Keith Taylor Tayler (sorry!), in a reply to the Purdy post below, raises the question of why journals are so expensive and inaccessible to those who don’t have institutional access.  It’s a very good question - and one that Brian Leiter’s recently been mulling, too.  (UPDATE: This is a point that applies equally well to those who the non-academic and the would-be academic.  There’re plenty of members of the public who would like access to journals… and there’s no shortage of people like me, either.  Five years ago, I was on the dole with a PhD that wasn’t going to generate any papers; I really could have done with online access to journals to keep up with the field and to be able to do some research in my ample spare time.  No job, no access; no access, no new papers; no new papers, no job; no job, no access…  I got lucky enough to be able to break the cycle, but I didn’t like having to rely on luck.  Nor did the person in the dole office understand my predicament.)

Not that I’m complaining about anything published by the gods of the BMJ.  Oh, no.  They’re all beyond reproach, obviously.

Debbie Purdy goes to the House of Lords today to seek assurance that her husband won’t be prosecuted for assisting suicide should he accompany her to the Dignitas clinic.  It’s hard not to sympathise with her request - but, speaking on the Today programme this morning, former DPP Sir Ken MacDonald said that he hoped her bid failed.  And, at least from a legal point of view, I think he might be right.  In essence, his point is that there’s something wrong with going to court to get permission in advance to break the law.

He added, though - also correctly - that there’s a very good reason to review the law.  MacDonald came over as thoughtful and insightful - and a whole lot more impressive than George Pitcher, who had spoken on the same topic a little over an hour earlier.  Quite why he should have been given airtime is beyond me - his qualifications seem simply to be that (a) he’s religious affairs editor of the Telegraph and (b) the BBC seems to think that you can’t have ethics without a large slice of religion (just have a look at this page to see what I mean).  Still - there he was.  And, lordy, did he talk some bollocks - which is appropriate enough.  Worse, it was tired, hackneyed, and false bollocks.

There were several claims: that allowing PAS or euthanasia is socially harmful and undermines the “social fabric” - whatever that is; that it diminishes the importance of death as a part of human life; that it undermines palliative care; that this point can be proved by looking at Holland and its non-existent palliative care system; and that allowing PAS or euthanasia for the ill will inevitably lead to its being available to the healthy.

Let’s deal with the last point first.  more…