A short time ago, I mentioned George Pitcher’s extraordinarily lame showing on the Today programme, when he was invited to talk about assisted suicide. I included a link to his blog – and, I admit it, this was partly intended so that he’d get an “incoming link” notification and either make a comment here, or refer […]
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In this Month’s JME
I have to admit that I’m a bit suspicious of empirical work in ethics: my general instinct is to be less interested in what people actually think or do or want than in what they ought to think or do or want. But it’s also true that empirical work can confirm or cast doubt on […]
More on DNA Retention
Not so long ago, I blogged about the government’s stupid-and-scary response to the drubbing it got at the ECHR concerning the retention of genetic information gathered from arrestees. It would appear that the police have managed to make the policy even more dispiriting than it was already: they’re arresting people in order that they can […]
I’m going to break a private promise to myself.
That promise was to observe the difference between academic ethics and activism, and to eschew the latter. But please, please, please take a couple of minutes to read this article and the statement that goes with it, and then to sign the petition. This is not about putting the boot into the British Chiropractic Association. […]
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 […]
New Directions in Bioethics: Bioethics Workshop at UCL 29-30 June
Thought this might be of interest to some of our readers – and not just because all of the editors of this bog are speaking at this workshop! […]
Ask a Homeopath a Question…
The Guardian has a feature in its “Ethical Living” feature called “You Ask, They Answer”. This provides a forum in which readers can put questions to firms, people and so on. This week, the subject was Neal’s Yard Remedies, purveyor of… um… “remedies” to the kind of people who go in for aromatherapy and homeopathy […]
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 […]