There’s an interesting post over at Science-Based Medicine about the practice of placentophagy: that is, placenta-eating. The piece points out that, while some eat it raw, it can also be cooked; eating it raw provokes the yuck factor. Speaking personally, I’m not sure that it’s rawness makes all that much difference here – but maybe […]
Category: Curios
What’re your Qualifications?
“I’ve never read a more outrageous job advert,” says a colleague’s Facebook update, in reference to this from Georgetown University. Georgetown University is seeking outstanding candidates for the position of Director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics at Georgetown University Medical Center (CCB). The CCB Director will report directly to the Medical Center’s chief executive officer, the […]
Chris Mooney Interviews Arthur Caplan (.mp3)
There’s a podcast of an interview between Chris Mooney and Arthur Caplan available here; Caplan is talking about bioethics having “come of age”. He’s talking about the history of the US bioethics councils under Bush and Obama, and about how the focus of the President’s Council now is more policy-driven than being concerned by “deep” […]
Stangroom on Opposition to Abortion
Hostile as I generally am to surveys as a tool in ethics, they are able to give us interesting anthropological insights on topics of moral concern. Jeremy Stangroom has been conducting a poll of people’s beliefs about the permissibility of abortion; and, though online polls are not wholly reliable, there seems to be some interesting […]
The Nobel Prize and the Holy See
Robert Edwrds was this week awarded a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on IVF. It’s true, of course, that IVF made possible a range of procedures that generate important ethical questions – Arthur Caplan mentions some of them here (although the article in which he’s quoted is a little lightweight, and gives altogether too much […]
MRI Scanners aren’t simply Medically Valuable
I’m assuming that many, if not most, of the readers of this blog will be medical types, and so will have spent a significant amount of time looking at MRI scans of brains and thoracic cavities, all the while fighting the urge to see what would happen if they used the big, expensive and medically […]
Ooooh, Matron!
Right: so I understand that hospitals sometimes feel the need to raise revenue, and I understand the idea that resources shouldn’t be left idle – an unused ward represents wasted money. I also fully understand that hospital wards have provided a rich source of smut over the years, some of which has been almost entertaining. […]
Visit Jonathan Glover’s web-site
Anyone in the bioethics business will know Jonathan Glover as one of the nicest and most insightful philosophers around, as well as one of the fathers of modern bioethics. Jonathan now has his own web-site www.jonathanglover.co.uk which is well worth a visit. The picture on the homepage shows that he shares my belief in the […]
On the subject of Mephedrone…
I think that it’s worth pointing out that the way the media have handled mephedrone has been generally pathetic. This is not wholly a surprise, because the way the media handle any drugs story tends towards the pathetic. […]
Science! Homeopathy! Quantum Stuff!
At last! A scientific rationale for homeopathy! This paper is a first step towards a full, quantum understanding of homeopathy. It is clear that quantum mechanics is the only way to understand the success of homeopathic medicine in a physical context. It is also immediately clear that doctors should avoid patients after treatment. Patients must […]