When Nadine Dorries MP was elected to the Commons Health Select Committee, eyebrows were raised. But, hey – she’s an ex-nurse, so perhaps she could be relied on to have at least some sort of insight into matters relating to health (even if she does think that a foetus is capable of reaching out of […]
Category: Politics
Spineless in Saudi?
A little while ago, Richard Ashcroft alerted me to this story: a judge in Saudi Arabia was considering surgical paralysis as the sentence for a man who had caused a similar injury to someone else in a fight. The BBC’s story came via a report on Amnesty’s website, which you can find here. The story […]
Bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news…
Footage of the oral evidence given to the Scottish Parliamentary Committee investigating the End of Life Assistance Bill. Starring… um… me. […]
When being the Worst-Off isn’t the Worst
For a little over a year now I’ve been tinkering with a paper on the brain drain – that phenomenon by which expertise migrates from poorer to wealthier areas – and how we should think about it from a moral point of view. Earlier drafts have been inflicted on attendees at the “New Directions in […]
Professor Richard Ashcroft’s Inaugural Lecture: ‘The Republic of Health – Ethics and Politics in 21st Century Healthcare’
A link to a podcast of Professor Richard Ashcroft’s belated inaugural lecture can be found here: The Republic of Health – Ethics and Politics in 21st Century Healthcare And since Richard is one of JME’s deputy editors I thought some folk might be interested. The abstract is below the fold. […]
Vienna Calling!
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 […]
Pharmaceutical Prohibition: as Successful as Ever
An item on Sky news the other day caught my attention. It concerned a new wave of legal highs being manufactured in China. The thrust of the report is that, in the wake of mephedrone having been banned a few weeks ago, enterprising Chinese chemists are working on a new set of chemicals designed to […]
Assistance and Force: Different Things
Imagine a world in which egg sandwiches are illegal. Given that I really don’t like eggs and that I particularly hate the smell of them, I have no desire ever to eat one; this world is fine by me. However, I’m aware that some people might, on occasion, express a desire for egg sandwiches. Some might […]
Brazil Nuts?
Human Rights Watch is reporting that Brazil is in the process of formulating a law that will give “‘absolute priority’ to the rights of the fertilized ovum”. The proposed bill would require any act or omission that could in any way have a negative impact on a fertilized ovum to be considered illegal. The bill […]
Official: The M-Cat is Dead.
So – remember those deaths that were linked to mephedrone use? The ones that started a moral panic and that led to the erstwhile government banning the drug in a desperate attempt to curry favour with the tabloids in the fag-end of the Parliament? Yep – those ones. Well, it turns out that Wainwright and […]