Suppose that the government is proposing a new policy regarding buildings of historical significance. Rather than simply banning the destruction of ‘listed’ buildings, the new policy would allow their destruction, provided that …

Over on the Ethox blog, Ignacio Mastroleo writes about the Nuremberg code and post-trial obligations of researchers My intention in this post is to highlight that relevance of the term “follow up” in research ethics, in particular, what has…

The use of placebos in medicine raises a large number of serious ethical issues. Do they involve deceiving patients, or violating their autonomy in some way? Are they harmful to certain patients, in research trials where the actual treatmen…

by Dominic Wilkinson (@Neonatalethics)   One of my registrars asked an interesting question this morning. A commonly used life-saving medicine in newborn intensive care is derived from animal products; should parents be told?

Patricia Churchland, a prominent Neurophilosopher, just published a book on neuroscience and its ethical implications which led to a rather nasty exchange in the New York Review of Books with fellow philosopher Colin McGinn.  His pointed, t…

There is no doubt that the internet has transformed our lives in multiple ways. Here I will focus on the ways in which it has transformed our cognitive environment. I’m writing these words in Australia; as soon as I press “publish” they wil…

Sporting contests are philosophically interesting, as well as enjoyable, because sports and games are full of rules and conventions, which inevitably raise issues of interpretation and give rise to passion about ethics and the spirit of the…

The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recently recommended that the NHS should learn from commercial weight loss programmes such as Weight Watchers, Rosemary Conley and Slimming World. The NICE guidelines suggested th…

By Julian Savulescu. @juliansavulescu The Australian newspaper ‘The Sunday Age’ reports today that “The Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority has built a ”non-presence” drug case against 34 Essendon footballers, adopting…

Originally posted on the OUP blog. Reposted with the permission of the author Tony Hope is a Uehiro fellow, Emeritus Professor of Medical Ethics at the University of Oxford and the author of Medical Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Scienc…