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2012

Yamanaka Wins Nobel Prize for Ethics

by Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics & Director, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics

Yamaka and Gurdon have jointly won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, for the discovery that mature cells can be reprogrammed to become pluripotent: that is, already specialized cells can be taken, and using iPS technology, transformed into unspecialized stem cells, which can be used for research and treatment. This technology may ultimately allow us to replace embryonic stem cells entirely in research and treatment thus avoiding ethical issues raised by the destruction of embryos for this purpose.

This is not only a giant leap for science, it is a giant leap for mankind. Yamanaka and Gurdon have shown how science can be done ethically. Yamanaka has taken people’s ethical concerns seriously about embryo research and modified the trajectory of research into a path that is acceptable for all. He deserves not only a Nobel Prize for Medicine, but a Nobel Prize for Ethics.

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Should you be prosecuted for feeding junk food to your child?

 By Charles Foster

Fast food permanently reduces children’s IQ, a recent and unsurprising study reports.

What should be done? The answer is ethically and legally simple. Parents who feed their children junk food, knowing of the attendant risks, are child-abusers, and should be prosecuted. If you hit a child, bruising it, you are guilty of a criminal offence. A bruise on a child’s leg is of far less lasting significance than the brain damage produced by requiring a child to ingest toxic junk. A child injured by a negligent or malicious parent can also bring civil proceedings against the parent.

The findings of the recent study mirror those in other jurisdictions. And now that they have been widely disseminated it will be hard for parents to plead ignorance.Read More »Should you be prosecuted for feeding junk food to your child?

What is the chance of an MP being wrong?

When MPs took a maths exam it showed that the members of parliament are pretty bad at elementary probability. When asked “if you spin a coin twice, what is the probability of getting two heads?” 47% of conservatives and 77% of the Labour MPs gave the wrong answer. About 75% of the MPs felt confident when dealing with numbers, although they generally though politicians did not use official statistics and figures correctly when talking policy.

How should a rational person react to this news?

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Banning conversion therapies

The Governor of California, Jerry Brown, has signed a Bill that will ban ‘conversion’ or ‘reparative’ therapies in that State. These are interventions that aim at ‘curing’ homosexuality or at least, controlling homosexual desires. There have been reported cases of exorcisms, shock treatment and aversive therapies not unlike those that were used in Stanley Kubrick and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.Read More »Banning conversion therapies

Driving Crazy

There has been discussion on a Polish news site about an extreme case of reckless driving. The discussion is not about the driver – his culpability and stupidity are in no doubt – rather, the discussion is about whether the passengers in the car should be punished in some way for the role they played; their role not only in failing to calm the driver and his driving, but most importantly in their active and enthusiastic encouragement of him and it.

The video of the drive, taken from within the car and uploaded to YouTube, shows five and a half minutes of speeding through red lights, overtaking despite oncoming traffic, using the curb as a ramp to ‘get air’ and, most disturbingly, only narrowly missing a pedestrian crossing the road. All this is accompanied by encouraging whoops and shouts and exclamations of “Karol, you are my God!” (Karol is the driver.) The passengers clearly want – and ask – Karol to take more and more risks.Read More »Driving Crazy

Magic tricks and moral fibre

By Charles Foster

How well do you know yourself? Can you identify confidently your convictions on major moral issues? If you can, do you think you could change them in a moment, and argue robustly and with conviction for exactly the opposite position?

Most people will say, unhesitatingly, ‘very well’, ‘yes’, and ‘of course not’. They should read a recent paper by Hall, Johansson, and Strandberg. Indeed we all should.Read More »Magic tricks and moral fibre

How to be a high impact philosopher, part II

In a previous post, I discussed how, as a philosopher, one should decide on a research areas.  I suggested that one method was to work out what are potentially the biggest problems the world faces, work out what the crucial normative consideration are, and then work on those areas.  Call that the top-down method: starting with the problem, and working backwards to the actions one should take.

There’s a second method for high impact philosophy, however.  Let’s call it the bottom-up method.

  1. Begin by asking ‘which are the biggest decisions that one typically makes in life?’
  2. Then ask: ‘What are the crucial normative considerations that might affect how I should make those decisions?’
  3. Then figure out which of these crucial considerations is most likely to produce an action-relevant outcome given your marginal research time.
  4. Then work on that topic!

As in my previous post, I’ll go through each step in turn.

Read More »How to be a high impact philosopher, part II

Does committing a murder make a 13-year-old an adult? In US courts it does…

Some days ago, two 13-year-old boys have been charged with first degree murder in Wisconsin (USA), as reported by the Daily News (New York). Allegedly, they went to one of the boy’s great-grandmother’s home, killed her using a hatchet and hammer, then stole her jewellery and her car – and went for a pizza afterwards.

After giving horrid details of the killing, the Daily News concludes its report with stating that the boys’ defence attorney tries to have the case moved to juvenile court. The reason why these 13-year-olds are not automatically charged as juveniles but stand trial in an adult court is that the USA allows prosecutors to try minors as adults when they commit certain violent felonies. In several states, children as young as 7 can be – and are – tried as adults for some years now. They can be convicted to adult sanctions, including long prison terms, mandatory sentences, and placement in adult prisons. (Since 2005, however, under 18-year-olds can’t be convicted to death sentence any more.)

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Are Open-ended Sentences Unjust?

The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled ‘arbitrary and unlawful’ the UK practice of indeterminate prison sentences for the protection of the public (IPPs). Currently more than 6,000 prisoners in this country are serving such sentences. The judges did not, however, rule the very idea of IPPs to be unlawful. What they quite rightly see as objectionable is the extension of sentences for prisoners who have failed to attend rehabilitation courses they have not been given the opportunity to attend. This truly Kafka-esque state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue.Read More »Are Open-ended Sentences Unjust?

Focus on the important things: reforming medical trials

As Ben Goldacre reveals, the status quo in drug testing is nothing less than a scandal. Pharmaceutical companies are suppressing and blocking information, perfectly legally, that is causing adults and children to die. Reforming the system wouldn’t be too hard – a registry for all drug trials, before they begin, should be enough to get rid of… Read More »Focus on the important things: reforming medical trials