Bold Private John Smith, VC, modified ‘t’ allele of TPH1 SNP rs2108977
By Charles Foster
There’s a significant association of PTSD symptoms with a particular allele, according to a recently published study from UCLA and Duke. Some of the ethical consequences are already being discussed. One consequence might be military. One might be able to detect and filter out PTSD-vulnerable recruits. Perhaps that’s a kindness. It would certainly seem militarily prudent. There might be legitimate qualms about creating a biologically callous warrior-class, but you’re not creating its components – you’re just collecting them together. You might not want to go to their parties, and you might wonder about the mutually brutalizing effect of corralling them in a barracks, but the exercise is really only a scientifically more informed version of the selection that goes on in any event. It’s not very interesting ethically.
But what if a gene for PTSD-resistance could be inserted or artificially switched on? It doesn’t seem fanciful. Should the military be permitted (or perhaps even required) to PTSD-proof their personnel? Continue reading
The Naked Truth?
Stephen Gough, over a series of sentences, has served nearly six years in custody in the UK for refusing to wear clothes in public. He shows no sign of changing his view on the importance of nudity, and it is conceivable that he will spend the rest of life behind bars. Why does he do it? It’s not entirely clear but his position appears to be grounded on the value of living an autonomous life: ‘We can either end up living a life that others expect of us or lives based on our own truth. The difference is the difference between living a conscious life or one that is unconscious. And that’s the difference between living and not living.’
On the face of it, Gough’s decision sounds like a paradigmatic example of the kind of ‘experiment of living’ that John Stuart Mill thought no one should be prevented from attempting except in so far as they harm others: ‘the worth of different modes of life should be proved practically, when any one thinks fit to try them’. But in fact Mill himself would probably have advocated Gough’s imprisonment on grounds of indecency: ‘[T]here are many acts which, being directly injurious only to the agents themselves, ought not to be legally interdicted, but which, if done publicly, are a violation of good manners, and coming thus within the category of offences against others, may rightly be prohibited. Of this kind are offences against decency.’
The tension here arises within Mill’s utilitarianism itself. On the one hand, he recognizes the importance to human happiness of our following our own paths in life. On the other, he sees that our so doing can often seriously upset or threaten others, sometimes to the point where the best outcome may involve the restriction of individual freedom.
But, if that were Mill’s view on the Gough case, would his siding with convention here be a mere product of Victorian stuffiness? Yes, people may get upset, perhaps even quite frightened, by seeing a man wandering around without clothes. But perhaps it would be more valuable, in the longer term, for us to allow experiments of living that upset others: we may discover more valuable ways of life, and even if we don’t our failures will provide a contrast against which truly happiness-promoting modes of existence can stand out. What, really, is the utilitarian value in having taboos concerning public nudity?
I can see the force of this liberal, pro-Gough argument. It is not difficult to imagine a world in which nakedness is universally accepted, and it may well be that such a world would be happier without our hang-ups about clothes. But a central issue here is feasibility. Even if Gough’s experiment catches on, the upshot is likely to be a large increase in genuine offence and alarm, as well as an increase in sexually motivated exhibitionism universal acceptance of which is even less likely in the longer term. In a sense, Gough is harmless: there is a possible world in which what he does harms no one. But in this world he does cause harm. And of course the chances of Gough’s changing attitudes and then the law are minuscule, especially in a country such as the UK, where the cool atmospheric climate is matched with a prudish intellectual one. My advice to Gough on release would be either to live in a naturist colony, or to find some less alarming way of expressing himself among the rest of us.
Linguistic social engineering?
There are a few sure methods to get people into arguments. Gender equality works well. Correct language is even more potent. Add children to the mix, and everybody has an opinion. This spring the big debate in Sweden has been about “hen”, a new pronoun intended to mean “he or she”. Introduced broadly (?) in a children’s book, it has led to a widespread debate about gender neutrality, the power over language and (of course) whether those politically correct Swedes have gone too far.
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.
Animal antibiotics
Suppose that a despotic political regime is keeping its citizens in cramped and unhygenic labour camps. The survival and and economic productivity of the incarcerated individuals is sustained only through the widespread administration of antibiotics which helps to prevent epidemics. It is difficult for international organisations to do anything about these work camps, but one thing they could do is cut off the supply of antibiotics. This would risk the lives of thousands of inmates in the short term, but can also be expected to put an end to the work-camp system in the longer term, since it would render the camps uneconomic.
Should the international organisations cut-off the supply of antibiotics? It is doubtful whether they should.
But now suppose we replace the work-camps with chicken houses and sow stalls, and the citzens with farm animals. Many farm animals held under cramped and unhygenic conditions are kept alive, and economically productive, only through the widespread administration of antibiotics. Restricting access to these antibiotics would force the agricultural industry to reform these practices. In this case it seems more plausible that antibiotic use should be restricted. At least, this is what Robert S. Lawrence writes in The Atlantic.
When the Law Should Ignore Incest
Worldwide media have been all over a case at the Strasbourg human rights court this week as it dismissed a man’s complaint over convictions for incest with his sister. Faced with a delicate moral question, the court ducked the issue, saying it fell within the ‘margin of appreciation’ (ie the area of discretion that the court leaves to member states in some areas of law). I think the law’s involvement in this case is a problem.
A Modest Proposal for the Media: The Science Haze
I love the BBC. Almost every day I browse the BBC News web site to catch up on current affairs. I especially love the BBC’s high quality TV and radio documentary output, and I confess that I am an avid Radio 4 listener.
Alas, my love for the BBC has not blinded me to one particularly jarring asymmetry in the Corporation’s (otherwise delightful) visage . It is manifested in a disconnect between its approach to programming on matters of science, and that on matters of ethics, or “Religion and Ethics” as the BBC officially categorizes the latter (in an undifferentiated glob) on iPlayer.
In the hope that some BBC types (preferably at the senior commissioning level) are also readers of Practical Ethics, I present to you a programme proposal that, if taken up, would go some way toward healing this deformity. In fact, if virtually all the BBC’s current science programming were scrapped and replaced with programming of the sort I am about to propose, the woeful gap between the BBC’s science programming and its ethics programming would all but disappear. I hereby present my modest proposal:
Psychiatric drugs to enhance conformity to religious norms, and conscientious objection
An article in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports on the (alleged) frequent use of psychiatric drugs within the Haredi community, at the request of the religious leaders, in order to help members conform with religious norms. Haredi Judaism is the most conservative form of Orthodox Judaism. It is sometimes referred to by outsiders as ultra-Orthodox. Haredim typically live in communities that have limited contact with the outside world. Their lives revolve around Torah study, prayer and family.
In December 2011, the Israel Psychiatric Association held a symposium entitled “The Haredi Community as a Consumer of Mental-Health Services”. One of the speakers was Professor Omer Bonne, director of the psychiatry department at Hadassah University Hospital. Professor Bonne is claimed to have said that sometimes yeshiva students (yeshiva is a religious school) and married men should be given antidepressants even if they do not suffer from depression, because these drugs also suppress sex drive.
Why I study geoengineering
I guess I should say, firstly, that I don’t. Or at least, not directly. I am a research fellow looking at the ethics and governance issues: the moral and political implications of geoengineering research and eventual deployment, should there be any. I have a long-standing interest in global justice and climate change. Climate change raises enough moral and political questions and I never thought any subject could be more complex until I heard about geoengineering. Information about geoengineering can be found on the Oxford Geoengineering Programme’s new website: http://www.geoengineering.ox.ac.uk/ Continue reading
A moral argument against the war on drugs
By Julian Savulescu and Bennett Foddy
Former Brazilian President, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, has argued that the war on drugs has failed and cannabis should be decriminalised. He argued that the hardline approach has brought “disastrous” consequences for Latin America. Having just returned from Rio, one can only agree. One of us was staying with an eminent professor of philosophy. We were returning to her house with her 11 year old daughter, only to have our way blocked by police with machine guns. They were hunting a drug lord in the local favela – this road was the only escape route and they were preparing for possible altercation.
Cardoso highlights the practical failure of a zero-tolerance approach. A zero tolerance approach to a crime like taking drugs must always fail, in the same way as a zero-tolerance approach to alcohol, prostitution or drugs in sport will always fail. Paradoxically, the worst thing you could do to the drug lords in Rio is not to wage a war on them, but to decriminalise cocaine and marijuana. They would be out of business in one day. Supplies could be monitored, controlled and regulated – the harm to users and third parties significantly reduced.
The case for legalizing drugs has been made often, most recently by Cardoso and by Australia’s foreign minister, Bob Carr, who this week co-signed a report declaring that ‘the war on drugs has failed’. The argument is nearly always put forward in terms of the burdens that the drug war has imposed on us in terms of crime and public health. And it is true that these things give us good reason to abandon Nixon’s war on drugs. But we so rarely hear a moral argument in favour of liberalizing drug laws. This is a mistake. Although experts have told us time and time again that things would be better without the drug war, politicians have ignored the expert advice because voters do not want drugs laws to be loosened. And voters feel this way not because they think they know better than the experts, but because they have moral objections to drug use. There is a hidden moral debate driving the war on drugs that we never seem to bring out in the open.
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