feel very smug about socialised medicine. Maybe the American system isn’t as bad as all that. Maybe we should be a bit more open about its merits. And maybe we should, in the process, ignore cases like that of JoAnn Knutson. Knutson was 72, and had a fall […]
It is official – Ethicists will still be here in 20 years time
The UK government sponsored science web-site for young people Science: [So what? So everything] has paid some futurologists to come up with 20 new jobs that will exist in 20 years time. Among the nano-medics and avatar managers you can also find the ‘New science’ ethicist’ described in the following way: “‘New science’ ethicist As […]
This may be the last post I ever make on this blog…
Saturday morning, 30th January 2010, I – along with many other people – will be taking a massive overdose. As it happens, I’ll be doing so in a seminar room at the Wellcome Trust, so there will probably be lots of medical sorts nearby. I’ll tell them not to intervene. I may even encourage them to […]
Obituary – Dr Jennifer Gunning
It is with great sorrow that I bring you news of the death of Dr Jennifer Gunning last week. Jenny was my colleague for more than 5 years at Cardiff University and was instrumental in setting up the Cardiff Centre for Ethics, Law and Society (CCELS). Jenny was educated as a structural biologist and later went […]