{"id":678,"date":"2010-10-14T10:57:06","date_gmt":"2010-10-14T09:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/?p=678"},"modified":"2010-10-14T10:57:06","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T09:57:06","slug":"bioethics-as-a-spectator-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2010\/10\/14\/bioethics-as-a-spectator-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"Bioethics as a Spectator Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Remember when the BBC and ITV had both used to pretend that the other didn&#8217;t exist, except in veiled references to &#8220;the other side&#8221;?\u00a0 I always feel that talking about papers in <em>Bioethics<\/em> is a bit like that.\u00a0 Oh, I know that journals don&#8217;t engage in rivalry, that it&#8217;s all collegiate, and so on.\u00a0 But, still&#8230;\u00a0<em>Bioethics<\/em> is\u00a0<em>the other side<\/em>, isn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p>That aside, I thought it worth putting on record that I really enjoyed reading <a href=\"http:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1111\/j.1467-8519.2009.01739.x\/pdf\">Dadlez and Andrews&#8217; paper<\/a> in November&#8217;s <em>Bioethics<\/em> on so-called Post Abortion Syndrome, an &#8220;illness&#8221; invented by the pro-life crowd with the intention of showing that abortion is deeply counterproductive, and therefore the sort of thing that women shouldn&#8217;t do.\u00a0 The only thing missing from the aetiology of the condition, it would appear, is any relationship with reality or sanity.\u00a0 Minor stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway: one thing about the paper is that I&#8217;m surprised that it actually got published.\u00a0 This isn&#8217;t because it wants for quality, but because it&#8217;s stylistically very different from most papers in bioethics &#8211; or philosophy generally.\u00a0 Notably, it&#8217;s largely an attack on the claims and methods of one person.\u00a0 (To this extent, I suspect that David Reardon &#8211; the person in question &#8211; may feel that it&#8217;s <em>ad hominem<\/em>.\u00a0 I&#8217;m not sure; but even if it is, it could be\u00a0one of those very rare cases in which an <em>ad hominem<\/em> attack is not fallacious.)\u00a0 But, surprise notwithstanding &#8211; and even putting aside my own sympathy with Dadlez and Andrews&#8217; position &#8211; I&#8217;m glad that the paper was published.\u00a0 That&#8217;s simply because philosophy can, at times, be a spectator sport &#8211; and it&#8217;s nice, every now and again, to see someone getting so thoroughly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.urbandictionary.com\/define.php?term=pwned\">pwned<\/a>.<!--TrendMD v2.4.8--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Remember when the BBC and ITV had both used to pretend that the other didn&#8217;t exist, except in veiled references to &#8220;the other side&#8221;?\u00a0 I always feel that talking about papers in Bioethics is a bit like that.\u00a0 Oh, I know that journals don&#8217;t engage in rivalry, that it&#8217;s all collegiate, and so on.\u00a0 But, [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-secondary understrap-read-more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.bmj.com\/medical-ethics\/2010\/10\/14\/bioethics-as-a-spectator-sport\/\">Read More&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1542],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-journals"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - 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