Two slightly curious stories about drugs and sex. Or, rather, two stories about drugs and sex curiously juxtaposed. First, this story from Sunday’s Independent was inspired by this paper in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. Quite how much weight we should put on the JSM‘s paper is a moot point – it’s a case study involving one […]
Latest articles
Vaccination, and Policies for Enforcement
Rob Crilly reported in the Telegraph a couple of days ago that Pakistan is to pursue a policy of fining people who do not have their children vaccinated against polio. Now, at the time I write this, I can’t find this story or anything like it replicated elsewhere – Dawn, which is Pakistan’s biggest English-language […]
A Small Solution for a Big Problem?
BioNews asked me to write something about Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg and Rebacca Roache’s paper on engineering humanity to minimise global warming. I’d been meaning to for a while, so this was the prod I needed. Anyway: my take on their paper is here; but I thought I’d also reproduce it on this blog. What […]
Cancer drugs and magic money fountains of youth
The McMillian Cancer trust has published a report described on the radio as I drove to Manchester this morning as a damming and shameful report about the NHS and discrimination. The report alleges that more than 14 thousand elderly cancer sufferers are allowed to die in the UK because of age based discrimination. […]
Raised Glasses to Raised Prices?
The proposal that there should be a minimum 40p/ unit price for alcohol, announced last week, has been broadly welcomed. Not universally, but broadly. There has been some dissent – but, by and large, it doesn’t seem to have been particularly vocal. From a ethicist’s perspective, the objection that we might expect to hear articulated […]
Matters of Principlism
There’s a short paper in the latest JME about which I’ve been meaning to write something for a while – ever since I noticed it as a pre-pub: William Muirhead’s “When Four Principles are Too Many”. (Raa Gillon provides a commentary here.) Anyone who’s ever heard me talk professionally for longer than about 35 seconds […]
How Abortion Law Works in Texas
Remember a little while ago there was a rash of proposals in the US that’d force women to see a sonogram of the foetus, or to listen to detailed descriptions of it, before having an abortion? Yeah: them. Well, via Ophelia, here’s an account of what really happens. Halfway through my pregnancy, I learned that […]
We’re Back!
Just a quick housekeeping post: the servers fell over a couple of days ago, so noone has been able to moderate – or, as far as I can tell, submit – comments. But hopefully things’re back on track now. There has been a couple of changes, though: I have a feeling that the comments whitelist […]
Unlocking the Right to Die?
It’s just been reported that Tony Nicklinson has won the right to have his right to die case heard before the courts. This is the result of a hearing in which the Ministry of Justice’s contention was that any such case would potentially re-write the murder laws, and that this is a matter for Parliament, […]
JOB: Research Fellow in Bioethics/ Philosophy
School of Health and Population Sciences/ College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham This post was created as a result of securing funds under the EU FP7 security call for collaborative research project SURVEILLE (Surveillance: Ethical Issues, Legal Limitations and Efficiency). In brief, SURVEILLE is a multidisciplinary project combining law, ethics, sociology and […]