Spoiler alert: Almost certainly not. But hear me out for a bit. The Christian Medical Fellowship blog had an article posted yesterday about what it praised as a balanced documentary concerning “sexual orientation change efforts” – gay conversion therapy to you and me – on Radio 4 on Sunday. Actually, it wasn’t a documentary – it was […]
Category: Curios
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via the Philosopher Shaming tumblr: *narrows eyes* […]
Kelly Hills, Data Miner
Kelly Hills has been data-mining – collecting and collating information about the frequency with which certain terms appear in paper titles in three journals: the JME, Bioethics, and the AJoB. I was going to say that the charts are not much use, but that they are pretty and quite cool; and I was going to […]
But what if you Don’t Want to be Regulated?
The Malaysian Parliament has just approved a law about traditional medicine. The Traditional and Complementary Medicine Act is largely about the regulation of practitioners of TCM – notably, setting up a regulatory Council. According to section II (5) The Council shall have the following functions: (a) to advise the Minister on matters of national policy relating […]
Is Bioethics Really a Bully? Really?
On his blog in The Independent, John Rentoul has a long-running feature called “Questions to which the Answer is No“. In it, he examines the kind of screaming rhetorical-question headline much beloved of certain middle-market tabloids: “Is this photographic evidence of Nessie?”, “Does coffee cure cancer?”, “Does coffee cause cancer?”, “Does MMR bring down house prices?“* and […]
Philosophy, Bioethics and Otherworldliness
Hmmmm. So Brian L picked up on Catarina’s post that picked up on Brian E’s post that picked up on the ever-simmering stuff about male circumcision – and the American Academy of Pediatrics’ latest policy position in particular – with the comment “Philosophers are a bit unworldly, but this is still quite something”. I take the […]
Is Julian Savulescu Channelling Bryan Ferry?
Specifically, I have in mind Roxy Music’s “Love is the Drug“. (Annoyingly, I can’t get the video to embed.*) And I don’t just mean Julian – I mean him, and Anders Sandberg, with Brian Earp somewhere in there too. The thought crosses my mind because I’ve been reading this essay in New Scientist, which apparently […]
You’re Worth more Dead than Alive
Via MedicalTranscription.net, here’s a rather fabulous little infographic about the value – well, the price – of transplant organs. (Update: moved below the fold, because otherwise you have the time to grow a liver in a petri-dish before the page has loaded.) […]
Drugs and Sex – or Drugs and Less Sex
Two slightly curious stories about drugs and sex. Or, rather, two stories about drugs and sex curiously juxtaposed. First, this story from Sunday’s Independent was inspired by this paper in The Journal of Sexual Medicine. Quite how much weight we should put on the JSM‘s paper is a moot point – it’s a case study involving one […]
Vaccination, and Policies for Enforcement
Rob Crilly reported in the Telegraph a couple of days ago that Pakistan is to pursue a policy of fining people who do not have their children vaccinated against polio. Now, at the time I write this, I can’t find this story or anything like it replicated elsewhere – Dawn, which is Pakistan’s biggest English-language […]