In the latest St. Cross Ethics Seminar (which you can listen to here) Anthony Skelton investigates how we should construct an adequate theory of welfare for children.

An underlying assumption of much debate on this blog is that the government has the right to boss people about and the question at issue is merely which bit of bossing about the government should be doing. Despite the fact that the left are…

In the latest New Scientist, Alex Berezow and Hank Campbell attempt to redress what they see as an imbalance in perceptions of how political views affect attitudes to science. It is widely held today – in the wake of books like The Re…

Would you trust a minister of finance explaining how he just fixed the latest euro-zone deal if he came out of the summit chambers tipsily waving a glass of wine? No? What about if he gave a press conference after an all-night session? Most…

Geoengineering as a response to anthropogenic climate change is of increasing interest to members of the scientific community.  The challenges of developing technologies powerful enough to manipulate the global climate are considerable and …

In a story reminiscent of the film ‘Sophie’s Choice’ Taj Mohammed, a refugee in afghanistan, tells the BBC that he chose to sell his six-year-old daughter Naghma to pay off a debt to a distant relative. To keep his family …

Earlier this month, I attended a conference on Controlled Human Infection Studies in the Development of Vaccines and Therapeutics. These studies involve deliberately infecting healthy volunteers with a disease (such as malaria, typhoid, nor…

Flu researchers have looked deeply at their own field, and decided that everything they were doing is all fine. Where the potentially hideously dangerous H5N1 bird-flu virus is concerned, They said that the benefits of the research in preve…

            An interesting article from the Guardian has been bouncing around my Facebook feed of late. The author, Damien Shannon, was offered a place to read for an MSc in economic and social history at Oxford University (St. Hugh’s Colle…

By Lachlan de Crespigny and Julian Savulescu An emergency centre doctor working in Germany has claimed 2 nearby catholic hospitals refused to accept a rape victim who needed treatment, in case she was pregnant  . This was allegedly in line …