Yesterday’s Observer features two pieces about human enhancement in the prospect of the FutureFest festival in London in September (see here and here). The articles mention Bertolt Meyer, a Swiss man born without a left hand who was recently fitted with a state-of-the-art bionic one (which he controls from his iPhone), and include quotes from well-know authors associated with the topic of human enhancement, such as Nick Bostrom and Andy Miah.
By Charles Foster and Jonathan Herring
Scene 1: An Intensive Care Unit
Like many patients in ICU, X is incapacitous. He also needs a lot of care. Much of that care involves needles. Late at night, tired and harassed, Nurse Y is trying to give X an intravenous injection. As happens very commonly, she sticks herself with the needle.
Nurse Y is worried sick. Perhaps she will catch HIV, hepatitis, or some other serious blood-borne infection? She goes tearfully to the Consultant in charge.
‘Don’t worry’, he says. ‘We’ll start you on the regular post-exposure prophylaxis. But to be even safer, we’ll test some of X’s blood for the common infections. I doubt he’ll be positive, but if he is, we’ll start you straight away on the necessary treatment. We needn’t take any more blood: there are plenty of samples already available.’
A sample of blood is submitted for analysis. Read More »Non-consensual testing after needlestick injury: A legal and ethical drama
Studies have shown that regular physical activity has benefits for mental health: exercise can help people to recover from depression and anxiety disorders. However, not all people like exercise, and a mental disorder like depression can additionally decrease motivation for physical activity. So the disorder itself might inhibit behaviour that helps to overcome it.
We would assume that pressurising people is no solution here: several studies have shown that restricting freedom of choice or control increases stress in both humans and animals. However, new research tentatively indicates that controllability might play a smaller role than expected when it comes to exercise, and that even forced exercise might protect against depression and anxiety symptoms:
Read More »Forced Physical Exercise as an Intervention for Mental Disorders?
Sussex police have announced a scheme to fit people suffering from dementia with GPS tracking systems. These small devices will allow police to locate the wearer, and also allow the wearer to reach a 24 hour helpline by pressing a small button on the device. It has been claimed that these devices will save police time and resources, as well as reducing both the potential risk to dementia patients who go missing, and the anxiety that relatives of the missing person will feel when their loved one goes missing.
However, some parties have decried the introduction of this scheme as barbaric and inhumane. For example, Neil Duncan-Jordan, the national officer of the National Pensioners’ Convention, claimed that the scheme serves to stigmatise sufferers of dementia by equating them with people who have committed a criminal act.Read More »Global Positioning Systems and Dementia: An Ethical Analysis
Recently a debate erupted in France over a proposal to use state funds to pay for sex surrogates for the disabled. News reports can be found here and here. Some advocates for the disabled applauded the move, including the French Association of the Paralyzed. However, the proposal was eventually altered and the call for the funding of sex surrogates was dropped before a vote on the proposal was held. This is a shame, for respect for the autonomy and the wellbeing of the disabled provides us with good reason to support such a proposal.
Whatever your view of abortion, there are too many abortions, and too many of them are too late. Even abortion’s fiercest advocates don’t pretend that it’s a Good Thing – just the lesser of two evils.
In 2010 there were 189,574 abortions in England and Wales – an 8% increase in a decade. The tightly policed regime envisaged in 1967, when the Act became law, hasn’t existed for ages, if indeed it ever did. There is abortion on demand, whatever the statute book says.
1967 was a long time ago. There have been many medical advances and societal changes since then. It’s time to take stock of the Act.
That’s what a recently announced cross-party commission, to be chaired by Fiona Bruce MP, will do.
It will focus, rightly, on two issues: medical advances and attitudes to discrimination.Read More »Too long in gestating: an overdue inquiry into the Abortion Act
When people do bad things – especially when they cause a lot of harm to others – we usually hope that they will experience something like remorse: that they will feel horror at the thought of what they did to the person harmed, that they will resolve to avoid causing similar harm in the future, and that they will be motivated to apologise and offer reparation, where possible. Penal systems in some jurisdictions deem remorse so important that it is considered a valid reason to mitigate the amount of punishment the offender receives. But, what happens to our expectations for emotion if the person cannot remember committing the offence; if he feels so detached from it that it is as if he did not commit it? An interesting case from Poland raises this question.
Maciej Zientarski was a celebrity driver on a TV programme similar to our Top Gear. On the 27th February 2008, accompanied by his motor journalist friend, he was given a Ferrari to test drive. The test drive didn’t end well. CCTV cameras captured footage of the car being driven at speeds of between 140-150kph along a 50kph road, serial over-taking, and the eventual head-on smash into the pillar of a bridge above. The motor journalist died at the scene but the driver, remarkably, just about survived. Read More »Amnesia and remorse: how much should we expect?
It will be interesting to watch the reception of a recent Court of Protection case, as yet unreported, in which a woman with profound learning difficulties was found to have capacity to decide not to terminate her pregnancy.
As so often, the case decided nothing new. But it is a timely reminder of the trite but often overlooked principle that capacity is not an all or nothing thing. The question: ‘Does she have capacity?’ is always dangerously incomplete. The correct question is always ‘Does she have capacity to decide X?’
There was no doubt that she did not have capacity to manage many aspects of her affairs. She was in the bottom 1% of the population so far as intellectual function was concerned. Deputies were appropriately appointed. But, so far as the continuation of her pregnancy was concerned, so what?
It was decided as a matter of fact that she had capacity to decide whether or not to continue with, or to terminate, the pregnancy. And that meant that the Court of Protection had no jurisdiction to decide the matter. No best interests determination could lawfully be made.Read More »Abortion and the cognitively impaired mother
‘Come in’, said the Well Known Educational Psychologist. We did. ‘Please sit down’, she said, and we did. She didn’t waste time, and quite right too. We wanted to know.
‘Tom and I have had a very interesting afternoon.’ That sounded bad.
‘He’s a very able child indeed’. That sounded worse, because it came with the emphatic pause that always indicates a big ‘but’.
In the pause I wondered why we’d done this. Why we’d taken a little boy out of the woods and out of his playground to have someone fumble inside his head with blunt tools: indices, probes, inventories, and assumptions about normality.
‘He’s quite dramatically dyslexic, I’m afraid.’ My wife shared her fear. There was a lot of it sloshing around. ‘But his IQ is so high that he’ll be able to use lots of coping strategies. And he’s still very young: there’s lots that can be done.’ And she told us what it was. Regulations could be invoked, tribunals could be convened, cards could be flashed, phonemes could be chanted. He could be imprinted like other children. It would just take longer. It would be hard work, for Tom and for us, but there was every reason to be hopeful of a ‘good result’.
And what the hell did that mean? I asked myself. I was too polite to ask her. I didn’t want a result. I wanted my son.Read More »A Dyslexic boy in a Trojan horse
By Lach De Crespigny and Julian Savulescu
Windsor Coroner’s Court has heard that a mother died within hours of giving birth at home after a private midwife committed a horrifying catalogue of errors . According to reports, the woman had previously delivered twins by emergency caesarean section, one of which later died. Her husband said his wife was ‘brainwashed’ into having a home birth by the midwife, who insisted it was safe. The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists advise delivery in hospital after caesarean section so that an emergency caesarean delivery can be carried out if necessary. The midwife denied trying to persuade the couple to have a home birth. However she has greater responsibilities than this; as professionals we should try to persuade women to deliver in hospital if this is a safer option. But the midwife seems to have prioritized homebirth over life itself when she reportedly stated:
“Claire had a great pregnancy, she had a really lovely spontaneous birth at home and I hope Simon in time will remember that”
Read More »The Continuing Tragedies of Home Birth and the Rights of the Future Child
