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Criticising Stigma Whilst Reinforcing it: the Case of the Response to CRUK’s Anti-Obesity Campaign
Written by Rebecca Brown There has been recent concern over CRUK’s (Cancer Research UK) latest campaign, which features the claim ‘obesity is a cause of cancer too’ made to look like cigarette packets. It follows criticism of a previous, related campaign which also publicised links between obesity and cancer. Presumably, CRUK’s aim is to increase…
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Doing More Harm Than Good? Should the Police Always Investigate Non-recent Child Sexual Abuse Cases?
Hannah Maslen, University of Oxford, @hannahmaslen_ox Colin Paine, Thames Valley Police, @Colin_Paine Police investigators are sometimes faced with a dilemma when deciding whether to pursue investigation of a non-recent case of child sexual abuse. Whilst it might seem obvious at first that the police should always investigate any credible report of an offence – especially…
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Four Lessons from the Covert Separation and Study of Triplets
Written by Julian Savulescu Today, the Journal of the American Medical Association published an article entitled “Three Identical Strangers and The Twinning Reaction— Clarifying History and Lessons for Today From Peter Neubauer’s Twins Study” written by Leon Hoffman and Lois Oppenheim. It provides background to a documentary, Three Identical Strangers, which gained a lot of…
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Responsibility Over Time And Across Agents
Rebecca Brown and Julian Savulescu Cross-posted from the Journal of Medical Ethics blog, available here. There is a rich literature on the philosophy of responsibility: how agents come to be responsible for certain actions or consequences; what conditions excuse people from responsibility; who counts as an ‘apt candidate’ for responsibility; how responsibility links to blameworthiness; what…
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Abolish Medical Ethics
Written by Charles Foster In a recent blog post on this site Dom Wilkinson, writing about the case of Vincent Lambert, said this: ‘If, as is claimed by Vincent’s wife, Vincent would not have wished to remain alive, then the wishes of his parents, of other doctors or of the Pope, are irrelevant. My views or…
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Is ‘Dad Joke” Sexist?
Written by Neil Levy A dad joke is a short joke, often turning on a pun or a play on words. Here are a couple of examples: Did you hear about the restaurant on the moon? It’s got great food, but no atmosphere. A sandwich walks into a bar and orders a beer. “Sorry,” says…
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How Should We Regulate Genetic Enhancement Technologies?
A Guest Post Written by Jonny Anomaly It’s been 20 years since Allen Buchanan and his colleagues published From Chance to Choice: Genetics and Justice. The book was a landmark, and it repays careful reading. But there is at least one kind of question that has been largely (if not entirely) ignored in discussions…
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The Ethics of Stress, Resilience, and Moral Injury Among Police and Military Personnel
In a fascinating presentation hosted in March by the Oxford Uehiro Centre in Practical Ethics, Professor Seumas Miller spoke about what is now known as ‘moral injury’ and its relation to PTSD, especially in the context of war fighting and police work.
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Guest Post: How Should We Evaluate Deaths?
Written by: Carl Tollef Solberg, Senior Research Fellow, Bergen Centre for Ethics and Priority Setting (BCEPS), University of Bergen. Espen Gamlund, Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Bergen. In 2015, there were 56.4 million deaths worldwide (WHO 2017).[i] Most people would say that the majority of these deaths were bad. If this is the…
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Withdrawing Life Support: Only One Person’s View Matters
Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford Shortly before Frenchman Vincent Lambert’s life support was due to be removed, doctors at Sebastopol Hospital in Reims, France, were ordered to stop. An appeal court ruled that life support must continue. Lambert was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in 2008 and has been diagnosed as being in a…