Is Darwinian Medicine Good for Us?
The New Scientist has recently interviewed Dr Paul Turke, paediatrician and advocate of ‘Darwinian Medicine’: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428600.300-hold-the-painkillers-says-darwinian-paediatrician.html. Dr Turke is working on a book expounding his views, with the working title Bringing Up Baby: A Darwinian View of Pediatrics. It is unfair to form a settled judgment of Dr Turke’s views before he has had a chance to develop them fully in his book. Nevertheless, I think it is worth making a few comments now, as Dr Turke is not the only advocate of Darwinian medicine and his interview raises a cluster of interesting issues.
One good point that Turke makes is that there is benefit to be had by considering the possible evolutionary functions of our bodies’ responses to injuries and infections. Experiencing a fever is unpleasant, but it seems to be part of our bodies’ preparation to fight certain forms of infection. As such, the propensity to experience fever may well be an evolutionary adaptation that we have acquired because of its contribution to our survival. Similarly, the swelling and pain that we experience when we twist a joint looks like an evolutionary adaptation to prevent us from using that joint and so promote healing and ultimately, long term survival. It surely helps medical practice to understand how and why particular bodily responses evolved, as this helps us to better understand what their functions are.
Planet of the (Little) Apes
The Daily Mail has recently published an article entitled ‘Planet of the (little) apes: Save the world by genetically engineering humans to be smaller, suggests NYU philosopher.’ (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2114430/Save-planet-genetically-engineering-humans-smaller-suggests-NYU-philosopher.html)
It is always good to see the Daily Mail covering philosophy and covering issues in applied ethics in particular. The NYU philosopher in question is former Uehiro Centre researcher S. Matthew Liao. His co-authors, Anders Sandberg and Rebecca Roache are both affiliated with the Future of Humanity Institute here at Oxford and the paper under discussion is called ‘Human Engineering and Climate Change’ and is forthcoming in Ethics Policy and the Environment, an interdisciplinary academic journal which specialises in environmental policy and ethics.
Should we Encourage Atheists to get into Foxholes?
‘There are no atheists in foxholes’, as the saying goes. This is of course an exaggeration. There have always been some atheists in foxholes. With millions of military personnel representing this or that country around the world it seems inconceivable that no atheists whatsoever would be occupying foxholes. The Richard Dawkins Foundation appears to like the idea of atheists in foxholes. So much so that they have been providing care packages to members of the Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers (MAAF) who request them. So far they have sent out over 150 care packages. These contain food items, supplies such as gloves, Dawkins Foundation pins and stickers and the occasional book. See http://richarddawkins.net/articles/644969-dawkins-foundation-care-packages-go-to-atheists-in-foxholes. Perhaps enough to encourage an atheist to remain in a foxhole for a while longer. Continue reading
The NHS should Stop Wasting Money on Homeopaths and Homeopathic Hospitals and should Offer Placebo Pills to Patients Requesting Homeopathic Treatments
The NHS spends three to four million pounds per year on homeopathic remedies, despite conceding that there is no evidence that homeopathic remedies actually work. They justify this expenditure on the grounds of patient choice: http://www.nhs.uk/news/2010/July07/Pages/nhs-homeopathy.aspx. In a post on this subject, on August 20th 2010, I took the view there is something right about this line of reasoning. If people want to choose homeopathic remedies that are known to be no more effective than placebos, rather than conventional medical alternatives, then they are making a foolish choice, but it is their choice to make and provided that they are not harming others it should be respected. However, I also argued that the NHS has a duty to manage its budget carefully. They should only pay for homeopathic remedies when these are cheaper than the conventional medical alternatives that they are replacing and they should not spend more money on homeopathic remedies than is necessary. Given that the NHS spends three to four million pounds on approximately 25,000 ‘homeopathic items’ per year, I calculated that the NHS spends an average of £140- per homeopathic item prescribed. This figure could easily be reduced. In the earlier post I offered two suggestions to help the NHS save money on homeopathy. First, on the grounds that homeopathic training makes no difference to the efficacy of homeopathic remedies, I suggested that the NHS should pay homeopaths minimum wage. Second, I argued that the NHS should reduce the cost of homeopathic remedies by making its own homeopathic remedies, or outsource the job to a competitive supplier who can reduce the price of homeopathic remedies.
Has Violence Declined? John Gray on Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker, the well-known Harvard evolutionary psychologist, has a new book just out, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, published by Viking. The claim which Pinker defends, that violence is declining and has declined over the course of human history will come as a surprise to many readers who are used to seeing a constant stream of media reports of contemporary wars, riots, homicides, rapes and so on and may have drawn the conclusion that we live in an exceptionally violent age. However, the claim that violence has declined is backed up by a mass of data. Unless Pinker has forged a lot of this data, or ignored significant countervailing evidence, it seems clear that those of us living in the early 21st Century are much less likely to die a violent death than humans living at pretty much any previous stage in history, and much less likely to be subjected to various non-lethal forms of violence too. Pinker offers a rather complicated explanation for the overall decline in human violence. The gist of it is that the spread of various ‘civilising’ cultural influences have operated to reduce violence as states have become successively more powerful and enlightenment ideas have spread. This is a very whiggish explanation of the decline in violence and is very unlikely to be accepted by those who do not share Pinker’s optimistic depiction of the trajectory of human history. Continue reading
Geoengineering, Science, Consequentialism and Humility
The Uehiro Centre has recently hosted Clive Hamilton who was visiting from the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. Hamilton is well known for his work on the politics of climate change. While here he presented a paper on the ‘Ethical Foundations of Climate Engineering’, which he has now been revised and is available at his website: http://www.clivehamilton.net.au/cms/media/ethical_foundations_of_climate_engineering.pdf.
Climate engineering is also known as ‘geoenginering’ and the ethics of geoengineering has recently been discussed in a joint paper by several members of the Uehiro Centre who take a view that Hamilton strongly disagrees with: http://www.practicalethics.ox.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0013/21325/Ethics_of_Geoengineering_Working_Draft.pdf
Hamilton’s paper is an attack on consequentialist justifications for geoengineering – attempts to use technology to try to manipulate the Earth’s climate in order to ameliorate the effects of climate change. He sees such attempts as part and parcel of a world view which springs from the Scientific Revolution. He tells us that: ‘The consequentialism of climate ethics is built on an unstated (and mostly unrecognized) understanding of the natural world, one that grew out of the Scientific Revolution in the 17th Century and the European Enlightenment philosophy that went with it.’ According to Hamilton, people who are in the grip of this scientific world view, including consequentialist philosophers, lack ‘humility in the face of nature’. The ground for this humility is, ‘… acceptance of our limitations in the face of the superior power, complexity and enigmatic character of the earth’. Hamilton sees the presumption that we might be able to ‘master’ nature as fundamentally misguided: ‘Climate engineering represents a conscious attempt to overcome resistance of the natural world to human domination …’, however, ‘… the sheer complexity and unpredictability of the natural world resists attempts at total mastery’.
Should the Danish Ban on Marmite be Spread?
It has been widely reported that Denmark has banned the sale of Marmite, a move that has shocked and outraged many Britons who love Marmite. Similarly, many Australians have been shocked and outraged by reports of a Danish ban on Vegemite. These reports are somewhat inaccurate. Companies that wish to market products that are fortified with extra vitamins, minerals and other substances are required to seek prior approval from the Danish Veterinary and Food Administration before the product can be placed on the Danish market and this has yet to happen in the case of Marmite (or Vegemite). These regulations have been in place in Denmark since 2004 but have not been applied to the case of these fortified food spreads until now. See: http://www.amblondon.um.dk/NR/exeres/8A56692E-1780-495E-8176-F0E366653F52,frameless.htm?NRMODE=Published
Should surgeons other than cardiac surgeons publicise performance information?
Mortality rates for common forms of cardiac surgery have been made public in the United Kingdom for several years now. This information is individualised. If you are considering having a particular surgeon perform a common form of cardiac operation on you, you can make a better-informed decision by getting on the internet and finding out how many times that cardiac surgeon has conducted that operation, how many of his or her previous patients have survived such operations and how often they have not survived. You can also find out how your prospective surgeon compares to other surgeons performing similar operations. Although the publicising of cardiac surgeons’ performance information was controversial when it was first introduced, it has attained a broad level of acceptance in areas in which it has been introduced, in large part because this form of transparency has been effective in reducing mortality (see Justin Oakley and Steve Clarke ‘Surgeon Report Cards’, in Patient Safety First: Responsive Regulation in Health Care, edited by Judith Healy and Paul Dugdale, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2009, pp. 221-236). For discussion of a range of ethical issues related to the disclosure of surgeons’ performance information see Informed Consent and Clinician Accountability: the Ethics of Report Cards on Surgeon Performance, edited by Steve Clarke and Justin Oakley, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, July 2007.
Why we should accept genetically modified chickens
Avian influenza, or ‘bird flu’ is a significant risk to many different wild bird species as well as to domesticated birds including chickens. The virus subtype H5NI has already killed millions of chickens especially in Asia. H5N1 has also resulted in the death of over three hundred humans who have made contact with infected birds. It has the potential to kill many millions of humans – perhaps even billions, according to an article in the American Scientist if the virus mutates to make it easier to transmit from human to human (http://www.americanscientist.org/my_amsci/restricted.aspx?act=pdf&id=3158345715265).
Reframing Sacred Values and Making Political Compromises
Steve Clarke
Scott Atran’s Talking to The Enemy (HarperCollins: New York, 2010) has recently been published. This is a big, sprawling and very readable book which has much that is important to say about religious behaviour and the role of religion in inspiring, and also in preventing, terrorism and conflict in general. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about religious conflict ‘on the ground’. One of the many intriguing issues that is discussed in the book is the issue of compromising over sacred values. When a religious group asserts that a particular city, or geographical feature which they control is sacred or holy, they are typically also asserting that they are not prepared to give up control of that site, regardless of the costs to them. And if they do not control it then they are prepared to do whatever is necessary to regain control of it, regardless of costs. The same can be said for possession of sacred artifacts and the right to practice sacred rituals.
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