Remember when the BBC and ITV had both used to pretend that the other didn’t exist, except in veiled references to “the other side”? I always feel that talking about papers in Bioethics is a bit like that. Oh, I know that journals don’t engage in rivalry, that it’s all collegiate, and so on. But, […]
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The Nobel Prize and the Holy See
Robert Edwrds was this week awarded a Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on IVF. It’s true, of course, that IVF made possible a range of procedures that generate important ethical questions – Arthur Caplan mentions some of them here (although the article in which he’s quoted is a little lightweight, and gives altogether too much […]
Brain Death, Decapitation and Good Arguments
One of the complaints that I’ve heard made about the JME is that its papers are too short: a word limit of only 3500 words means that arguments have to undergo a process of severe shrinkage to fit, and at least sometimes don’t survive. Sympathetic as I am to the complaint, I’m also aware that […]
Dorries, Disability and Benefit
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 […]
Teaching, Application and Theory
Ben Saunders’ paper in this month’s JME dealing with how to teach applied ethics is thought-provoking. He picks up on an argument between Robin Lawlor and David Benatar that’s been rumbling on for yonks in the Journal‘s pages. Lawlor and Benatar are worried about how much theory to teach in applied ethics classes – Lawlor […]
How Important are Genetic Origins?
It’s something of a commonplace to suggest that genetics poses a number of problems both in and for bioethics as it’s traditionally done. One of the problems in bioethics is that there could well be times when giving genetic information to a person about himself based on a test that he’s had will mean, necessarily, […]
Conference: Paying for blood and organs is not so bad: A Debate
Allowing sales of gametes and body parts and offering incentives to increase provision have been some of the more controversial suggestions to narrow the gap between demand and supply. Drawing on Richard Titmuss’ work on blood, many have argued that financial incentives reduce supply by driving out altruistic donors as well as reducing the quality […]
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 […]
COBRA Conference on Teaching Professional Ethics
Nathan Emmerich reviews the conference here. He’s also asked me to add a reminder about the conference on Social Scientific Approaches to Bioethics to be held in London in January. I posted the CFP here a little while ago, but the conference website is here. […]
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. […]