“Martin”‘s story has been generating a reasonable amount of media and blog attention over the lat few days. (Udo Schuklenk considers some of the Telegraph‘s coverage, for example, and finds it severely wanting.) Paralysed after a stroke, “Martin” wants help to end his life; but his wife doesn’t want to be the one to help […]
Month: August 2011
Reiki Research: Not Quite the Maddest thing on the Net.
Right now, physicists are pondering the fallout from the collision of high-energy particles. (Probably.) And I, for my part, am pondering the fallout from the collision of high-energy nonsense. Having had this brought to my attention, I’m led fairly quickly to this, then this, and, finally, this Mail on Sunday piece. All the links refer to […]
Fighting Fire with a Different Kind of Fire?
How much would I love to have been on the ethics committee that was faced with this? Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania were interested in a method of treatment for leukaemia that made use of modified versions of white blood cells. Cells were taken from leukaemia patients and genetically modified in two ways: first, they […]
Book Review: John Gray, “The Immortalization Commission”
London: Allen Lane, 2011; 276 + xii pp If some people are to be believed – not least certain former JME editors – saving lives is a duty that doesn’t stop with children drowning in ponds: it extends to there being a moral obligation to pursue scientific research so that death can be actively avoided […]
Assisted Dying: Physicians and Metaphysicians in the BMJ
There’s a slightly curious correspondence taking place in the BMJ at the moment that concerns assisted dying. Des Spence started things moving with this short piece. For the most part it is (sorry to say) a slightly pedestrian and simplistic overview of the state of the assisted dying debate. One of the arguments against AD that […]