The Director of Public Prosecutions published his guidelines on assisted suicide yesterday, after consultation on the provisional guidelines that I discussed here. The most recent publication is slightly different from the consultation version and the full list of considerations is available here. Most of the considerations strike me as being well-intentioned, and pretty inoffensive – […]
Month: February 2010
Nicaragua’s Abortion Law and the Moral Cost of Saving Lives
Regardless of where you stand on questions about the permissibility of abortion, the nature of the debate is much less polarised than it would seem. Pro-choice types are perfectly capable of admitting that abortions are matters of regret in their own terms; pro-lifers, overwhelmingly, will admit that there are times when the termination of a […]
Manchester MA/ Intercalated MSc in Health Care Ethics & Law – Open Preview Event
University of Manchester The Centre for Social Ethics and Policy at the University of Manchester has places available on its MA and Intercalated MSc in Health Care Ethics & Law programmes for the academic year 2010-11; further details can be found via the link at www.law.manchester.ac.uk/csep. There will be an open event on the 3rd […]
Acronym Overload: HoC S&TC report on homeopathy published…
The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee’s report on homeopathy was published today (and is available here). The findings have not been diluted; the Committee didn’t sugar the sugar pill. […]
Conference: NICE, Age Discrimination, and Treatment at the End of Life 16th April 2010
Following the recent Department of Health Report, Achieving Age Equality in Health and Social Care, UCL is pleased to announce a free one day conference on the topic of how the NHS should deal with questions of age when making decisions about which treatments to fund at the end of life. […]
Parachuting to the Front of the Queue?
A curious letter was sent out by the Department of Health the other day to GPs and the Chief Executives of various health authorities, trusts, and so on. The full text is available online, but here’s the nub of it: ACCESS TO HEALTH SERVICES FOR MILITARY VETERANS – PRIORITY TREATMENT The purpose of this letter […]
Niall Scott Reveals his Dark Side (…as if it was ever hidden)
Many readers of this blog will have come across the work of Niall Scott, a bioethicist at UCLAN. Anyone who’s ever met him will also know that he’s one of the nicest anarcho-syndicalist black metal fans you’re ever likely to encounter; and he popped up on Radio 4’s Sunday programme this week to talk about the facebook […]
Wakefield – the Cooked-up “Controversy” that Will Not Die
I didn’t pay much attention the Wakefield MMR paper when it first started generating controversy: I wasn’t bothered whether its conclusions were correct or not, because I figured that it’s in the nature of science for certain putative discoveries later to be debunked. But the years passed, and as I paid a bit more attention, […]
Workshop: The Concept of Community in Bioethics
A call for participants in a satellite meeting of the 10th World Congress of Bioethics, Singapore on the 27TH JULY 2010, Sponsored by the Wellcome Trust. The Wellcome Trust is pleased to invite applications for participation in a one-day meeting on the concept of community in bioethics. The meeting will explore different understandings of the […]
Terry Pratchett Shakes Hands with Death
This is probably a bit de trop, because I suspect that many watched it as broadcast – but those who haven’t seen Terry Pratchett‘s Dimbleby Lecture can watch it here; I believe that most things on the iplayer get taken down after a while, but I can’t see any indication of there being a limited […]