At least the Trolley Problem has been solved. (Hat-tip to Brian Leiter for the pointer.) […]
Latest articles
Can Saving a Life be the Wrong Thing to Do?
Doubtless many of you will have heard by now of Kerrie Wooltorton, who, apparently depressed by her fertility problems, drank anti-freeze, called an ambulance, and handed a living will to staff at A&E. Her story is reported by the Telegraph under the headline “Suicide woman allowed to die because doctors feared saving her would be assault” […]
Book Review: Singer & Viens (eds.), “The Cambridge Textbook of Bioethics”
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009; 538+xv pp £40, pb A couple of months ago, Cambridge UP tried to post a cheeky advert for this book in the comments to one of the posts on this site. I sabotaged the link, but offered to restore it in return for a freebie, which CUP asked me to review. […]
Acronym Overload: the CLC on the DPP and the ECHR
In the wake of the DPP’s publication on Wednesday of guidance about assisted suicide, the Telegraph is reporting that the Christian Legal Centre is considering launching legal action to halt the implementation of that guidance. The nub of their claim is that Lord Phillips, who had ruled in the summer that clearer guidance ought to […]
DPP’s Interim Policy on Assisted Suicide Published
The Director of Public Prosecutions has today published interim guidelines on prosecutions for assisted suicide in England and Wales – they’re available here (and Northern Ireland will get its own consultation process). I’ve not had time to consider them in full, but there’s a number of things that stand out to me as worthy of comment. […]
ECHR Rulings: Keeping the Faith
I’m going a bit off-topic with this, I think, but John Coggon’s reply to today’s earlier post has got me thinking. His reply pointed out that [i]t might be worth noting that Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (presumably the key right under issue) states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of […]
Jewellery and Dress Codes (redux)
It must have been a slow news day: a nurse is seeking legal advice after being told by her employers that she wasn’t allowed to wear a necklace at work. What’s so – ahem – special about this is that it’s a crucifix necklace: Mrs Chaplin has sought advice from the Christian Legal Centre (CLC). […]
The difficulty of identifying gradual changes in health status
By David Hunter It wasn’t until I was eight that I first got glasses. This wasn’t because I wasn’t short sighted before then, rather the contrary I was very short sighted I just hadn’t noticed. I thought trees were just blurry green blobs at a distance, I sat at the front of the classroom so […]
David Hockney, up in Smoke
David Hockney has been talking to the BBC about the UK’s smoking ban: he’s not a fan, and suggests that there ought to be “smoking rooms” available. It’s not the first time that he’s gone public in his opposition to the ban – a few years ago he was interviewed on the Today programme and […]
DNA Databases and Crime… part 34
The New Scientist this week is running a series of short articles on how to make the world a better place. One of the suggestions is to legalise drugs – I’ve blogged about why this is a good idea before (and Ben Goldacre has a nice account of why we haven’t done it already). Another […]