There’s been a lot in the news over the last couple of days about the Military Covenant, and how there’s a plant to give it a legal footing as part of the Armed Forces Bill. Some of the reportage over the weekend suggested that there would be explicit prioritisation for members and ex-members of the […]
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Apparently, I Support Slavery
I like the idea of free-at-the-point-of-use healthcare, and if you want to call that a right, that’s fine with me, too. In the world of Tea Party-affliated Republican senator Rand Paul, that means I’m the sort of person who’d support turning up at a physician’s door with the police, and forcing that physician (and all […]
Special Offer! Genital Mutilation!
Today’s dose of righteous anger comes, via Ophelia Benson and Marie Myung-Ok Lee writing in The Atlantic, from the fifth annual Congress on Aesthetic Vaginal Surgery, held just outside Tuscon at the end of last year. The affable organizer of the Tucson event, Dr. Red Alinsod, was an early entrant into cosmetic-gyn, and is recognized for […]
Musing about Kant
So… I’ve been writing a paper on Kant, the basic thrust of which is to assert the importance of respect for autonomy over and above respect for persons. (That is, I think that Kant thinks that we ought to respect persons because they’re autonomous; this is in contrast to the modern idea that we ought […]
Stem-Cells: To Patent or Not?
In spare moments, I’ve been wondering about the Advocate-General of European Court of Justice’s recent recommendation that patents involving human embryonic stem-cells be prohibited, and the response that it’s generated. One of the best-publicised responses was the letter from Austin Smith et al that appeared in Nature, which complained that the recommendation would be bad […]
Language and ethics – being “let” to go overdue
By David Hunter The more I think about it the more I think that one issue bioethicists should play much closer attention to is the language used to describe things. This isn’t a new thought, Kongzi (known as Confucius in the West) said: Tsze-lu said, “The ruler of Wei has been waiting for you, in […]
Hyperexpensive royal weddings – the opportunity costs in terms of health
By David Hunter James Wilson (UCL) and I recently wrote a briefing paper for the Nuffield Council on Bioethics on the ethical issues surrounding hyper-expensive treatments – that is treatments which exceed NICEs usual cut off point of £30000 per quality adjusted life year (qualy). One factor that we kept coming back to was the […]
Pakistan Introduces New Gender Category
It’s not often that you get good news from Pakistan, especially in respect of sex or gender issues. Rarer still that you hear of Pakistan not only finally doing what the rest of the world has taken as minimally decent for ages, but actually taking something of a lead. On the face of it, this […]
To Breed, or not to Breed?
There’s a very interesting article on the BBC news website at the moment concerning the decision of Jono, a man with Treacher Collins Syndrome, about whether or not to have children of his own. His having the syndrome himself has led to a number of difficulties – but he seems to have got off fairly lightly […]
Assisted Dying for the non-Terminal
I’m a bit behind the curve with this, but I thought it worth noting the story of Nan Maitland, who recently travelled to Dignitas* at the start of March. She was suffering from arthritis – which, though painful, is a long way short of a terminal illness. (Her story is reminiscent of Robert and Jennifer […]