Over at Pea Soup, Ralph Wedgwood makes an interesting claim: I suspect that on several issues that are the focus of fierce moral controversies today – such as homosexuality and the death penalty – there is significantly less disagreement among contemporary philosophers than in the population as a whole. Indeed, I tentatively suggest, the historical [...]

In response to the post below about circumcision, “IntactByDefault” asked a number of questions.  I think that they merit a thread of their own, although I’ve touched on some of the issues before. Is it not the case that, short of legislation, the role of bioethicists is to put a check on the potentially unethical [...]

In the replies to this thread, The Witch Doctor asks this: A Scenario: Apparently there are some sites on the web just now claiming that the world is going to end in 2012. Some teenagers are becoming agitated. I don’t want to be around when the world ends, so I’m going to drink some poison [...]

This year marks the tenth anniversary of my first wife’s death. Kerry Anne (KAS to her friends) had cystic fibrosis and passed away after a good hard fight on the 12th of September , 1999 a year and a half after we married. Kerry taught me many things and was really my main impetus for [...]

The Department of Health today launced Exercise Prometheus, an exercise for the social care sector to assess and develop its resilience planning in readiness for a second wave of the pandemic swine flu. Designed as an ‘off the shelf’ package primarily for use by local authorities in partnership with their local  providers of social care, the [...]

One thing I’ve been pondering lately is what we might use to refer to a gathering of bioethicists?

It’s all very well to vanish off to a conference and put faces to names… but that can’t help with the important questions, like What does the internet think of you?.  Fortunately, this little app can tell you.  Type in your name, and it’ll do the Google version of a genetic fingerprint. In the interests [...]

“I’m surprised,” said the German philosopher whose name I’ve forgotten but next to whom I was walking towards the ice-cream parlour, “how little argument there is here.” I have to admit it - had he chosen his parallel sessions unluckily, he could easily have been left with the notion that the ESPMH is an argument-free zone: [...]

I’ve reached an important milestone: the first case of Pig Aids swine flu among people I know.  It’s quite exciting. She’s been told to stay in, avoiding contact with others, for five days by one person, for 10 by another.  I’m wondering why this is. In the early days of the illness, there might have [...]