by Dominic Wilkinson Roll up, roll up for the 109th Philosophers' Carnival… There weren't a huge number of submissions, so the following is partly drawn from my own wanderings across the blogosphere. Thanks for all those who did submit posts. Main tent – fight club In the big top this month we have a series… Read More »Philosophers’ Carnival CIX
In a case that is probably echoed daily across this country and many others, an amphetamine addict Michael Hunter was jailed yesterday for attacking a friend with a hammer. The judge noted that
"amphetamine had clearly affected
Hunter’s mental health, but he highlighted the fact that he had been
responsible for two unprovoked attacks using weapons."
The judge alluded to the question of responsibility and the influence of addiction. Are addicts morally responsible? Should drug addiction excuse or mitigate blame for actions taken under their influence?
Read More »The hammer or the nail – are addicts morally responsible?
The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) has come under fire for a policy statement that has a more nuanced approach to female circumcision (FC) than its previous absolute opposition. The new policy proposes that the law be changed to allow pediatricians to perform a ritual ‘nick’ as a compromise where families request female circumcision. The AAP document strongly opposes all female circumcision that would lead to physical or psychological harm, but suggest that pricking or incising the skin of the external genitalia in females is less harmful than ear piercing. This has led to outrage from groups who oppose female circumcision in all forms.
by Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu
There are 8000 patients on transplant waiting lists in the UK. Every year 400 patients die while waiting for an organ to come available.
We are all far more likely to be in need of an organ transplant than to be a donor. Most of us expect that if we needed a transplant that someone would donate one. On the basis of the ethical golden rule – do unto others as you would want them to do for you, we should all think seriously about whether and how we could donate our organs if we no longer need them.
Is it wrong for documentary film makers to film intimate moments in the lives of non-human animals? David Attenborough has used fibroptic cameras to obtain views of the inside of a platypus’ nest, providing never-before-seen images of the birth and feeding of a newborn platypus. But imagine that he had used similar technology to obtain pictures from a human home birth, or to take pictures of copulating couples in their homes? Brett Mills, a lecturer in television studies at the University of East Anglia has controversially suggested that animals may have a right to privacy that is breached by filming them without their consent.
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?
Read More »Embrace the controversy: let’s offer Project Prevention on the NHS
When are placebos ethical in medical research? One common answer is that it is only appropriate to use placebos in research when there is no proven effective treatment for the condition (1). On this view, if there is a proven treatment placebos would be unethical, and any trial should compare new drugs or treatments with the existing proven one. But what if the question of ‘proof’ is in dispute? For new medical treatments there often comes a point where some researchers and doctors are convinced that the new treatment is effective and safe while others remain unconvinced. When placebo-controlled trials take place in this setting they are often controversial.
Read More »The equal air-time solution for controversial research
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.
The Family Court in Brisbance this week authorised a hysterectomy for a severely disabled 11 year old girl. Disability groups have branded the decision an abuse of human rights and called for a law prohibiting the sterilisation of disabled children.
There has been a lot of discussion about health care rationing in the North American media over the last year, much of it hysterical and barely coherent. A number of respected ethicists have tried to make the case for rationing, including Peter Singer in the New York Times last year, and recently John Freeman.
This week Newsweek Science Editor Sharon Begley asked ‘What is a Life Worth?’ drawing on a recent study presented at the American Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine meeting. Begley noted
“This is the kind of news that unleashes hysteria about "death panels" and "health-care rationing," but here goes: an analysis of genetic screening for an incurable, untreatable disease called spinal muscular atrophy shows that it would cost $4.7 million to catch and avert one case, compared with $260,000 to provide lifetime care for a child born with it. So here's the question: do we say, "Damn the cost; it is worth any price to spare a single child the misery of being unable to crawl, walk, swallow, or move his head and neck"—or do we, as a society, put on the green eyeshades and say, "No, sorry, we can't afford routine screening"?”
