There’s been a lot of ink sneezed recently on how we should organise our response to H5N1 and, latterly, H1N1 – on questions of who should be top of the Tamiflu distribution list and on how the distribution should be organised. (To give a recent example, Dan Sokol touches on the question here.) However, one aspect […]
Category: Thinking Aloud
More on prayer…
Wouldn’t you know it, my favourite religious commentator (and I favour one religious commentator over another in the sense that I favour a hangover over a migraine or burst aneurysm) George Pitcher has weighed into the prayer on the wards coverage. Guess what? His opinions aren’t impressive. […]
Praying for patients? God help us.
Via the Press Association, the BBC has been reporting the motion to be discussed by the BMA conference that would explicitly seek to allow doctors to offer to pray for their patients. The full text of the motion is available via the Christian Medical Fellowship’s website. Right. Go and make a cup of tea. We […]
Sex, Ayatollahs and Expectations
Obviously, a lot of the world’s attention is currently on Iran and the political turmoil there. I don’t think that this blog is the place to make comments about the disputed presidential election – but I am reminded of a story from a couple of years ago, and it’s worth airing here. One of the […]
Just One More Drugs Post, then I’ll Stop.
I can stop, you know. Any time. Honest. Perhaps as something of a counterbalance to the generally pro-decriminalisation stuff I’ve been posting for the past couple of months, it’s worth pointing to Alexandre Erler’s piece on the issue on the Practical Ethics blog. The tone of the post is thoughtful and more sympathetic to the […]
Open Access
Keith Taylor Tayler (sorry!), in a reply to the Purdy post below, raises the question of why journals are so expensive and inaccessible to those who don’t have institutional access. It’s a very good question – and one that Brian Leiter’s recently been mulling, too. (UPDATE: This is a point that applies equally well to […]
Purdy Tries Again…
Debbie Purdy goes to the House of Lords today to seek assurance that her husband won’t be prosecuted for assisting suicide should he accompany her to the Dignitas clinic. It’s hard not to sympathise with her request – but, speaking on the Today programme this morning, former DPP Sir Ken MacDonald said that he hoped her […]
Engelhardt Lecture, Cambridge: Can Someone do me a Favour?
Tristram Engelhardt is giving a lecture entitled “Moral Pluralism and the Crisis of Secular Bioethics: Why Orthodox Christian Bioethics has the Solution” at the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies at Wesley House in Cambridge on the 3rd June. It’s a provoking title – and my guess is that I’d probably disagree with just about every word after “Good evening”. Notwithstanding this – […]
Morgellons and Noble Lies
Here’s a poser: imagine that your patient comes to you reporting the canonical symptoms of a condition that is untreatable. You agree that this patient is suffering from something, and that the reported symptoms tally with those that are reported by other sufferers. However, the reason that the disease is untreatable is that – frankly […]
Portugal’s Experiment with Drug Decriminalisation
In 2001, drug use was decriminalised in Portugal, meaning that the country had, in effect, the most lenient drug laws in the world. What has been the effect of this move? Martin Robbins considers the evidence. His conclusion is that the policy hasn’t been the unmitigated success that he – and the Cato institute (warning: bigger-than-the-moon 4Mb […]