For my money, one of the best papers at the nonhuman animal ethics conference at Birmingham a couple of weeks ago was Steve Cooke’s.* He was looking at the justifications for direct action in the name of disrupting research on animals, and presented the case – reasonably convincingly – that the main arguments against the permissibility of […]
Category: Philosophy
The Talking Cure Taboo
Guest post by C Blease Talking cures have never been so accessible. Since 2007 the UK government has invested £300 million launching its Improved Access to Psychological Treatments scheme. The goal is to train up to 4000 therapists in a particular branch of psychotherapy – cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). CBT is the most widely researched […]
Flogging and the Medic
You must, by now, have heard of the Saudi Arabian blogger Raif Badawi. Just in case you haven’t (really?), here’s a potted biography: having set up the secularist forum Free Saudi Liberals, he was arrested for insulting Islam and showing disobedience. Among the formal charges he faced was one for apostasy, which carries the death penalty in Saudi. […]
Does Religion Deserve a Place in Secular Medicine?
By Brian D. Earp The latest issue of the Journal of Medical Ethics is out, and in it, Professor Nigel Biggar—an Oxford theologian—argues that “religion” should have a place in secular medicine (click here for a link to the article). Some people will feel a shiver go down their spines—and not only the non-religious. After […]
Strange Happenings in Belgium
There’s a part of me that recognises this story as having been in the news before – but I don’t think I’ve written on it, so here we go. It’s from the Telegraph, under the headline “Son Challenges Belgian Law after Mother’s ‘Mercy Killing’” – which is a reasonably pithy summation of what’s at issue. A […]
Free Speech and the CMF
Despite a slight reticence when it comes to quoting Mill approvingly, I do have to admit that sometimes he does articulate a thought clearly and pithily, and sometimes it’s a thought in which all right-thinking people ought to see the merit. Like, for example, this, from the opening paragraph of chapter III in On Liberty: An opinion […]
Rights, Duties, and Species
A little earlier this year, there was a case brought before the New York courts concerning a chimpanzee called Tommy: the matter was the lawfulness of keeping Tommy confined. Acting on Tommy’s behalf was an organisation called the NonHuman Rights Project. The legal documentation filed is available here. The basis of the case was not so […]
Questions to which the Answer is Yes
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, […]
Would Aristotle Vape?
As I surfaced the other day, there was a discussion on Today about the marketing of e-cigarattes between Deborah Arnott, chief executive of ASH, and Lorien Jollye of the New Nicotine Alliance (now there‘s an organisation that wears its heart on its sleeve!). It’s available from about the 1:22 mark here. Having re-listened, it appears to me […]
Advance Directives, Critical Interests, and Dementia Research
Guest post by Tom Buller, Illinois State University In my paper, “Advance Directives, Critical Interests, and Dementia Research”, I investigate whether advance directives can be applied in the context of dementia research. Consider, for the sake of argument, the following fictional case. William, a 77-year-old man who has moderate to severe dementia. When he was first […]