An area of research with which I’ve been toying for quite a long time now is to try to provide an answer to the question “What are doctors for?”. (Admittedly, the possibility of a cheap’n’nasty Heidegger pun in the title, Wozu Doktor?, has a reasonably high place in the list of the project’s attractions… Ho-hum. It’s […]
Month: October 2008
Bioethics Briefing Book
The Hastings Center has produced Birth to Death and Bench to Clinic: The Hastings Center Bioethics Briefing Book for Journalists, Policymakers, and Campaigns It contains 36 overviews of issues in bioethics of high public interest, such as abortion, health care reform, human and sports enhancement, organ transplantation, personalized medicine, medical error, and stem cells. The […]
And the language of bioethics is… ?
Going to conferences can often be a frustrating experience. Going may be good for refreshing your academic network but there is rarely any deep discussion of the topics on the agenda and many of the presentations are to be blunt rather boring. I therefore count myself very lucky to have attended 3 interesting conferences within […]
Is there a gene for vivid imaginations?
I only ask because of some of the stuff that’s been suggested in relation to the debates surrounding embryo research that’re currently going on in the UK parliament – of which this example has to be one of the best I’ve seen for a long time. WARNING: I suppose that I ought to add a warning that the link […]
It’s oh-so Quiet…
As some of you may have heard, Wired magazine is suggesting that the age of the blog may already be over. And the level of activity here over the past couple of weeks may have lent credence to that supposition. Full service will be resumed soon – it just seems like Søren, David and I are […]
Death and palliation – thoughts on Purdy.
A letter in The Times today considers the duty of doctors to ease the dying process, in the light of the Debbie Purdy case. Dr MS Ali wonders why “people like Debbie Purdy and others have to fear that they will not get the necessary assistance from the medical profession to relieve their suffering […]
A fishy affair
By David Hunter Writing in his usual uncompromising style Ben Goldacre describes the latest carry-ons in the “trial” carried out in Durham by the Council on whether fish oils improve GCSE performance: You’ll remember the Durham fish oil “trial” story, possibly the greatest example of scientific incompetence ever documented from a local authority. Initially they […]
The ethics of abortion – De ja vue or necessary debate?
This summer I realised with some horror that it was 20 years ago I first presented a paper at an international medical ethics conference while still being a medical student. That paper was on who should control the fate of aborted foetuses and the paper I gave the year after at the same conference was […]
Hot on the newsstands…
The latest JME is out today… and I’d just like to draw everyone’s attention to the paper on facial allograft transplantation by Ben White and some random bloke who needs a haircut. This isn’t because I had anything to do with it, but because (a) it’s very good, and (b) it’s based on Ben’s dissertation […]