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Bioethics

What is Your Gender? A Friendly Guide to the Public Debate

What is your gender? A friendly guide to the public debate

Brian D. Earp

 

Note: This is a lightly edited transcript of an informal lecture, based on coursework submitted as part of my Ph.D. It was recorded on Whidbey Island, Washington, and published online on January 15th, 2020. A link to the video is here: https://youtu.be/LZERzw9BGrs. 

 

Video description:  I’m a philosopher and cognitive scientist who studies gender, sex, identity, sexuality and related topics and I am offering this video as a friendly guide to the (often very heated) public debate that is going on around these issues. This is my best attempt, not to score political points for any particular side, but to give an introductory map of the territory so you can think for yourself, investigate further, and reach your own conclusions about such controversial questions as “What does mean to be a man or a woman?” This video is not meant to be authoritative; it is not the final word; experts on these topics will find much to quibble with (and perhaps some things to disagree with outright). But for those who would like to take some first steps in getting a sense of the landscape without feeling intimidated, I hope this will be of some use. Read More »What is Your Gender? A Friendly Guide to the Public Debate

Coronavirus: Dark Clouds, But Some Silver Linings?

By Charles Foster

Cross posted from The Conversation

To be clear, and in the hope of heading off some trolls, two observations. First: of course I don’t welcome the epidemic. It will cause death, worry, inconvenience and great physical and economic suffering. Lives and livelihoods will be destroyed. The burden will fall disproportionately on the old, the weak and the poor.

And second: these suggestions are rather trite. They should be obvious to reasonably reflective people of average moral sensibility.

That said, here goes:

1. It will make us realise that national boundaries are artificial

The virus doesn’t carry a passport or recognise frontiers. The only way of stopping its spread would be to shut borders wholly, and not even the most rabid nationalists advocate that. It would mean declaring that nations were prisons, with no one coming in or out – or at least not coming back once they’d left. In a world where we too casually assume that frontiers are significant, it doesn’t do any harm to be reminded of the basic fact that humans occupy an indivisible world.

Cooperation between nations is essential to combating the epidemic. That cooperation is likely to undermine nationalist rhetoric.

2. It will make us realise that people are not islands

The atomistic billiard-ball model of the person – a model that dominates political and ethical thinking in the west – is biologically ludicrous and sociologically unsustainable. Our individual boundaries are porous. We bleed into one another and infect one another with both ills and joys. Infectious disease is a salutary reminder of our interconnectedness. It might help us to recover a sense of society.

3. It may encourage a proper sort of localism

Internationalism may be boosted. I hope so. But if we’re all locked up with one another in local quarantine, we might get to know the neighbours and the family members we’ve always ignored. We might distribute ourselves less widely, and so be more present to the people around us.

We might even find out that our local woods are more beautiful than foreign beaches, and that local farmers grow better and cheaper food than that which is shipped (with the associated harm to the climate) across the globe.

4. It may encourage altruism

Exigencies tend to bring out the best and the worst in us. An epidemic may engender and foster altruistic heroes.

5. It may remind us of some neglected constituencies

Mortality and serious illness are far higher among the old, the very young, and those suffering from other diseases. We tend to think about – and legislate for – the healthy and robust. The epidemic should remind us that they are not the only stakeholders.

6. It may make future epidemics less likely

The lessons learned from the coronavirus epidemic will pay dividends in the future. We will be more realistic about the dangers of viruses crossing the barriers between species. The whole notion of public health (a Cinderella speciality in medicine in most jurisdictions) has been rehabilitated. It is plain that private healthcare can’t be the whole answer. Much has been learned about the containment and mitigation of infectious disease. There are strenuous competitive and cooperative efforts afoot to develop a vaccine, and vaccines against future viral challenges are likely to be developed faster as a result.

7. It might make us more realistic about medicine

Medicine is not omnipotent. Recognising this might make us more aware of our vulnerabilities. The consequences of that are difficult to predict, but living in the world as it really is, rather than in an illusory world, is probably a good thing. And recognising our own vulnerability might make us more humble and less presumptuous.

8. Wildlife may benefit

China has announced a permanent ban on trade in and consumption of wildlife. That in itself is hugely significant from a conservation, an animal welfare, and a human health perspective. Hopefully other nations will follow suit.

Read More »Coronavirus: Dark Clouds, But Some Silver Linings?

Pandemic Ethics: Infectious Pathogen Control Measures and Moral Philosophy

By Jonathan Pugh and Tom Douglas

Listen to Jonathan Pugh and Tom Douglas on Philosophical Disquisitions  discussing  Covid 19 and the Ethics of Infectious Disease Control, a podcast interview that was inspired by this blog.

Following the outbreak of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, a number of jurisdictions have implemented restrictive measures to prevent the spread of this highly contagious pathogen. In January, Chinese authorities effectively quarantined the entire city of Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak, which has a population of around 11 million people. There has since been much discussion of various measures that might be implemented now or in the future to counter the spread, including various forms of social distancing, further mass quarantines and lockdowns, closed borders, mandatory testing and screening and even potentially forced treatment.

There are important questions about the lawfulness of infectious pathogen control (IPC) measures. Here, though, we focus on the moral justification of IPC. How can moral philosophy help us to think through when and whether different IPC measures ought to be employed?

To do so, we will briefly summarise our analysis of the different ways non-consensual medical interventions can be justified in infectious diseases control and criminal justice settings, which we originally published open access here.

 

Read More »Pandemic Ethics: Infectious Pathogen Control Measures and Moral Philosophy

Heritable Human Genome Editing Can Cure or Prevent Diseases

By César Palacios-González

@CPalaciosG 

More than a year after the fallout from He Jiankui’s announcement to the world that he had edited human embryos in order to made them resistant to HIV, the debate on whether we should move ahead with heritable human genome editing has given no signs of slowing down. For example, just a couple of days ago the UK House of Lords was debating this issue, and the WHO’s advisory committee on genome editing is running a consultation on the governance framework that should rule over human genome editing. While there are many ethical questions surrounding human genome editing, there is a question that recently has gained prominence: is heritable human genome editing therapeutic?Read More »Heritable Human Genome Editing Can Cure or Prevent Diseases

Mutilation or Enhancement? What is Morally at Stake in Body Alterations

By Brian D. Earp (@briandavidearp)

 

Those who follow my work will know that I have published a number of papers on the ethics of medically unnecessary genital cutting practices affecting children of all sexes and genders (a partial bibliography is at the end of this post). When my writing touches on the sub-set of these practices that affect persons with characteristically female genitalia, primarily women and girls, I have on occasion received some pushback for using the term ‘FGC’ for female genital cutting rather than ‘FGM’ for female genital mutilation (though I have also received words of appreciation, so, I cannot please everyone).

A recent instance of such pushback came from a respected colleague in response to a forthcoming paper of mine in Archives of Sexual Behavior, in which I explicitly argue against the use of ‘mutilation’ in certain contexts, as there is evidence that such stigmatizing language may have adverse effects on the very people who are meant to be helped. The paper, “Protecting Children from Medically Unnecessary Genital Cutting Without Stigmatizing Women’s Bodies: Implications for Sexual Pleasure and Pain” is available as a pre-print here.

Given that this terminological issue is likely to keep coming up, I thought I would share parts of the reply I wrote to my colleague (lightly edited). I certainly don’t expect that everyone will agree with what I say below, but I hope it can shed some light on at least one plausible way of thinking about such difficult matters.

One last thing. In order to understand my reply, you need to know that my colleague argued that my use of ‘FGC’ rather than ‘FGM’ is disrespectful because it goes against the recommendation of the 2005 Bamako Declaration adopted by the Inter-African Committee (IAC) on Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children. My answer is immediately below.

Read More »Mutilation or Enhancement? What is Morally at Stake in Body Alterations

Video Interview: Peter Singer on The Global Kidney Exchange Programme

In this interview with Katrien Devolder, Peter Singer defends the Global Kidney Exchange (GKE) programme, which matches donor–recipient pairs across high-income, medium-income, and low-income countries. The GKE has been accused of being a form of organ trafficking, exploiting the poor, and involving coercion and commodification of donors. Peter Singer refutes these claims, and argues that… Read More »Video Interview: Peter Singer on The Global Kidney Exchange Programme

Lifesaving Treatment for Babies Born at 22 weeks Doesn’t Mean Abortion Law Should Change.

Recommendation for life support from 22 weeks.
Kristina Bessolova/Shutterstock

Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford

When new guidance relating to the outcome and medical care of babies born extremely prematurely was recently released, it led some to call for UK abortion law to be revised.

This was because one of the new recommendations from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine is that it is sometimes appropriate to provide resuscitation and active medical treatment for babies born at 22 weeks gestation (four and a half months before their due date). This is a week earlier than was recommended in the last version of the framework, published in 2008.

The argument goes that the new guidance creates a “contradiction in British law” because extremely premature infants can now be resuscitated before the point in pregnancy where abortion law changes.
A spokesperson for campaign group Right to Life UK said: “In one room of a hospital, doctors could be working to save a baby born alive before 24 weeks whilst in another room a doctor could perform an abortion which would end the life of a baby at the same age. Surely this contradiction needs to end?”Read More »Lifesaving Treatment for Babies Born at 22 weeks Doesn’t Mean Abortion Law Should Change.

An Ambitious Vision for Bioethics – Some Reflections on Professor Jing-Bao Nie’s St Cross Seminar

Written by Ben Davies

Many readers of the Practical Ethics blog will remember the astounding announcement last November by Chinese researcher He Jiankui that he had used CRISPR-cas9 technology to edit into two healthy embryos a resistance to developing HIV, later resulting in the birth of twins Lulu and Nana. As Professor Julian Savulescu expressed in several posts on this blog, the announcement spurred widespread ethical condemnation.

The first in this year’s series of St Cross Special Ethics seminars saw the University of Otago’s Professor Jing-Bao Nie (who is also currently a 2019/20 Fellow of Durham University’s Institute of Advanced Study) get behind the headlines to consider the political and social context of He’s experiment. At the core of Professor Nie’s presentation was that the decision to engage in genetic editing of healthy embryos could neither be written off as the act of a ‘rogue researcher’, nor dismissed as merely the product of a uniquely Chinese disregard for ethics, as some have argued.

Read More »An Ambitious Vision for Bioethics – Some Reflections on Professor Jing-Bao Nie’s St Cross Seminar

Press Release: Tafida Raqeeb

Professor Dominic Wilkinson, Professor of Medical Ethics, University of Oxford. Consultant Neonatologist

 

This morning, the High Court judgement around medical treatment for five-year old Tafida Raqeeb was published. Tafida sustained severe brain damage from bleeding in the brain eight months ago. Her parents wish to take her to a hospital in Italy to continue life support, while the doctors at the London hospital caring for her believe that it would be best to stop life support and allow Tafida to die.

 

Justice MacDonald concluded today that life sustaining treatment for Tafida must continue and her parents should be allowed to take her to Italy.Read More »Press Release: Tafida Raqeeb

The Doctor-Knows-Best NHS Foundation Trust: a Business Proposal for the Health Secretary

By Charles Foster

Informed consent, in practice, is a bad joke. It’s a notion created by lawyers, and like many such notions it bears little relationship to the concerns that real humans have when they’re left to themselves, but it creates many artificial, lucrative, and expensive concerns.

Of course there are a few clinical situations where it is important that the patient reflects deeply and independently on the risks and benefits of the possible options, and there are a few people (I hope never to meet them: they would be icily un-Falstaffian) whose sole ethical lodestone is their own neatly and indelibly drafted life-plan. But those situations and those people are fortunately rare.Read More »The Doctor-Knows-Best NHS Foundation Trust: a Business Proposal for the Health Secretary