Ethics Goes on Holiday
By Stephen Rainey
Summer time, and the living is ethically perplexing. Hordes of holidaymakers, the shimmering sea, busy beaches, and one sun over it all. How can the eager ethicist assess how to make the most of a fortnight away? We all know how we can generally make the most of things – but how ought we to treat the beach while we’re away? Should we think of our own pleasure, the pleasure of all, or something else? Here, we can explore some options, and get some answers. Continue reading
The Dangers Of Deferring To Doctors
By Charles Foster
(Image: tctmd.com)
There is a dizzying circularity in much medical law. Judges make legal decisions based on the judgments of rightly directed clinicians, and rightly directed clinicians make their judgments based on what they think the judges expect of them. This is intellectually unfortunate. It can also be dangerous.
There are two causes: Judges’ reluctance to interfere with the decisions of clinicians, and doctors’ fear of falling foul of the law.
In some ways judicial deference to the judgment of professionals in a discipline very different from their own is appropriate. Judges cannot be doctors. The deference is best illustrated by the famous and ubiquitous Bolam test, which is the touchstone for liability in professional negligence cases.1 A doctor will not be negligent if their action or inaction would be endorsed by a responsible body of professional opinion in the relevant specialty.
In the realm of civil litigation for alleged negligence this deference is justified. The problem arises when the deference is exported to legal arenas where it should have no place. The classic example relates to determinations of the ‘best interests’ of incapacitous patients. Something done in relation to an incapacitous patient will only be lawful if it is in that patient’s best interests. Continue reading
What’s Wrong With Simulation in Football?
Written by Doug McConnell
The 2018 edition of the football world cup has brought with it a renewed bout of hand wringing over ‘simulation’, e.g. players falling, diving, and tumbling under imaginary fouls, rolling around in mock pain, or clasping their faces pretending to have been hit. Stuart James writes in the Guardian that “play-acting has been commonplace at this World Cup. It’s become a cancer in the game, not just a stain on it, and Fifa needs to find a cure.” But what exactly is wrong with this behaviour? Why is the rise of this behaviour ‘a cancer in the game’? Continue reading
The Psychology of Uncertainty, Vaccinations, and Protecting the Most Vulnerable: Was Rawls Right After All?
written by Andreas Kappes (@AnKappes), Anne-Marie Nußberger (@amnussberger ), Molly Crockett (@mollycrockett ) & Julian Savulescu (@juliansavulescu)
Measles is making a comeback in Britain and Europe with numbers rising to record levels this year. Last year in Europe, measles killed 35 people, including young children . The re-emergence of measles can be traced to falling rates of vaccination and might make you want to re-think your summer plans. Crowded environments with low levels of hygiene, also known as summer festivals, are something to avoid if unsure about whether you have been properly vaccinated. And maybe re-think going for holidays to Romania, Italy and Greece, the countries with the highest rates of measles outbreaks this year.
But of course, even if you are not vaccinated, your chances of getting measles are low. And if you are infected, dying from measles is rare. The people that die during measles outbreaks are vulnerable babies that are too young to be vaccinated and unvaccinated people with compromised immune systems. And what are the chances that you infect one of these vulnerable people? Extremely low. Your intuition then might be that even if you are unsure about your vaccination status, the low odds don’t seem to justify the effort to engage with the NHS or any other health care provider. Maximize your benefits, and others will surely be fine. Individually, this feels right, but for the communities and countries we live in, this is disastrous, slowly eroding herd immunity that protects the most vulnerable.
Utilitarian Supervillains, Moral Enhancement, and Enforced Vegetarianism
By Hazem Zohny
Bad utilitarians make for great supervillains.
Take Thanos, the purple CGI nemesis the Avengers have to face this year in what feels like the gazillionth Marvel movie. In his sincere desire to reduce suffering, Thanos is trying to kill half of all life in the universe.
Like all utilitarian-type supervillains, he has presumably gotten his welfare-maximizing calculus very wrong. But it made me wonder what such a supervillain might look like if their calculus wasn’t so comically dim-witted. To that end, I’m going to discuss a character we can call Vegetarian Thanos.
Hell, Damnation, The Royal Wedding, And The Thrashing Of Schoolboys
By Charles Foster
Image: Holly Fisher, a Conservative Christian blogger from West Virginia, posing with gun, Bible, and US flag: from www.nydailynews.com
There was a near universal consensus that Bishop Michael Curry’s sermon at the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle was magnificent. ‘Frock Star’, panted the Sun. The Bishop ‘stole the show…and is the ‘new Pippa Middleton’’ He left for the US, the Sun continued, ‘leaving Britain still raving about his electrifying sermon.’ The Bishop ‘just stole the show’, said Vox.com ‘Prince Harry and Meghan were all but upstaged by the Episcopal priest’s fiery sermon….You might say Curry just made the Anglican communion great again.’
‘The Rev Michael Curry’, tweeted Ed Miliband, ‘could almost make me a believer, ’ and Piers Morgan tweeted: ‘Wow. Still reeling from Rev Curry. What a moment. What a man!’ The BBC commentator Jeremy Vine said that the preacher was ‘doing 50 in a 30 zone, and it’s brilliant.’ Continue reading
Press Release: Alfie Evans Case
by Dominic Wilkinson
In the light of the media attention today, I have gathered together some of the material relating to the ethics of this case Continue reading
Tongue Splitting, Nipple Excision, And Ear Removal: Why Prosecute The Operator But Not The Customer?
By Charles Foster
Image: ‘Split tongue: procedure, safety, result’: Tattoo World: Standard YouTube licence.
The appellant in R v BM was a tattooist and body piercer who also engaged in ‘body modification’. He was charged with three offences of wounding with intent to do grievous bodily harm. These entailed: (a) Removal of an ear; (b) Removal of a nipple; and (c) division of a tongue so that it looked reptilian. In each case the customer had consented. There was, said the appellant, no offence because of this consent.
Where an adult decides to do something that is not prohibited by the law, the law will generally not interfere.
In Schloendorff v Society of New York Hospital (1914) 105 NE 92 Cardozo J said:
“Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with his own body.”[1]
This principle has been fairly consistently recognised in the English law.[2] Thus, for instance, In In re T (Adult: Refusal of Treatment, Butler-Sloss LJ cited with approval this section of the judgment of Robins JA in Malette v Shulman[3]:
‘The right to determine what shall be done with one’s own body is a fundamental right in our society. The concepts inherent in this right are the bedrock upon which the principles of self-determination and individual autonomy are based. Free individual choice in matters affecting this right should, in my opinion, be accorded very high priority.’ Continue reading
Harm, Interests and Medical Treatment. Where the Supreme Court Got it Wrong…
By Dominic Wilkinson
In the latest case of disputed medical treatment for a child, the family of Liverpool toddler Alfie Evans yesterday lost their last legal appeal. The family had appealed to the European Court of Human Rights to examine whether the UK courts’ decision (to allow doctors to stop life support) was contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court (as it had in two other cases in the last 12 months) rejected the appeal. It is expected that the artificial ventilation that is currently keeping Alfie alive will be withdrawn in the coming days.
This decision, difficult as it is for his family to accept, is the right decision for Alfie. Medical treatment can no longer help him. As I wrote a month ago, it is time to stop fighting, time to let him go.
However, one important legal and ethical issue raised in this case, and in the case of Charlie Gard from last year, is about the basis for deciding when parents and doctors disagree. What ethical standard should apply?
Last week, the UK Supreme Court adamantly refused Alfie’s parents’ previous legal appeal, focused on this specific question. I will argue that the court’s arguments fail and that the current UK legal approach is mistaken. (Though in fact, in the Evans case as in the case of Charlie Gard, it seems likely that the court would have reached the same decision about treatment even if it had applied a different ethical standard).
The Psychology of Speciesism: How We Privilege Certain Animals Over Others
Written by Lucius Caviola
Our relationship with animals is complex. There are some animals we treat very kindly; we keep them as pets, give them names, and take them to the doctor when they are sick. Other animals, in contrast, seem not to deserve this privileged status; we use them as objects for human consumption, trade, involuntary experimental subjects, industrial equipment, or as sources of entertainment. Dogs are worth more than pigs, horses more than cows, cats more than rats, and by far the most worthy species of all is our own one. Philosophers have referred to this phenomenon of discriminating individuals on the basis of their species membership as speciesism (Singer, 1975). Some of them have argued that speciesism is a form of prejudice analogous to racism or sexism.
Whether speciesism actually exists and whether it is related to other forms of prejudice isn’t just a philosophical question, however. Fundamentally, these are hypotheses about human psychology that can be explored and tested empirically. Yet surprisingly, speciesism has been almost entirely neglected by psychologists (apart from a few). There have been fewer than 30 publications in the last 70 years on this topic as revealed by a Web of Science search for the keywords speciesism and human-animal relations in all psychology journals. While this search may not be totally exhaustive, it pales in comparison to the almost 3’000 publications on the psychology of racism in the same time frame. The fact that psychology has neglected speciesism is strange, given the relevance of the topic (we all interact with animals or eat meat), the prevalence of the topic in philosophy, and the strong focus psychology puts on other types of apparent prejudice. Researching how we assign moral status to animals should be an obvious matter of investigation for psychology.
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