Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London

Philosophy Lecturer, Royal Holloway University of London

Is it criminal not to breastfeed?

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
August 18, 2010

by Rebecca Roache

The Brazilian
model Gisele Bundchen recently—and controversially—claimed that mothers should
be required by law to breastfeed their babies for the first six months of their
lives.
A few days later, she partially retracted the claim on her blog, insisting that her talk of a breastfeeding law should
not be taken literally. It was simply a way of expressing her belief in the
importance of doing the best for her child.
After all, legally enforcing breastfeeding would be madness, right?

Not
according to the Indonesian government.
It recently passed a law giving babies the right to six months of
exclusive breastfeeding,
except in cases where medical problems prevent their mothers from breastfeeding. Mothers who do not comply face a year in
prison or a fine of 100,000,000 Rupiahs (around £7,100), and those who prevent
mothers from fulfilling their breastfeeding obligations also face punishments. Scientists and health professionals generally
agree that breastfeeding is healthier for babies than the alternatives (see,
for example, here),
that not enough mothers do it (see here),
and governments around the world invest huge sums trying to get mothers to
breastfeed. But is criminalising non-breastfeeding mothers a good idea?

Do we harm our children by revealing their sex?

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
August 7, 2010

by Rebecca Roache

I am over a
month late reading the news of the Swedish couple who have chosen to keep the
sex of their toddler a closely-guarded secret, but the story is too interesting
to pass up the opportunity to write about it here.

The parents
of the two-and-a-half year old child, known as Pop, explain, ‘We want Pop to
grow up more freely and avoid being forced into a specific gender mould from the
outset. It's cruel to bring a child into
the world with a blue or pink stamp on their forehead’. The wish to protect one’s child from gender
stereotyping is understandable, but is refusing to reveal Pop’s sex going
too far?

Why public health campaigns should not promote enhancement

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
July 28, 2010

by Rebecca Roache

Human
enhancement is a hot topic in bioethics.
Typically conceived as the use of technology to raise human capacities
above what is merely healthy or normal, it attracts questions such as, Is it
ethical? Is it desirable? Is it cheating? and, Should the state
subsidise it? A common view is that,
whilst therapy—which aims to restore human capacities to what is healthy or
normal, but not to raise them above this level—is desirable; enhancement is at
best unnecessary [1], and at worst unethical [2]. Human enhancement, one might be tempted to
think, is for oddballs only: the average person is content merely to be
healthy.

How much should we care about MPs’ expense claims?

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
May 15, 2009

Few people
in the UK could have missed the furious storm about MPs’ expense claims that has dominated the news headlines for the past several weeks. A steady flow of stories has revealed not
only which MPs bent the rules on expenses, but also that many of the rules are themselves objectionable and arguably
facilitate a misuse of taxpayers’ money.

Of course,
few of us enjoy paying tax, but most of us grudgingly accept that it is
necessary if we want certain social goods like decent healthcare and a fair
justice system. None of us likes to
think of our money instead being directed towards those who already enjoy a
higher income and better job perks than we do.
What is most striking about the current focus on MPs’ expense claims,
however, is the fact that we are in the middle of a serious recession.
And the amount of taxpayers’ money used to finance MPs' bogus
mortgage payments, luxury goods,
and furniture is but a drop in the ocean compared to the financial losses suffered by
homeowners due to falling property prices, by the half-million workers who have lost their jobs in the past nine months, and by those still employed whose tax payments must help support the newly jobless. Given that the impact of a recession on
ordinary people is at least partly the result of government decision-making,
why does the recession consistently take second place in the headlines to the
relatively trivial matter of MPs’ expense claims?

Is doodling a form of cheating?

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
February 27, 2009

The public
often complains about the fluctuating and conflicting attitudes of scientists. So often do things heralded as good for us
one week turn out to be deadly the next (consider, for example, this recent
report about vitamin pills) that there seems little point in
trying to follow the advice of scientists.

Some recent
news stories raise the question of whether the public is inclined to dismiss
the conflicting views of ethicists, too. Ethical
concerns about pharmacological cognitive enhancement have regularly been
reported in the press (see, for example, here,
here,
and here);
whilst at the same time—as Dominic Wilkinson has noted on this blog—the
public has embraced non-pharmacological cognitive enhancement in the form of software designed to improve brain power, and the media
currently abounds with docile, non-panicky reports of how instant messaging,
texting,
taking short naps,
taking long naps,
listening to The Beatles,
and doodling can all enhance cognition in various ways.
So far, there have been no reports of ethical concerns about these
activities: nobody is suggesting that students who doodle during lectures are cheating. It seems that, despite the concerns of some, the public is willing
to embrace cognitive enhancement in a variety of forms.

Animal experimentation: morally acceptable, or just the way things always have been?

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
November 17, 2008

Following
the announcement last week that Oxford University’s controversial Biomedical
Sciences building
is now complete and will be open for business in mid-2009, the ethical issues
surrounding the use of animals for scientific experimentation have been
revisited in the media—see, for example, here ,
here,
and here.

The number
of animals used per year in scientific experiments worldwide has been estimated
at 200 million—well in excess of the population of Brazil and over three times that of the United Kingdom. If we take the importance of an ethical issue
to depend in part on how many subjects it affects, then, the ethics of animal
experimentation at the very least warrants consideration alongside some of the
most important issues in this country today, and arguably exceeds them in
importance. So, what is being done to address
this issue?

Why the cheating objection to smart drugs doesn’t work

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
October 13, 2008

The BBC reports today
that increasing numbers of people are using prescription drugs like Ritalin—intended
as a treatment for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
(ADHD)—to boost alertness and brain power. Reports of the increasing popularity of ‘smart
drugs’ are synonymous with concerns about cheating (see here, here, and here):
surely, the worry runs, taking drugs that help you do well at college is
equivalent to bribing your examiners into awarding you high marks? Those who take cognitive enhancement drugs,
just like those who bribe their examiners, are better placed to beat their
peers in the competition for the best educational qualifications and jobs, and
so cognitive enhancement is unfair. In
this case, shouldn’t cognitive enhancement be banned in schools and colleges?

Knowledge may be power, but is it healing?

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
September 30, 2008

The
explosion of medical information on the internet is a good thing,
right? Patients worried that their condition
is not being taken seriously, those who want a second opinion but are worried
about upsetting their GP by asking for it, and those with symptoms too trifling
or embarrassing to take to a doctor—all these people who, fifteen years ago, may
have felt at a dead end with the medical profession can now use
the internet to research their conditions from the comfort of their own homes.

Philosophers’ Carnival LXXVIII

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
September 22, 2008

78th Philosophers’ Carnival

‘Anyone who thinks the Large Hadron Collider will destroy the world is a t**t.’

by Rebecca Roache, Royal Holloway University of London
September 8, 2008

This week is Big Bang Week at the BBC, with various programmes devoted to the switch-on of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on Wednesday morning. Many of these programmes are covered in this week’s issue of the Radio Times—the BBC’s listings magazine—which also features a short interview with Professor Brian Cox, chair of particle physics at the University of Manchester. Asked about concerns that the LHC could destroy the earth, he replies:

‘The nonsense you find on the web about “doomsday scenarios” is conspiracy theory rubbish generated by a small group of nutters, primarily on the other side of the Atlantic. These people also think that the Theory of Relativity is a Jewish conspiracy and that America didn’t land on the Moon. Both are more likely, by the way, than the LHC destroying the world. I’m slightly irritated, because this non-story is symptomatic of a larger mistrust in science, particularly in the US, which includes things like intelligent design. [… A]nyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a t**t.’ (Final word censored by Radio Times.) [1]