Skip to content

Ethics

Am I allowed to throw away *my* memories: does memory editing threaten human identity?

A paper has recently been published demonstrating that a previously learned fearful reaction can be weakened using a drug. The aim of the research is to ameliorate PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder, where traumatic experiences cause an ongoing state of anxiety and stress reactions. In the media it of course became "drug can erase bad memories" and "Pill to erase bad memories: Ethical furore over drugs 'that threaten human identity'". Are we getting close to a memory eraser pill, and would it pose any ethical challenges?

Read More »Am I allowed to throw away *my* memories: does memory editing threaten human identity?

A kidney for a heart – some thoughts on ownership of biological material

Back in 2001 Richard Batista, a vascular surgeon at Nassau University Medical Center, donated a kidney to his wife Dawnell Batista in an attempt to save both her life and their failing marriage (here and here). Although the transplantation (Ms Batista’s third) was a success nothing could salvage the marriage and in 2005 Ms Battista filed for divorce. The infuriated Mr Battista responded by demanding his kidney back. Mr Battista said that while he had done everything to save her – as his lawyer put it “acted ‘godlike’” – she had exploited his kindness and betrayed him in the worst of ways. He accused her of having an affair with her physical therapist, said that she refused marriage counselling (implying it could have saved the marriage) and that she would not let him see their 3 children. Ms Battista, on the other hand, denied the affair and said that her soon to be ex-husband was “insanely jealous and hyper-suspicious”. Faced with the impossibility of actually getting the organ back Mr Battista has announced that he wants to be compensated monetarily. More precisely he holds that $1.5 million would be the appropriate market value of the kidney. The hearing started last month and it seems fair to assume that the claim for monetary compensation will be rejected. The selling of organs is illegal in the USA and as pointed out by one of the lawyers involved; a kidney is not a marital asset to be divided. The sensationalist overtones of the Batista case aside, it is clear that ownership of biological material is one of the most challenging issues in bioethics today. Arguably, a strongly contributing factor is that it is not particularly clear what it means to own biological material. Which are the rights and obligations that we have with regards to our own, and other people’s, biological material?

Read More »A kidney for a heart – some thoughts on ownership of biological material

Transparent brains: detecting preferences with infrared light

Researchers at University of Toronto have demonstrated that they can decode which of two drinks a test subject prefers by scanning their brains with infrared light. (Original paper here.) The intention is to develop better brain-computer interfaces for severely disabled people, but there are obvious other applications for non-invasive methods of detecting what people want. No doubt neuromarketers are drooling over the applications. But the threat to mental privacy might be a smaller problem than the threat of mistaken preferences.

Read More »Transparent brains: detecting preferences with infrared light

Educating children on matters of food

As evidenced by recent declarations by the Children’s Secretary (see here and here),
the British government is determined to fight childhood obesity and to initiate
nothing less than a “lifestyle revolution”, resulting in more children leading
a healthy and active life. With this aim in view, a free cookbook was recently distributed to 11
year-olds by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. In
addition to that, from 2011
cookery lessons will be compulsory in England's secondary schools for children
aged 11 to 14, and £3.3 million will be invested in order to
recruit and train people capable of teaching cooking skills to children.
Parents are also urged to teach their children how to prepare meals from
scratch.

These are certainly sensible steps to take. With nine out of 10 British adults
and two-thirds of children expected to be overweight or obese by the year 2050
unless action is taken (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/jul/30/obesity),
we are clearly dealing with an important public health issue. And given the
significance of the link between excess weight and an unhealthy diet (lack of
exercise being another major contributing factor), it seems clear that we should
teach children what a healthy diet consists in and equip them not to be dependent on
the local fast-food chain when the time of the next meal comes. We can hope
that the government’s scheme will help to achieve this, and that parents will
follow the lead – though it is also necessary that the meals provided in school
canteens be in keeping with those aims. However, I would like to suggest that
these steps should form part of a wider project meant to educate children on
matters of food. We want our children to be healthy, but we should also want
them to become autonomous and ethically responsible eaters (and, more
generally, consumers).

Read More »Educating children on matters of food

Tennis and Sex

Once a week I thrash around haplessly on the tennis court.   This week, I’m also a tennis spectator.  While the global economy implodes, at least one event appears to be untouched – the 2009 Australian Tennis Open.    Andrew Murray’s defeat yesterday means he can’t now net the eye-watering AUD$2 million first prize for the men’s single title.   The women’s champion will earn….well, exactly the same, AUD $2million.

After a long running campaign by various groups, all the Grand Slams tennis tournaments now offer   equal prize money to both sexes:  Wimbledon fell into line in 2007.  The argument was that just as no distinction should be made between women and men in the office, so there should be no distinction drawn on the court.


Read More »Tennis and Sex

I just don’t care about animals that much!

Despite the protestations of those opposed to the use of animals in research, the fundamental differences between people over the treatment of animals seems to lie with the weight that we are prepared to give to animal suffering and death in the pursuit of human goods and interests. Very few, I would have thought, would give animal suffering no weight and similarly, very few would give animal suffering more weight than human suffering.

Read More »I just don’t care about animals that much!

Open source censorship

The struggle against child porn goes on. An Australian judge has ruled that a cartoon showing a character from The Simpsons engaged in sexual activity is child pornography. Australia is also trying to implement Internet filtering for the whole population, although the project has run into serious opposition. Meanwhile Wikipedia ended up 'censored' in the UK due to a page with the controversial cover of an album.

The most interesting aspect of the Wikipedia debacle is that the decision that led to the censorship was not made by any government authority but an industry-sponsored group, the Internet Watch Foundation. The IWF maintains a blacklist certain ISPs subscribe to, and users trying to reach a site on it will be sent a blank page. Is this censorship, and is this bad?

Read More »Open source censorship