Julian Sheather is specialist adviser (ethics and human rights), policy directorate, BMA.
So they’ve been at it again, the men in white coats. Putting on their grey beards and playing God, getting the jump on poor old mother nature. There are times when you could almost feel sorry for her. All those pipette-pushers forever tunnelling deeper and deeper into her mysteries. Leave her alone, I can almost […]
In my early twenties I was felled by a bout of mental illness. It started with a panic attack. I was standing on the station at Leamington Spa waiting for a train and shivering slightly in the early autumnal chill when, without warning, a paralysing wave of fear broke over me. The terror that swept […]
It is often said of military planners that they spend their time preparing to fight the last battle, not the next one. The same could be said of regulators. Take research ethics. Recently I was with the WHO in Geneva looking at the regulation of research during health emergencies. The question we were invited to […]
Audiences can be fickle things. Last week I clambered down from my ivory tower and emerged, blinking, onto a brilliantly-lit podium at the Cheltenham Science Festival. The theme of the evening: Playing God – Risk in Surgery. I was on a panel with two surgeons, but my job was to do the ethics. I figured […]
At a certain point in life you start eyeing the word ‘crisis’ suspiciously. Inflationary pressures in the media devalue the linguistic coin and you could be forgiven for thinking that journalists have given up getting out of bed for anything less than a fully fledged catastrophe. But even a troglodyte like me cannot escape a […]
Representations of mental illness are traditionally menaced by two kinds of distortion, distortions that seem to pull in opposing directions. The first, and far the most common, is that the mentally ill are asocial, chaotic and violent, their ungoverned minds unfitting them for ordinary human civility, their dangerous impulses requiring surveillance, confinement and control. […]
What is the definition of a saint? Someone who doesn’t enjoy the downfall of a banker. I know it’s not a new joke – in the original it is the downfall of a best friend, which cuts a little nearer to home – but it seems to survive the retelling. Of late I have had […]
Naomi Campbell is more often associated with toppling heels and fashion-pack tantrums than fundamental clashes in human rights, but as we all know, in our celebrity-strewn culture, fame can be a lightning rod, drawing down great matters on otherwise unremarkable souls. While there may be more moving sights than the gyrations of exposure-hungry models seeking […]
Once upon a long time ago I worked for a small charity that was much concerned with the plight of indigenous peoples. My role in the cause was a small one – it was a summer job photocopying press cuttings and grant applications in a pleasant, high-ceilinged room in a large house in West London […]
The Coroners and Justice Bill is currently in Committee stage in the UK House of Commons. Section 152 of the Bill amends the Data Protection Act. It gives ministers of state the power to enable the sharing of any data that falls within their sphere of responsibility. It defines data sharing as both “the disclosure […]