Why Pro-Life Counsellors Ought to Lie
Those who are pro-choice often get frustrated by anti-abortion advocates, who are seen as using underhanded and immoral tactics to decrease numbers of abortions. These include presenting misleading information about abortions at their advice centres.
For example, it is claimed that some abortion counsellors show pictures of late-stage abortions when discussing early-stage abortions, exaggerate the trauma felt by people who have had abortions and assert that foetuses feel pain earlier than scientists believe they do. A large part of the opposition to the amendment proposed by Nadine Dorries , which would have prevented bodies which carry out abortions from counselling women, was that this might mean that more women would be counselled by anti-abortion groups who cannot be trusted to provide accurate information about abortion. I’m going to suggest that it is a mistake to think that anti-abortion advisors are failing morally by providing misleading information about abortions. Indeed, they might be failing morally if they did not do so. Continue reading
Circumcision is immoral, should be banned
By Brian Earp (Follow Brian on Twitter by clicking here.)
Seattle, 1985. I escaped the hospital with my penis intact. Lucky for me. Routine neonatal circumcision in boys is cruel and immoral, deeply unnecessary, and it should be made illegal in the United States. Or so I argue in this post.
Yet lawmakers in California, it is now being reported, have introduced a bill with the opposite end in mind. They wish to ban legislation that could forbid circumcision-without-consent. Read that sentence again. What could be going on?
“Focus Pocus” and Beyond: consumer brain computer interfaces for health, self-improvement and fun
In September 2011 ,the most advanced computer game to use a consumer brain computer interface (BCI) will go on sale. Its name is Focus Pocus (see video trailer here, its awesome) and it is aimed at children with ADHD so that they might use gamification to train their brains to improve focus and impulse control.
The game is based on neurofeedback enabled by the use of the Neurosky dry-electrode EEG (Electro-EncephaloGram) headset, which anyone can purchase for under $100 (or 100 Euros if in Europe) Earlier this week, BBC2 did a special on the headset. The basic Idea is that the single electrode on the Neurosky headset (placed on the forehead) is able to pick up a few simple and characteristic brainwaves (created by activity in populations of neurons), some that have been shown to be enriched when the subject is awake and attentive (ex. Beta-waves), and some when the subject is relaxed (ex. alpha waves). Neurosky has developed algorithms to funnel these and other brain waves into measures of “focus” and “meditation.” Look here for more details on how it works.
Considering the Instrumentalization and Exploitation of Elite Athletes
Why did Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye not wear helmets during their boxing fight a few weeks ago? Actually, they do tend to wear them during training, but obviously not when an official boxing match takes place. Why not? Presumably, it is because wearing helmets could foster tactical fights and finally turn them into unspectacular victories won on points.
Instead of impressive knock outs, swaying hulks and eye-rolling fighting-machines, an audience would have to content itself with scampering human rocks and rare surprise effects. From another perspective, boosting knock outs (or not wearing helmets) could even be seen as a degrading or even a humiliating act against an athlete’s integrity. Nevertheless, professional boxers accept this system because they also get their salary after being vanquished and humbled. Still, a slightly unpleasant taste of something between modern slavery and exploitation cannot be denied.
Furthermore, participating at an excellent level automatically implies taking on a kind of role model responisibility. Often, still adolescent athletes are meant to be ambassadors of virtues such as fairness, consideration and respect. But unfortunately, within a Darwinistic framework like sports you cannot reach the top of the pyramid while considering the needs of your competitor. Moreover, the regular monitoring of athletes actually undermines their status as role models, since it stigmatizes athletes as people who, without surveillance, will behave improperly. [1] Hence, to put an athlete in charge of being an ambassador of moral traits may be utopian. Rather it should be the other way round. Elite sportsperson represent qualities and insufficiencies of the specific society they were born and raised in and therefore, tend to be seen as a mirror of society. In fact, they’re not. Sports, including athletes as its protagonists, are rather boosters of human traits because performing at limits confesses which values we actually stand for. Expecting athletes to exhibit superior moral traits because they occasionally appear on a screen responding to questions, is not unfair, but naïve. Therefore, enforcing a sportsperson to bear the burden of being a centre of moral competence while gasping for breath might be a deportation of this specific « educational » responsibility.
A further aspect of instrumentalization is going to be obvious while conceding that the system of modern sports industry actually promotes doping. To substantiate this provocative thesis, I would like to make the connection to the Tour de France 2011 or similar intense competitions requiring weeks of top performance. The main reason why cyclists began abusing performance enhancing methods in such an excessive manner is certainly not because they were poorly prepared for the race. It is because the setting of the competition itself (in this case the TdF) demands inhuman physical capacities. To cycle 3’430.5 kilometres within 23 days and only 2 days of recovery cannot be healthy at all. Despite the fact elite sport does not much concern health these numbers imply a daily distance of 149.15 km on average, of course under contest conditions. Additionally, all of the six high mountain stages take place in the second half of the Tour (superfluous to mention that every of them is above 152 km with exception of the last one). Notably, not the length of each single stage, which is questionable, it is more about the short interval between the stages and the repetition for more than three weeks. Due to the fact that the human body depends on regular nutrition, hydration and recovery to keep a natural level of performance such a race-calendar, at least indirectly, suggests the intake of performance enhancing substances . In fact, during the Tour, cyclists get infusions for nutrition and hydration [2] because the human body is physiologically not able to restore its stock this fast (until next competition starts, normally on the subsequent day). Finally, we have to keep in mind that the Tour de France is only one of several long-distance events in the race-calendar.
To conclude, doping is just an inevitable corollary. Especially, if we as spectateurs insist on the current aesthetic and entertaining standard of sports which actually involves boxers not wearing helmets or cyclists trying to make up with inhuman competition-settings. Even on that account, it might be inconsistent, maybe even hypocritical, to justify a ban by appealing on athletes’ well-being [3] like various anti-doping defenders do. As a result, sports governing bodies may ask themselves what they intent to provide to the ticket payers. Is it about sports, a fair competition or solely an entertaining show to celebrate the potential of modern biochemistry? Simultaneously, society, as a consumer of elite-sports, may re-evaluate its interpretation of the extraordinary skilled athlete who is regarded to represent idealistic moral traits.
[1] Current anti-doping policy: a critical appraisal. Kayser B, Mauron A and Miah A, published 29 march 2007, BMC Medical Ethics 2007, 8:2
[2] Dopium fürs Volk? Werte des Sports in Gefahr, Denkperlen 06, Hans Lenk, 2007 by merus verlag Hamburg.
[3] Constructing Winners: The Science and Ethics of Genetically Manipulating Athletes. A. J. Schneider and J. L. Rupert, Journal of the Philosophy of Sport, 2009, 36, 182-206.
What is the point of being a doctor when conscience overrules professional duties?
A new study recently published on the Journal of Medical Ethics and reported by the newspapers explored the attitude towards conscientious objection of 733 medical students from four different UK medical schools (Cardiff University, King’s college London, Leeds University and St George’s University of London).The results of this survey are interesting and deserve to be introduced in details.When the students were asked if doctors should be entitled to object to any procedure for which they have a moral, cultural or religious disagreement, the 45.2% agreed doctors should be entitled to make conscientious objection, the 40.6% disagreed and the 14.2% was unsure.
“The Madness of Normality” – On why the DMS-5 is fundamentally wrong
The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) is the world widely recognized classificatory system of psychiatric disorders, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It is currently under major revision; the release version DSM-5 is expected in May 2013. The “psychiatrist´s bible“ has overwhelming impact: Inclusion in the DSM carries weight far beyond the psychiatrist’s office. It has major influence on whether insurers will cover therapy for a condition, whether research will be pursued for a specific disease or whether the health technology assessment agencies will approve medications that can be marketed for it.
Many interesting issues in DSM-5 could be discussed: the prevailing categories “substance abuse” and “dependence” will be substituted by “addiction and related disorders”, gender and ethnicity specific distinctions will we introduced and instead of distinguishing different entities like “Autistic disorder” or “Asperger´s disorder”, the manual introduces the term “Autism spectrum disorder”.
In this blog post, I want to focus on one particular innovation: The introduction of so-called risk syndromes. This is a collective term for all those conditions, which do not “yet” meet the “full” clinical diagnostic criteria, e.g. for schizophrenia: In this case, you would suffer from the “attenuated psychotic syndrome”. The aim is obvious: “Young people at risk for later manifestation of a psychotic disorder can be identified“. (http://www.dsm5.org/ProposedRevision/Pages/proposedrevision.aspx?rid=412#). This is a clear paradigm shift towards early diagnosis and prediction in psychiatry. Is this shift ethically justified?
Shocking behavior: Government scare tactics, smoking, and public health
Coming to a mini-mart near you. The FDA has just approved nine very grisly looking warning labels—to be slapped on cigarette packs throughout the USA. But will they work to cut smoking … or will they backfire?
Here are some of the top reasons why these labels may not only fail to achieve the FDA’s desired outcome, but could actually do the opposite – leading to more smoking, not less. Continue reading
Uterine transplants: applaud, and then shut up
By Charles Foster
It was reported this week that 56 year old Eva Ottosson is planning to give her 25 year old daughter, Sara, the uterus in which Sara herself gestated. Sara suffers from Mayer Rokitanksy Kustner Hauser Syndrome: she was born without a uterus.
Predictably the newspapers loved it. And, equally predictably, clever people from the world’s great universities queued up to be eloquently wise about the ethics of the proposal.
But if ethics are concerned with what we should do, there was really nothing worthwhile to be said about Eva Ottosson’s altruism (bar the usual uninteresting caveats about dangerousness and resource allocation), except: ‘Fantastic’. Continue reading
Excitement vs Importance: Do we have any sense of proportion?
When I was choosing a topic to write about today, I almost passed over a story on the grounds of it being too boring. It was about a large corporate donation of vaccines for developing countries — much less exciting than some other stories, such as the outbreak of killer bacteria in Germany. But then I realised that as stories go, the vaccine donation was *very* important. It also raised some very interesting questions about ‘important news’ versus ‘exciting news’. Continue reading
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