-
A tale of two reactors
Right now, by sheer chance I am sitting in the same chair, in the same place in Stockholm, as when I first heard the news about the Chernobyl accident. But today it is the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan that has had an explosion.There are interesting lessons in how the two disasters have been playing…
-
Galliano, Westboro Baptists, and the question of free speech
Despite the protestations of Albert Sydner, the father of a young soldier killed in Iraq, the American Supreme Court has ruled in favour of the Westboro Baptist’s right to picket military funerals. The religious group has demonstrated at 200 funerals, sporting events, and concerts, claiming that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are god’s way…
-
How to Stop the Medical Killing Spree
According to a recent study, around 350 patients die in Australian hospitals every two weeks. The figure would be expected to be much higher in the UK. Prof Jeff Richardson, from Monash University, appropriately said, “The issue of adverse events in the Australian health system should dominate all others. However, it would be closer to…
-
Does euthanizing animals lead to the devaluing of human life?
Not long ago a study on British veterinarian suicide rates [Bartram, D.J. and Baldwin, D.S., ‘Veterinary surgeons and suicide: influences, opportunities and research directions’, Veterinary Record 162(2): 36-40] received a bit of media attention when it reported that veterinarians in Britain have a suicide mortality rate that is four times that of the general population…
-
Should Conservative Christians be Allowed to Care for Our Children?
Eunice and Owen Johns are Christian Pentecostalists who believe that sexual relations other than those within marriage between one man and one woman are morally wrong. They also want to be foster parents. Should they be allowed to care for other people’s children? Derby city council have been reluctant to allow this, and the High…
-
Who should be allowed to foster?
A Christian couple have been blocked in their attempt to foster children this week. Eunice and Owen Johns had applied to Court to prevent Derby city council from continuously stalling their application to foster children. The council was doing so because the couple are Pentecostal Christians who hold “strong views on homosexuality, stating that it…
-
Nothing is like mother’s ice cream
The Icecreamists, an ice cream parlour in Covent Garden began selling a human breast-milk based ice cream last month, only to have it confiscated recently by Westminster Council in order to check that it was “fit for human consumption”. New York chef Daniel Angerer was reported as served human cheese (he didn’t, but see his…
-
Ethical Lessons From Locked-In Syndrome: What Is a Living Hell?
A recent important study by Stephen Laureys and colleagueson what it is like to be to experience severe brain damage has been widely reported. (eg, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/locked-patients-life/story?id=12984627). Laureys and colleagues surveyed the views of people with “locked-in” syndrome. This syndrome, which typically occurs after certain kinds of stroke, results in the person unable to move his…
-
Can forced sterilization ever be ethical?
A British court still needs to decide whether to authorize the sterilization, at her mother’s own request, of a mentally disabled woman (see e.g. here and here). Reading only the headlines and initial paragraphs of the news entries devoted to the case, one might become worried that we are seeing here a resurgence of an…
-
61-year-old woman gives birth to her own grandchild, and so what?
The “news” is that a 61 year old from Illinois served as a surrogate mother for her daughter’s son, carrying in her womb the embryo created using her daughter’s and her son-in-law’s egg and sperm. Anyone shocked? I guess no, and this is instead a (nice) surprise to me. When I started my first class…