Over at Practical Ethics, Charles Camosy asks a question: Can bioethics be done without theology? Yep. It can. Well, that was quick and simple. But – oh, all right: I probably ought to say a bit more. Now, Camosy’s post is quite long, and that means that if I want to scrutinise it in any detail, […]
Category: Blogosphere
Oh, dear, Richard…
Look, I know that Twitter really isn’t the place for nuanced debate. But, by that token, everyone else should realise that as well – especially intellectual superstars. So how, then, to explain Richard Dawkins’ spectacular foot-in-mouth moment earlier today? It started off reasonably enough, with him tweeting about Catholicism’s stance on abortion and providing a […]
On Conflicts of Interest
It’s only a few days since Richie’s paper on providing IVF in the context of global warming was published, but already there’s been a couple of lines of objection to it that have been fairly widespread; I thought it might be worth nodding to one, and perhaps offering an attempt of a defence against the […]
How Not to Argue against a Proposed Law
Yes, yes: it’s tedious and internecine, but it’s almost a year since I had a pop at Kevin Yuill’s book on assisted dying; how about an update? Well, conveniently, there’s this, in which he tries “to convince my fellow liberal minded atheists to reconsider their support for legalized assisted dying”. OK, then. First up, this isn’t […]
Their Poor Little Heads might Explode
There’s a nice little piece by Martin Robbins in this week’s Guardian in which he talks about the fact that women seem to be less supportive of abortion than men. That does seem counterintuitive, given that… well, given the obvious physiological facts and the relative burden of risks related to pregnancy. So there’s an interesting little anthropological […]
This will hurt a bit
By David Hunter In a piece titled in a fashion to simultaneously win the internet and cause every male reader to wince, Michelle Meyer asks “Whose Business Is It If You Want a Bee To Sting Your Penis? Should IRBs Be Policing Self-Experimentation?” In this piece she describes the case of a Cornell graduate student […]
Medical Information for Sale?
Reader Keith emailed me a week or so ago to tip me off about the government’s plans to allow private firms to access medical information. It’s a story that has subsequently been picked up by – inter alia – The Guardian. As with the last post I made here, I’m going to have to cry off from saying […]
Sex-Selection and Abortion: Is there a Problem?
This is just a quick post, and it’s mainly to draw your attention to a couple of other posts worth reading elsewhere. A little background: there’s been a minor fuss* in the media over the last few days concerning sex-specific abortion**, after The Independent reported that [t]he practice of sex-selective abortion is now so commonplace that […]
Identity and IVF
It’s good to see that Stephen Latham is blogging again after a short hiatus; and he’s come back with a really thought-provoking post on IVF and problems of identity. The background is this: apparently, there is evidence that children conceived by IVF are at an elevated risk of health problems compared to kids conceived naturally: […]
An Attack of the What-Ifs
Among the comments to the last post, there’s this from Parmenion59: So…if a cure for lung cancer is found, and the study has been funded through money from a tobacco company…the BMJ won’t publish said study? Way to go BMJ. Hmmm. At least on the face of it, this looks like an important point – […]