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 […]
Category: Politics
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 […]
Henrietta Lacks and “Enchanting Rhetoric”
Note: There’s a couple of errors of interpretation in this post. I’m not going to re-write it, because I wrote what I wrote, and it’s in the public domain, and I don’t think it’s all that dignified to pretend that one never makes blunders; it’s better to acknowledge them, take the hit, and move on. […]
Is Bird Flu Research a Security Risk?
A story that has had a little airtime on the news over the last 24 hours or so concerns requests by US officials that details of research into a bird flu variant be held back from publication on the grounds that it might be of use to terrorists: The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommended […]
Smoking in Cars and the BMA: The Counterwheeze
You can tell libertarians from the sound they make: it’s the faint rattle of a tiny intellect untethered in an otherwise empty mind. Cheap and all-too-easy insults aside, though, I’d been wondering how long it’d be, in the wake of the BMA’s recommendation that smoking be banned from cars, before we got a response from […]
Personhood in Mississippi
Phew, I thought, when I heard that Measure 26, the proposal to redefine “personhood” to cover the unborn, had been thrown out by the electorate of Mississippi. To catch up: the prosaically-named piece of legislation would have amend[ed] the Mississippi Constitution to define the word “person” or “persons”, as those terms are used in Article III of […]
Long-Term Care: Dilnot and Justice
Andrew Dilnot’s report into social care is published today; the full document is here, (2.3 Mb) and Dilnot’s covering letter to the Chancellor and Health Secretary is available here. I’ve not had a chance to read the report in any particular detail yet, but one of the most widely talked-about features (since significantly before the […]
Pratchett and Assisted Dying: A Question of Balance?
If you’ve not yet seen “Choosing to Die”, Terry Pratchett’s film about Dignitas from Monday night, I recommend that you go and watch it now. (I don’t know if it’s available outside the UK: I’m sure it’ll appear on YouTube soon, though; or, if you’re outside th UK, get a Brit to download it and […]
Medicine and the Military Covenant
There’s been a lot in the news over the last couple of days about the Military Covenant, and how there’s a plant to give it a legal footing as part of the Armed Forces Bill. Some of the reportage over the weekend suggested that there would be explicit prioritisation for members and ex-members of the […]
Apparently, I Support Slavery
I like the idea of free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare, and if you want to call that a right, that’s fine with me, too. In the world of Tea Party-affliated Republican senator Rand Paul, that means I’m the sort of person who’d support turning up at a physician’s door with the police, and forcing that physician (and all […]