Julian Sheather is specialist adviser (ethics and human rights), policy directorate, BMA.
I recently happened upon a fascinating article by Ben Goldacre – he of Bad science fame – on the ticklish question of the provision of pornography at IVF clinics to enable men, how shall we put it, to provide a suitably lively sample on the day. It seems that that most upstanding of organs The […]
Slouching around the internet recently I happened upon an article with a title that intrigued me – and one that I have shamelessly stolen for this blog. Where once the mentally troubled went to enormous lengths to avoid a diagnosis of mental illness, today some of us are actively seeking it, or seeking one diagnosis […]
Early on in my ‘career’ in ethics – I put the word in scare quotes not only because the idea that my rather shapeless crashing about should be dignified with the name ‘career’ makes me chuckle, but also because the idea of a career in ethics itself has always felt like a category error – […]
Synchronicity. The meaningful coincidence of causally unrelated events. It was the Swiss psychologist and all round weaver of the wind Carl Jung who coined the word. […]
It’s an odd question I know, but bear with me. It was prompted by a book I picked up again recently, “Open Skies,” a collection of Somerset landscapes by the war photographer Don McCullin. McCullin is arguably the best known war photographer of his generation, and has taken some of that generation’s most iconic war […]
Near universal consensus then that we are in the grip of a public health disaster. Daily the evidence mounts: obesity, smoking, alcohol abuse, our very lives are killing us. And how insurmountable the problems seem, how high the hurdles. Massive corporations – the food, tobacco and drinks manufacturers – are ranged against us, saturating our […]
Difficult cases may make bad law, but they can also be a powerful stimulus for thought. A problem may be a candle, as the French writer Paul Valéry put it, but an insurmountable problem is a sun. The Hastings Center, a leading US bioethics think tank, recently posted a legal case that asks ferociously difficult […]
With considerable media fanfare the BMA has declared its opposition to the NHS providing homeopathic remedies. Not entirely a surprise, given the BMA’s explicit support for evidence-based medicine. The consensus seems to be that in so far as homeopathy works it works because of the placebo effect. In brief, patients who anticipate benefits from a […]
And so scientists have succeeded in creating life in a test-tube. Hey ho. Another day, another biotech Rubicon behind us. But before we finally succumb to miracle fatigue it might be worth holding that fact in our hands for a while and wondering what it might mean. […]
Reader I am not a shrinking violet, not a wuss or a whimp. When friends seek to describe me, pusillanimous is not the first adjective they choose. For all its many faults I have a mind and I tend to speak it. So why oh why am I still frightened of doctors? […]