Suppose you have a child with special educational needs. Suppose the only school that could meet your child’s needs (as set out by their Statement of Special Educational Needs) was over an hour away (as can often happen). It falls under you…

The Treasurer of Australia, the Hon Joe Hockey MP, recently received widespread attention with the statement: It’s kind of remarkable that somewhere in the world today, it’s highly probable that a child has been born who will li…

According to Oxfam’s latest report,  by 2016 the richest 1% will own more than all the rest of people in the world. For many, the current and increasing inequality among individuals is deeply worrying. For many of us this is because w…

Facebook has changed its privacy settings this January. For Europeans, the changes have come into effect on January 30, 2015. Apart from collecting data from your contacts, the information you provide, and from everything you see and do in …

Julian Savulescu discusses the ethics of mitochondrial transfer

Imagine that there was a law which prevented 150 children a year suffering from a life threatening liver or kidney failure from receiving a transplant. This would be unethical. But this is precisely the current state of affairs for around 1…

A blog post late last month by Richard Smith, former editor of the BMJ, has provoked a storm of criticism and controversy. Provocatively entitled, “Dying of Cancer is the Best Death”, the author argues that a death from cancer is preferable…

Alternative medicine is a trendy topic to discuss – both by despising and praising it in a contradictory manner. But there is something controversial in the categorical critique towards it. The controversies and fallacies in the categorical…

In philosophical discussions, we bring up the notion of plausibility a lot.  “That’s implausible” is a common form of objection, while the converse “That’s plausible” is a common way of offering a sort of cautious sympathy with an argument …