Here’s an intriguing letter from one John Doherty, published in the BMJ yesterday: Medical titles may well reinforce a clinical hierarchy and inculcate deference in Florida, as Kennedy writes, but such constructs are culture bound. When I worked in outback Australia the patients called me “Mate,” which is what I called them. They still wanted me to be in […]
Month: December 2015
Pro-Lifers’ Arguments Might be their Greatest Gift to Pro-Choicers
Abortion is always going to be a controversial topic. For what it’s worth, I hold that there’s nothing wrong with it. That’s me speaking from my habitual non-consequentialist position. From a more utilitarian perspective, I’m willing to concede that, given the choice between world A, in which abortions happen, and world B, in which they don’t because […]
A Moral Imperative to Pursue Gene Editing Research?
A moral imperative to pursue gene editing research? The bioethicist Erik Parens has recently asked whether parents can be trusted with gene-editing technology, in a thought-provoking essay published in Aeon magazine. To set the stage, he writes that: “In April 2015, in the pages of Science, a group of prominent scientists and ethicists announced the […]