-
The Ethics of Social Prescribing: An Overview
Written by Rebecca Brown, Stephanie Tierney, Amadea Turk. This post was originally published on the NIHR School for Primary Care Research website which can be accessed here. Health problems often co-occur with social and personal factors (e.g. isolation, debt, insecure housing, unemployment, relationship breakdown and bereavement). Such factors can be particularly important in the context of non-communicable…
-
Conscientious Objection, Professional Discretionary Space, and Good Medicine
By Doug McConnell Some argue that good medicine depends on physicians having a wide discretionary space in which they can act on their consciences (Sulmasy, 2017). Interestingly, those who are against conscientious objection in medicine make the exact opposite claim – giving physicians the freedom to act on their consciences will undermine good medicine.…
-
Religion, War and Terrorism
In a fascinating, engaging, and wide-ranging talk in the New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar series, Professor Tony Coady provided several powerful arguments against the increasingly widespread assumption that religion, and religions, have a tendency to violence, particularly through war or terrorism.
-
Planting Trees, Search Engines, and Climate Change
Written by César Palacios-González The other day I went down an internet rabbit hole when researching about planting trees and climate change. I came out the other side concluding (among other things) that there were good reasons to change my search engine to Ecosia[1]. So I did, and, other things being equal, you should too.…
-
Japan to Allow Human-Animal Hybrids to be Brought to Term
By Mackenzie Graham The article was originally published at the Conversation Around the world thousands of people are on organ donor waiting lists. While some of those people will receive the organ transplants they need in time, the sad reality is that many will die waiting. But controversial new research may provide a way to…
-
Making Ourselves Better
Written by Stephen Rainey Human beings are sometimes seen as uniquely capable of enacting life plans and controlling our environment. Take technology, for instance; with it we make the world around us yield to our desires in various ways. Communication technologies, and global transport, for example, have the effect of practically shrinking a vast world,…
-
What the People Really Want: Narrow Mandates in Politics
Written by Ben Davies Last week’s by-election in the Welsh constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire saw a reduction of Boris Johnson’s government majority to just one, as Liberal Democrat Jane Dodds won the seat. The result was an interesting one: more voters went for No Deal-friendly parties (mainly Johnson’s Conservatives and the Brexit Party) than…
-
Press Release: Tafida Raqeeb, Medical Ethics, and Difficult Decisions
by Professor Dominic Wilkinson, consultant neonatologist, Professor of Medical Ethics, University of Oxford. In September, the high court will hear a legal challenge relating to the medical care of five-year old Tafida Raqeeb. She has been in intensive care since suffering a severe stroke in February this year. The doctors apparently believe that…
-
Puberty-Blocking Drugs: The Difficulties of Conducting Ethical Research
The ethics of research trials for young people with gender dysphoria are complicated. Billion Photos/Shutterstock Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford and Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford A recent Newsnight programme reported that a major UK puberty-blocking trial is under investigation. Doctors at a London clinic provided drugs to block the development of puberty in young…
-
A Proposal for Addressing Language Inequality in Academia
Written by Anri Asagumo Oxford Uehiro/St Cross Scholar Although more and more people see the importance of diversity in academia, language diversity is one type of diversity that seems to be diminishing: English is increasingly dominant in both areas. I would like to argue that people who are born and raised in an English-speaking country…