Skip to content

Does it matter that there’s cocaine in our water supply?

Does it matter that there’s cocaine in our water supply?

Scientists from the Drinking Water Inspectorate have recently discovered benzoylecgonine in water samples at four test sites, a finding that is thought to be a result of high levels of domestic cocaine consumption. Benzoylecgonine is the metabolised form of cocaine that appears once it has passed through the body, and is the same compound that is tested for in urine-based drug tests for cocaine. It is also an ingredient in a popular muscle-rub, however, so the origins of the compound in our water are somewhat uncertain. Steve Rolles from the drug policy think tank Transform has suggested that the findings are an indication of the scale of the use of cocaine in Britain today. According to a 2010 UN report, the United Kingdom is the single largest cocaine market within Europe, followed by Spain.  In contrast to the shrinking cocaine market in North America, the number of cocaine users in European countries has doubled over the last decade, from 2 million in 1998 to 4.1 million in 2007/8. Although the annual cocaine prevalence rate in Europe (1.2%) is lower than North America (2.1%), the UK prevalence rate (3.7% in Scotland and 3.0% in England and Wales) is actually higher than the US (2.6% in 2008). According to the charity DrugScope, cocaine is the second most used illegal substance in the UK after cannabis: there are around 180,000 dependent users of crack cocaine in England, and nearly 700,000 people aged 16-59 are estimated to take cocaine every year. Further, according to the government statistics, in the years 2012-13, cocaine was the only drug to show an increase in use among adults between 16-59. All this does appear to suggest a possible link between the benzoylecgonine found in the water supply and high levels of cocaine use in the UK.

Read More »Does it matter that there’s cocaine in our water supply?

Personal Genome Project UK email disaster: If you can’t guarantee privacy, at least try to ensure trust

It’s not often that you can write on a topic in ethics whilst rolling around laughing, so I shall take this rare opportunity to make a few comments on the ludicrous breach of privacy that occurred last night when the Personal Genome Project messed up something as simple as an email list.

I’d expressed an interest in taking part in this project which aims to sequence the genomes of hundreds of thousands of people and make these available, together with trait information, to researchers. There are clear potential worries about privacy here, as there is a potential to identify individuals from such a rich source of information. Nonetheless, I was excited to take part. After all, many of the people I know and love the most would not be alive today were it not for advances in medical science which have helped to treat diseases such as cancer and type 1 diabetes. In the past, many have risked life and limb for medical science. What was the potential of a little breach of privacy to worry about? Besides which, there has been considerable attention to ethics, privacy, and security around this project. There’s a whole ethics crew. Presumably they only hire the crème de la crème of data and IT experts. Surely these guys could be trusted to use our information wisely, and to do all they could to prevent irresponsible use?Read More »Personal Genome Project UK email disaster: If you can’t guarantee privacy, at least try to ensure trust

On the ‘right to be forgotten’

This week, a landmark ruling from the European Court of Justice held that a Directive of the European Parliament entailed that Internet search engines could, in some circumstances, be legally required (on request) to remove links to personal data that have become irrelevant or inadequate. The justification underlying this decision has been dubbed the ‘right to be forgotten’.

The ruling came in response to a case in which a Spanish gentleman (I was about to write his name but then realized that to do so would be against the spirit of the ruling) brought a complaint against Google. He objected to the fact that if people searched for his name in Google Search, the list of results displayed links to information about his house being repossessed in recovery of social security debts that he owed. The man requested that Google Spain or Google Inc. be required to remove or conceal the personal data relating to him so that the data no longer appeared in the search results. His principal argument was that the attachment proceedings concerning him had been fully resolved for a number of years and that reference to them was now entirely irrelevant.Read More »On the ‘right to be forgotten’

Revenge – an unjust necessity?

Recently, I have come to seemingly hap hazardously stumble over a series of texts and events that all circulate around what I always considered base and somewhat repulsive desires to hurt fellow human beings on what is considered good grounds. Some months ago, I wrote a post here about so-called shaming sites that expose in particular sex criminals, where law-abiding citizens are given the opportunity to add to the suffering of sex offenders by spreading information about them, and making sure that whatever the legal punishment has been, they shall not get away that easily with the appalling crimes they have committed. Since then, New York Times has published an article about the merit of spite, and an opinion piece by Norwegian crime novel author Jo Nesbo entitled ‘Revenge, My Lovely’ on the value of revenge. Here in Oxford, Martha Nussbaum has given the first of a series of lectures on ‘Anger and Forgiveness’ where she addresses the same desire to hurt wrongdoers. Interest for this phenomenon is à la mode, and I will suggest that this might be because it reveals a tension in our society that is very difficult to deal with.Read More »Revenge – an unjust necessity?

Is Home Birth Really As Safe As Hospital Birth? “Woman-centred Care” vs “Baby-centred Care”

Imagine that you and your partner are having a baby in hospital. Tragically something goes wrong unexpectedly during birth and the baby is born blue. He urgently needs resuscitation if there is to be a chance of preventing permanent severe brain damage. How long would it be reasonable for doctors to wait before starting resuscitation? 15 minutes? 5 minutes? 1 minute?

What would be a reasonable excuse for delaying the commencement of resuscitation? They wanted to get a cup of coffee? The mother wanted to hold the baby first? The mother had catastrophic bleeding and this needed urgent attention?

If it were my baby, I would not want any delay in starting resuscitation. And there would be no justification for delaying resuscitation except some more serious, more urgent problem for another patient, such as the mother.

Yet when people choose homebirth, delay is precisely what they choose. It is simply not possible to start advanced resuscitation in the home within minutes. And their reason is not typically some relevant competing health concern that necessitates delivery at home.

Choosing home birth is choosing delay if some serious problem arises which requires immediate resuscitation.

Read More »Is Home Birth Really As Safe As Hospital Birth? “Woman-centred Care” vs “Baby-centred Care”

Do people have a right to be bigots?

 Last month Australia’s Attorney-General said in parliament that “people have the right to be bigots”. The remark came in the context of a debate about the government’s proposed amendments to sections of the country’s Racial Discrimination Act 1975 that deal with racial hate speech.

The relevant provisions of the Act make it unlawful for a person to ‘do an act’, otherwise than in private, if:

(a)    the act is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people; and

(b)   the act is done because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin of the other person or of some or all of the people in the group.

This section was added in 1995 and until recently had largely gone unnoticed by the majority of Australians. But the newly elected government made a commitment prior to its election that it would amend the provision (and a defence provision) on the grounds that it unduly restricts free speech – and so a hearty debate has ensued.

The question is: are hate-speech laws, and in particular the Australian provision, overly restrictive of free speech?

 Read More »Do people have a right to be bigots?

‘Hello Kitty’, Society, Utopia

Several people have asked me why I wrote a post to defend Avril Lavigne’s music video ‘Hello Kitty’. I’m a little bemused by the question, as I thought my main motive was self-explanatory: it is a part of philosophers’ job to consider when it’s appropriate to use normative terms to blame someone or something. It’s one… Read More »‘Hello Kitty’, Society, Utopia

Reporters Shouldn’t Embrace Bias

For a long time, objectivity and impartiality were perceived to be noble and uncontroversial goals for journalists.  Objectivity is straightforwardly appealing – we want information that is accurate and undistorted by reporters’ personal politics.  However, there is of late some pushback against that view (often called ‘The View from Nowhere’, which has apparently become such common parlance in the industry that the Wikipedia entry focuses on the term’s use in journalism rather than Nagel’s book whose title inspired the movement).  The idea, roughly, is that personal bias is unavoidable among journalists (and indeed the public in general).  It is hypocritical to claim to offer impartial reporting because that impartiality can never be achieved; instead, reporters should simply embrace their normative perspectives and be up front about it and its influence on their work.  But this move is a serious mistake, one that will subvert the central internal purpose of journalism and only serve to promote greater ignorance about the world.  Read More »Reporters Shouldn’t Embrace Bias

Lethal Injection: Time for the Chop

On 29th April 2014, Clayton Lockett, 38, was executed by lethal injection in Oklahoma for the heinous crimes he committed fourteen years earlier.

 That evening, he was escorted to the execution chamber and placed on the table.  An intravenous line was inserted in his groin.

 At 6.23pm, he was given midazolam, a sedative intended to render him unconscious.  He should normally have lost consciousness within a minute or two.  Seven minutes later, a doctor declared that Mr Lockett was still conscious.  After a further three minutes, the doctor checked again and declared him unconscious.  It is unclear what criteria he used to come to this conclusion, but the events that followed indicate that Mr Lockett was still partially conscious.  Vecuronium was then administered to paralyse his muscles, followed by potassium chloride to stop his heart.Read More »Lethal Injection: Time for the Chop

Cognitive science and threats to free will

It is often asserted that emerging cognitive science – especially work in psychology (e.g., that associated with work on automaticity, along with work on the power of situations to drive behavior) and cognitive neuroscience (e.g., that associated with unconscious influences on decision-making) – threatens free will in some way or other. What is not always clear is how this work threatens free will. As a result, it is a matter of some controversy whether this work actually threatens free will, as opposed to simply appearing to threaten free will. And it is a matter of some controversy how big the purported threat might be. Could work in cognitive science convince us that there is no free will? Or simply that we have less free will? And if it is the latter, how much less, and how important is this for our practices of holding one another morally responsible for our behavior?Read More »Cognitive science and threats to free will