One of the topics to which I return every so often is ethics in psychiatry – particularly in the context of problems concerning how we decide whether someone is sane or insane. Julian Baggini ponders related topics here. Worth a few minutes, I think… […]
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WoooOOOoooO!! Research!!
That “wooOOOooO” was the sound a ghost makes, just in case you were wondering. I’m not sure if what follows is more of a tale about woeful reporting, or woeful research. What I am more sure about is that many of you will have seen BBC reporting that “[a] large study is to examine near-death experiences in […]
The good old but somewhat cold days
By David Hunter Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber links to this 1958 piece of research on how children behaved when locked inside fridges… Using a specially designed enclosure, 201 children 2 to 5 years of age took part in tests in which six devices were used, including two developed in the course of this experiment […]
Food without much thought…
By David Hunter Something that always surprises me at bioethics conferences, especially given the number of vegetarians in the field, is the absence of quality or sometimes even any vegetarian food. Take the recent International Association of Bioethics (IAB) Congress in Croatia. The lunches were fairly awful especially for vegetarians (although the KFC looking chicken […]
Principles of Biomedical Ethics, 6. ed. – Nearing perfection?
It is rare to be able to review a book long before it is published. But my copy bears the publication year of 2009, even though I bought it in July 2008. Be that as it may, seven is the number of perfection so it is relevant to ask whether the 6th edition of Tom […]
IAB conference 2008
I wonder what readers’ experiences were of the IAB conference in Croatia at the start of the month. I know that some delegates had a terrible time with the organisation – what were your impressions? Additionally, what was your impression of the standard of papers? For myself, I was happy to see that those whom […]
Well, hello there…
Having taken on board the idea that the fashionable people are always late to parties, I made it my mission to be the last person to post an entry here. Søren’s instructions for blogging on this site were minimal: David and I can write what we see fit, as long as it’s not libellous. I […]
Toleration and method in bioethics
By David Hunter It has been argued by some that bioethicists and in particular philosophers must be tolerant of the variety of different methods that might be employed in trying to answer the questions focused on by medical ethics/bioethics. Thus it is claimed we ought to accept as equally valid to classic philosophical analysis; empirical […]
Welcome to the Medical Ethics blog!
Medical ethics is a fast moving field where there is always some new scientific or political development to analyse and discuss. It is difficult for a journal like the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME) to keep up with these day to day developments in its print version, but we hope to do it in this […]