You’ve possibly heard on the news that the 18th International Aids Conference is currently on in Vienna, and that one of the things that’s been talked about in connection with it is the Vienna Declaration. The essence of the declaration is very simple: The criminalisation of illicit drug users is fuelling the HIV epidemic and […]
Category: In the Journals
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. […]
Journal-ism
I got an email today from one of our current batch of students, who will – all being well – be collecting his MA in the next few months.* The essence of the email is this: over the course of his time with us, he’s found that his interest in medical ethics and law has […]
Wakefield – the Cooked-up “Controversy” that Will Not Die
I didn’t pay much attention the Wakefield MMR paper when it first started generating controversy: I wasn’t bothered whether its conclusions were correct or not, because I figured that it’s in the nature of science for certain putative discoveries later to be debunked. But the years passed, and as I paid a bit more attention, […]
Teaching Ethics in Medical Schools
My attention has wandered recently to this editorial in Clinical Medicine, concerning the place and content of ethics education in the undergraduate medical curriculum. There’s nothing Earth-shattering in there, but the piece does draw out a few persistent problems with teaching ethics within the medical degree: […]