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Embrace the controversy: let’s offer Project Prevention on the NHS

A controversial US-based charity that pays drug addicts to undergo sterilisation or long-term contraception has recently opened for business in the UK. Project Prevention pays drug users $300 if they provide a medical certificate of drug dependency and another certifying that they have had tubal ligation, vasectomy or a contraceptive implant. The founder of the charity points to the significant physical and psychological problems in children born to drug-using parents. Noone would deny that it would be good to avoid these problems. Drug counselling often includes advice about contraception, and encouragement of those who are interested to take up options including long term contraception or sterilisation – we don’t think that that is a particular problem. So what is wrong with Project Prevention?

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Are We Future Evil Aliens?

By: Julian Savulescu

Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge physicist, has recently argued, in a Discovery channel documentary, that alien life forms probably exist somewhere in the Universe, but we should avoid contact with them. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8642558.stm). His reason is, apparently, that if they are anything like humans, they are likely to be aggressive and either exterminate us or pillage our resources.

"If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans," he said. "We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet." 

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I’m a taxpayer, I want my data!

A ruling by the Information Commissioner has ordered scientists at Queen’s University in Belfast to hand over copies of 40 years of research data on tree rings after a long battle with a climate sceptic. (PDF of the ruling) This is an important precedent for scientists, who have to comply with the strictest interpretation of the
Freedom of Information (FoI) Act. According to the Times: "Phil Willis, a Liberal Democrat MP and chairman of the Science and
Technology Select Committee, said that scientists now needed to work on
the presumption that if research is publicly funded, the data ought to
be made publicly available." More and more, there are demands for public releases of research data.

Were the scientists right in trying to withhold data, or is the public interest stronger? Is there a moral obligation to publish not just the results of publicly funded research, but the underlying data?

Read More »I’m a taxpayer, I want my data!

Volcano Ethics: Should we be Flying the Unfriendly Skies?

An ash cloud produced by the eruption of the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano in Iceland has led to the severe disruption of airline transportation in the UK and across a wide swathe of Europe, with UK airspace almost completely closed since midday last Thursday. Passengers, freight importers and exporters, and airlines are just some of those affected by the disruption; some British employers are also taking a hit due to absent workers who went abroad for their Easter holidays and then found themselves stranded and unable to get home. The reasons for grounding the planes are non-trivial: as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) wrote in a press release last week: “Since volcanic ash is composed of very abrasive silica materials, it can damage the airframe and flight surfaces, clog different systems, abrade cockpit windows and flame-out jet engines constituting a serious safety hazard.”

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Holidays in Death Camps

The paradox of tragedy, one that has puzzled philosophers for over two millennia, is that people like to go to watch tragedies at the theatre – and tragedies are depressing.   How can one enjoy being miserable? This weekend I went as a tourist around Sachsenhausen, a vast complex just outside Berlin.  Sachsenhausen was one of… Read More »Holidays in Death Camps

The real scandals in organ donation consent

Headlines in a number of newspapers in the last day or two have claimed scandalous failures in organ donation consent in the UK. According to ‘Sky News’, organs were “taken without consent”, while the Sun claims that “NHS doctors took the wrong organs from the bodies of donors”. But it is important to put these claims in context. There are some bigger and more serious scandals when it comes to organ donation consent.

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Should parents be allowed to pick their children’s sex for non-medical reasons?

Once upon
a time, there were a queen and a king who had three children, all of them boys.
They both loved their children dearly and made sure they had everything they
might need to flourish. Nevertheless, the queen and her husband still felt that
their family was incomplete without a daughter. They had hoped to have one
after the birth of their first son, but both of the queen’s subsequent
pregnancies had produced boys. As she was now getting close to the age when she
could no longer reasonably hope to have more children, she and her husband were
worried that their wish for a daughter would never be fulfilled. Finally,
deciding not to leave what might be their last attempt to chance, they traveled through the
kingdom to solicit the assistance of an eminent enchanter. He was a wise man
renowned to have produced many miracles. Feeling sympathy for the royal couple,
the enchanter granted their request and prepared a special brew for them to
drink. Nine months later, the queen gave birth to a
beautiful daughter.

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A Secular Foothold?

“Insofar as modern
liberal discourse rests on a distinction between reasons that emerge in the
course of disinterested observation — secular reasons — and reasons that flow
from a prior metaphysical commitment, it hasn’t got a leg to stand on.”

And so
Stanley Fish concludes his recent
column about the role of secular reasons and religion in public life. While
he briefly touches on a number of issues that stem from this ongoing debate, he
focuses his commentary on the ideas of Stephen Smith, whose new book is called The Disenchantment of
Secular Discourse. Since much of Smith’s argument circles around the
notion of secular reasons, Fish begins by explaining what these reasons are all
about.

Read More »A Secular Foothold?

Breakfast with Satan

At the beginning of my journalistic career I went to interview a chap called Magnus Malan.  It was in Pretoria, and early in the morning.  General Malan had been at the heart of South Africa’s apartheid government.  He’d been head of the army and the Minister of Defence.  He had, no doubt, been responsible for… Read More »Breakfast with Satan