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Penzions and Politicians
Aren’t you glad you’ve got a state pension! I know I am. It’s just great to know the government cares about us and will look after us in our old age. Kind of like having parents, only better because it’s even bigger and even stronger, and not selfish like parents are. (Also, more likely to…
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Joking about ‘the Unluckiest Man in the World’
The BBC and the production company Talkback Thames, after receiving a letter of complaints from the Japanese embassy in London, issued a joint statement of apology about an episode of the popular comedy quiz show QI featuring Tsutomu Yamaguchi, who had survived the atomic bombings of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki and died last January at…
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New work on neuroethics in Spain.
The growing relevance of neurosciences within Bioethics leads to the appearance of new Centres dedicated to the study of neuroethics around the world. This is the case of a new group just appeared at my home University, the University of Valencia. I would like to dedicate my first contribution to this blog to introduce this…
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How to feed people dioxin and get away with it
Earlier this month German authorities closed around 4,700 farms following the discovery that pigs and poultry had been given feed contaminated with dioxins, which are thought to be among the most carcinogenic environmental pollutants. Yesterday Russia banned the import of untested pork products produced in Germany after 1 November 2010. This follows earlier import bans…
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Beauty, brains, and the halo effect
by Alexandre Erler Satoshi Kanazawa is currently in the news – see e.g. these articles in the Daily Mail, The Australian and Psychology Today. An evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, Kanazawa has just published a new article in the journal Intelligence (Kanazawa 2011) in which he argues, in continuity with his previous…
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Stop that painting!
A painting thought to be by Peter Paul Rubens has been barred from export this week. The ban on selling it to a foreign buyer lasts until March, with the possibility of an extension, and is intended to give British museums a chance to raise the money to buy it. The committee which advises the…
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Do We Confuse Surrogacy With Prostitution?
Elton John and Nicole Kidman have both recently had children by surrogate mothers. The usual enthusiasm that new babies receive has been tempered by the hostility that sometimes accompanies surrogacy. A thought that occurs to me is whether some moral reactions to surrogacy might be linked with reactions to prostitution.
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Nazi Eugenics Returns to Germany: The Paradox of Eugenics
The prestigious scientific journal, Nature, reports that Germans are poised to allow genetic testing of embryos for serious genetic disorders. This follows a recent judicial judgement that genetic testing of embryos for serious disorders did not fall under German laws that ban destruction of embryos. Now, The Leopoldina, Germany’s national academy of sciences, has published…
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Hypothetically donated organs
Every day three people die in the UK while waiting in the transplant queue. In the face of the urgency to increase the organs available, some propose introducing economic incentives. A more moderate solution consists in choosing a public policy with an appropriate default option, that is, a condition that is imposed on individuals when…
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If North Africa Starves Next Year, I’ll be Rich!
Inflation is swinging upward in the UK and it will surely cause us some irritation soon in the supermarkets. But most of us do not have difficulty putting enough food on the table for our families, and it’s easy for us to forget that things are different elsewhere. During the past few years sharp rises…