The Morality of Carbon Border Taxes
By Doug McConnell
The European Parliament has adopted a tool called the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) which will apply the EU’s carbon pricing to imported goods. This means that imports from countries with lesser or non-existent carbon pricing will effectively face a tariff. Various governments including Australia and China have objected strongly to the CBAM claiming that it unfairly forces EU rules on other countries, discriminates against them, and represents a return to the bad old days of trade protectionism.
So are CBAMs a noble mechanism to push the world towards carbon neutrality or the latest tool for powerful nations to assert control over weaker nations? I argue that the CBAM does have the potential to be discriminatory and unjust but not against rich countries like Australia that have had ample opportunity to develop (and maintain) a carbon pricing system.
Is a Publication Boycott of Chinese Science a Justifiable Response to Human Rights Violations Perpetrated by Chinese Doctors and Scientists?
By Doug McConnell
Recently the editor-in-chief of the Annals of Human Genetics, Prof David Curtis, resigned from his position, in part, because the journal’s publisher, Wiley, refused to publish a letter he co-authored with Thomas Schulze, Yves Moreau, and Thomas Wenzel. In that letter, they argue in favour of a boycott on Chinese medical and scientific publications as a response to the serious human rights violations happening in China. Several other leading journals, the Lancet, the BMJ and JAMA have also refused to publish the letter claiming that a boycott against China would be unfair and counterproductive.
This raises two separate ethical issues: 1. Should journals refuse to publish a letter arguing in favour of a boycott on Chinese medical and scientific publications? 2. Should journals actually establish a boycott on Chinese medical and scientific publications? Continue reading
A Juror’s Guide to Going Rogue
Written by Doug McConnell
A jury recently acquitted several activists charged with causing £25,000 worth of damage to Shell’s HQ in London despite the defendants admitting that they caused the damage and the judge informing the jury that the defendants had no legal defence. In other words, if the law were applied correctly, the jury had no choice but to find them guilty. When juries deviate from the law and “go rogue” like this, it is known as “nullification”. But when, if ever, should juries behave in this way? Continue reading
Ethics of the GameStop Short Squeeze
By Doug McConnell
Recently a large, loosely coordinated group of individual ‘retail investors’ have been buying up stocks that certain hedge funds had bet against (i.e. ‘shorted’). In doing so, the retail investors have driven up the price of those stocks. This has caused hedge funds that shorted the stock to lose billions of dollars and enabled a number of retail investors to get rich in the process. The phenomenon is anthropologically interesting because it is symbolic of a shift in power away from the traditional Wall Street players towards less wealthy, less well-connected individuals. But what are the ethics of this? Did Average Joe Trader just bring a measure of justice to Wall Street? Or did the mob unethically manipulate the market? If they did, are their actions any more unethical than the usual behaviour of institutional investors? Continue reading
Dementia, Pagal, or Neurocognitive Disorder: What Is In a Name?
By Doug McConnell
A recent BBC news story has drawn attention to the fact that there isn’t a word for “dementia” in many South Asian languages and some South Asian people living in the UK still use the stigmatising Punjabi word “pagal”, meaning “crazy” or “mad”. The news story implicitly assumes that the word “dementia” is non-stigmatising but this is disputed. If the word “dementia” is itself stigmatizing, are anglophones really in a position to criticize other languages? Can we adopt a non-stigmatising word for dementia? Continue reading
Pandemic Ethics: Key Workers Have a Stronger Claim to Compensation and Hazard Pay for Working During The COVID-19 Pandemic Than The Armed Forces Do When on Deployment
By Doug McConnell and Dominic Wilkinson
Post originally appeared on the Journal of Medical Ethics Blog
While the general public enjoy the relative safety of social distancing, key workers are at a higher risk of both contracting COVID-19 and transmitting it to their families. This is especially the case for ‘frontline’ workers who are frequently exposed to the virus and may not have access to adequate personal protective equipment (PPE). Tragically, many key workers have died of COVID-19 around the world already, including over 100 in the UK.
Although it is relatively rare for key workers to die from COVID-19, the risk of death is obviously much greater than one would usually expect in these roles and key workers clearly have good reason to be anxious. For ‘frontline’ workers, the distress is compounded by working in harrowing conditions where so many are dying alone. Furthermore, frontline workers have to take on the burdens of ensuring they do not transmit infections to their families, by moving in with patients, living in hotels, or maintaining rigorous social distancing in their own homes.
These atypical costs, risks, and burdens suggest that key workers are owed compensation in addition to their usual pay and a few instances of nationally coordinated applause. Continue reading
Pandemic Ethics: How Much Risk Should Social Care Workers and Their Families Be Expected to Take?
By Doug McConnell
Recently many of the staff at an aged-care home in Sydney, Australia called in sick the day after the report of a CoVid-19 outbreak at that facility.1 Upon investigation of these absences, one of the reasons the workers gave was that they were concerned about protecting their own families. They didn’t want to act as a vector transferring the disease from the aged care home to their own homes. So how much risk should social care workers and their families be obliged to take when responding to infectious diseases like CoVid-19? Continue reading
Mr Broccoli Versus Piers Morgan: Hypocrisy and Environmental Action
Written by Doug McConnell
Everywhere we look environmentalists are being exposed as hypocrites. But is this relevant to the arguments these environmentalists are making and, if not, how can we improve the quality of public debate on environmental issues? Continue reading
Conscientious Objection, Professional Discretionary Space, and Good Medicine
By Doug McConnell
Some argue that good medicine depends on physicians having a wide discretionary space in which they can act on their consciences (Sulmasy, 2017). Interestingly, those who are against conscientious objection in medicine make the exact opposite claim – giving physicians the freedom to act on their consciences will undermine good medicine. So who is right here?
Should Religious Homophobia be a Firing Offence?
By Doug McConnell
It looks as if Isreal Folau will lose his job as a professional rugby player for expressing his apparently genuine religious belief that drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists, and idolators are all going to hell. Morgan Begg, a research fellow at the Australian conservative think-tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, has recently argued that this is the result of a “totalitarian” and “authoritarian desire to impose ideological orthodoxy on Australians.” I respond that it is, in fact, Begg’s ideological position that is more amenable to totalitarianism and authoritarianism. Continue reading
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