BioNews asked me to write something about Matthew Liao, Anders Sandberg and Rebacca Roache’s paper on engineering humanity to minimise global warming.  I’d been meaning to for a while, so this was the prod I needed.  Anyway: my take on their paper is here; but I thought I’d also reproduce it on this blog.  What follows is the version I submitted; it’s substantially the same, save for a few tweaks that BioNews made to conform with their house style.  (They didn’t like the Latin…)  I am massively grateful to the student who made the point about small people taking more steps to get anywhere.  I’d also like to think that the idea of making people smaller led me to Lilliput, thence to Gulliver, thence to the voyage to Laputa.  It didn’t.  I’m not that clever.  Laputa made its appearance quite unbidden.  But – hey, it works.

 *     *     *     *     *

There’s a part of Gulliver’s Travels where Gulliver visits the grand Academy at Lagado, wherein one of the academicians is trying to derive sunbeams from cucumbers.  It’s tempting to wonder at first glance whether there’s something of the Academy to Liao, Sandberg and Roache’s proposed strategy for combating climate change: that we could engineer humanity to be less of a drain on the environment.  Their paper, “Human Engineering and Climate Change” (forthcoming in Ethics, Policy and the Environment, with a pre-publication version here), has already attracted a reasonable amount of media interest, and it’s not hard to see why.  The headline proposal is that we could engineer people to be smaller, on the grounds that smaller people require less food and fuel: a population that is smaller on the whole would have less environmental impact.  (A small part of this – and I’m genuinely fond of this idea – is that heavier people wear out shoes and carpets more quickly, so are more resource-hungry.  On the other hand, as one of my students has pointed out, short people take more steps to get across the room; the carpet might actually suffer more.  Moreover, a small person has a greater surface-to-volume ratio, and so would lose heat more quickly, possibly requiring more central heating and more food.) more…

A story that has had a little airtime on the news over the last 24 hours or so concerns requests by US officials that details of research into a bird flu variant be held back from publication on the grounds that it might be of use to terrorists:

The National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity recommended that the “general conclusions” be published but that final manuscripts not include details that “could enable replication of the experiments by those who would seek to do harm”.

The BBC’s health news blog reports that

Professor John Oxford from Barts and the London School of Medicine [says], “They should definitely publish. The biggest risk with bird flu is from the virus itself. We should forget about bio terrorism and concentrate on Mother Nature.”  [He and Prof Wendy Barclay from Imperial College London] agree that the influenza virus would make a pretty poor bioterrorist weapon, unless your aim was to spread the infection across the world. Influenza has no respect for borders, so introducing a virus in one country would inevitably spread it globally.

But Michael Parker, Professor of Bioethics and Director of the Ethox Centre at the University of Oxford, disagrees.  ”The position that everything should be published is not tenable. There must be some scientific information which contains an immediate threat to public safety if it fell into the wrong hands.”

Parker’s worries reflect those articulated by Tom Douglas and Julian Savulescu in the JME a little while ago; they argued that synthetic biology raises significant new ethical problems, not least because of the potential for “dual use”.

I have to admit that I have yet to be convinced by the biosecurity worries.   more…

I’m a bit behind the curve with this, but I thought it worth noting the story of Nan Maitland, who recently travelled to Dignitas* at the start of March.  She was suffering from arthritis – which, though painful, is a long way short of a terminal illness.  (Her story is reminiscent of Robert and Jennifer Stokes.)

Maitland’s decision was – predictably – not supported by Care not Killing, whom The Guardian reported as saying that

the case demonstrated “a shifting of the goalposts” by pro-rights campaigners and would place pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives if they felt they were a burden. “It’s a very scary situation that not very severely disabled people could, at the drop of a hat, opt to kill themselves, and [Maitland's case] shows a ramping-up by campaigners,” said a spokesman. “Many people have to live with arthritis. It does expose the lie that only people who are terminally ill will be affected by changes in the law.”

Perhaps more suprisingly, Dignity in Dying also spoke against Maitland’s decision:

“We don’t think that you could faithfully have in law assistance for someone who wasn’t terminally ill. Then you’re making judgements about quality of life, not quality of death.” She said their work was to improve the experience of death for those “where it was an inevitability”.

I think that both organisations are wrong. more…

So the Guardian got in touch to see if I’d be able to contribute a Comment is Free column on Project Prevention, which has just started operating in the UK.  For one reason or another, I didn’t get the email until the deadline had passed; but since I was planning on saying something about PP here anyway, this is roughly (word-limits notwithstanding) what I would have said.  Warning: it’s long - I may have gone off on one…

For those not in the know, Project Prevention is an American organisation – well, more of a family outfit – that (according to its website) aims to raise

public awareness to the problem of addicts/alcoholics exposing their unborn child to drugs during pregnancy.  Project Prevention seeks to reduce the burden of this social problem on taxpayers, trim down social worker caseloads, and alleviate from our clients the burden of having children that will potentially be taken away.

The organisation is controversial, though, because it does more than raise public awareness: it offers money to addicts of one sort or another in return for being sterilised: more…

Footage of the oral evidence given to the Scottish Parliamentary Committee investigating the End of Life Assistance Bill.  Starring… um… me.

There’s an interesting story on the front page of the Manchester Evening News about an 11-year-old who has asked that her right leg be removed so that she has a better chance of becoming a paralympian. more…

On the 20th of July the Centre for Professional Ethics at Keele is holding a

full day conference focusing on the topic of Research ethics in Europe -

what is done and how it could be done better

On the 21st of July will be a half day workshop on the Role of Autonomy &

informed consent in research ethics: Some challenges

There are still a few places left for each day of the conference and

bookings close on the 11th of July.

more…

The Scottish Parliament recently sought evidence in relation to the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill; I responded to that call, and most of what I said would not be new to people who know me, or who read this blog.  However, I did make a point there that I’ve not given an outing before; this part of my evidence is reproduced below the fold.

(One factor that’s occurred to me since submitting by evidence, by the way, is that I’m not sure how much impact Gillick has under Scottish law.  But I think that’s a minor point.)

more…

For the past week, the news in the UK has been all about coalitions, compromise, consensus and that sort of thing.  The hung Parliament has been heralded as ushering in a new era of politics-by-agreement, rather than by the traditional Westminster model of simply flattening everyone else.  And a lot of people seem to think that such a change in tone is a good thing.

But it’s not just in politics that consensus has its supporters.  You occasionally see it popping up in medical contexts – specifically, when it comes to questions of consent.

more…

The Centre for Professional Ethics & the School of Law at Keele University would like to invite you to attend their postgraduate taught courses open day on the 31^st of March – between 4:30 pm and 7:00 pm at the Claus Moser Research Centre, Keele University.

Update: Details of the event can be found here:  http://www.keele.ac.uk/hss/twilight/

And an RSVP form can be found here:  http://www.keele.ac.uk/hss/twilight/invitationform/

Keele’s Centre for Professional Ethics (also known as PEAK – Professional Ethics at Keele) is amongst the largest and most successful providers of postgraduate ethics courses in Europe, with over 200 postgraduate students, eight permanent academic staff, and a portfolio of five distinctive MA / PgDip programmes as well as the UK’s first Professional Doctorate in Medical Ethics

more…