A curious story from the Irish Times: a lecture by Len Doyal on euthanasia had to be cancelled after disruption from protesters: he’s now complained to the President. The protesters apparently shouted obscenities and, er, the Rosary. There are more details here. In the meantime, I just can’t help myself: Thanks to Richard Ashcroft and […]
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The Benefits of not being an Alcoholic
Some health policies are very well thought-through and their merits are obvious. Others take a bit of time and thought for their merits to become clear. Some are well-meaning but wrong. And some are mad as a bag of wasps in a salad-spinner. Into which category should we put James Purnell’s suggestion that alcoholics should […]
The ethics man strikes again – ethics checklists
By David Hunter Daniel Sokal has been busy again Success from surgical checklists breeds idea for ethical checks suggesting that clinicians ought to consider adopting an ethics checklist to use on their rounds. […]
What does the Press Think about HPV Vaccination?
It would seem that it depends what country you’re in. I suspect it’s only a matter of time before someone suggests that it’s sales, rather than science, that determines newspapers’ editorial policy. Heaven forbid. […]
An Easter Sperm Story: The Defeat of Death
This from the bioethics.net blog: A woman’s 21-year-old son dies in a Texas bar fight. The bereaved mom wants the son’s clearly virile and tenacious genes to live on in the next generation and fights to have his sperm collected and stored so that someone may carry his seed. She says, on the one hand, […]
Sperm Banks and Product Liability
The New Scientist is carrying this rather peculiar story: a sperm bank in New York is being sued under product liability law by a girl who claims that her conception was from “faulty” sperm. The 13-year-old girl named in the suit has Fragile X syndrome; apparently, she does not have to show that the sperm bank […]
The Vagina is Full of AIDS!
I’ve just been pointed in the direction of this YouTube gem, which ostensibly demonstrates why condoms don’t offer protection against Aids. It’s a little experiment involving a glass, a tea-strainer, and some out-of-date soya milk. The rest you can work out for yourselves. It has to be a piss-take, doesn’t it? (Actually, I’m not so sure. […]
Drug Policy Transformed?
I’ve spent the morning looking over the Transform Drug Policy Foundation’s consultation paper, A Comparison of the Cost-Effectiveness of the Prohibition and Regulation of Drugs, which was published today. The full report is available as a .pdf here (note the filesize – at 445k, it’s HUGE) – or there’s a summary on Transform’s blog, here. […]
Suicide Documentary on the BBC
In case you missed it, there’s a little under a week left to listen again to last night’s Radio 4 documentary on the Swiss assisted suicide movement: follow this link. For what it’s worth, I couldn’t help thinking that it was a little scare-mongering and tabloid. (So the mentally ill or non-terminal might be able to […]
Cancer LOL!
Cancer’s the sort of thing in respect of which a lot of people are very, very earnest indeed. It’s a pleasure, then, to discover Cancerous Capers, a blog about cancer by someone with cancer, that is light and funny and… well, not earnest: I’m Jamie Ross. I’m twenty, and I was an English student until […]