Channel 4 is currently mid-way through a series of short talking-head films on the question of whether organ donation should be compulsory: as I write this, two have been broadcast, with another five to come. The first one is by John Harris, rehearsing familiar arguments about the permissibility of mandated donation (as he did here) […]
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Three Quiet Cheers for Uterine Transplants
Charles Foster’s post over at Practical Ethics about the news of the womb-transplant surgery that’s slated to take place in the near future is on the money in many respects. Foster points out that [p]redictably the newspapers loved it. And, equally predictably, clever people from the world’s great universities queued up to be eloquently wise […]
Pratchett and Assisted Dying: A Question of Balance?
If you’ve not yet seen “Choosing to Die”, Terry Pratchett’s film about Dignitas from Monday night, I recommend that you go and watch it now. (I don’t know if it’s available outside the UK: I’m sure it’ll appear on YouTube soon, though; or, if you’re outside th UK, get a Brit to download it and […]
Couldn’t find the language – the positive counterparts of risk and hazards
By David Hunter Continuing my recent theme of the impact of language on ethics and decision making I’m presently writing a paper on the use of claims based on justice to object to new technologies such as human enhancement or synthetic biology. In the process of writing this paper I’ve encountered a rather odd gap […]
Symposium on Public Health and Political Philosophy
We are happy to announce a symposium on Public Health and Political Philosophy hosted by the Centre for Professional Ethics at Keele and funded by the Wellcome Trust. The symposium will run from 10 – 5 on the 17th of June and is at Keele University. (Directions to Keele can be found here: http://www.keele-conference.com/21/directions ) […]
In ur videoz, appreciatin ur formz
After yesterday’s maundering on about Kant, here’s an example of how to keep philosophy in its rightful place. I like to think that the cat was thinking, “Holy tables? Really? I’m going to have to save you from yourself here, matey”. (props to HappyToast for the link.) […]
Musing about Kant (2)
It’s very easy, having encountered Kant for the first time, to think that his account of morality is much too cold and impersonal to be plausible – the sort of thing you might expect from a computer rather than a human. And though this criticism is rather simplistic – I think that Kant does have […]
Medicine and the Military Covenant
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 […]
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 […]