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Of Mothers and Fetuses and Abortionists
Two recent articles highlight the powerful influence that language has over the way people think. Word choice is at the centre of an article about USA ‘abortionist’ Warren Hern . He hates the word abortionist: ‘the opponents of abortion have turned it into a degrading and demeaning word that has the same negative connotations as the…
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Second-hand and second-class organs. Should the patient know?
In a urology journal this month American surgeons describe transplanting kidneys that would previously have been rejected as unsuitable. In each case the donor kidneys had been found to contain a solitary mass during the transplant work-up that was potentially cancerous. Rather than cancelling the donation the surgeons removed the kidney, cut out the tumour,…
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Copenhagen
The Copenhagen climate change summit begins today, and will run for two weeks: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/copenhagen . The aim of this UN meeting is to establish agreements to succeed the Kyoto protocol, in the hope ultimately of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2˚C. After the disappointing results of the negotiations in Barcelona in September, it…
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Why the minaret ban?
I would like to try and throw additional light on the motives that led a majority of Swiss voters to a surprise acceptance, on November 29, of an initiative forbidding the construction of future minarets – already commented on by Russell Powell in his entry on this very blog yesterday. Some supporters of the initiative,…
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AUTHORS
Nick BostromProfessor of Applied Ethics, Director, Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford Steve ClarkeJames Martin Research Fellow, Program on the Ethics of the New Biosciences, University of Oxford; Principal Researcher, AHRC funded project ‘Science and Religious Conflict’, University of Oxford Roger CrispProfessor of Moral Philosophy, Uehiro Fellow, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University…
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The Swiss Minaret Controversy: Religion and the Tyranny of the Majority
Right wing politicians in Switzerland have been embroiled in a series of legal battles for the last several years over the construction of ‘minarets,’ or the tall spires that indicate the location of a mosque and broadcast the call to prayer. After suffering from a number of legal setbacks, the group finally succeeded in having…
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More on Religion and Harm
Russell Powell has recently written here about the ‘New Atheism’ debate, the controversy over the scathing attack that Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and other atheists have recently launched against religious belief. I want to add a few remarks of my own about one of the most controversial claims that is associated with these ‘new atheists’,…
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Diluted evidence: is there anything special with homeopathy?
Last week I participated in the Royal Society MP-Scientist Pairing Scheme where I got a chance to see Westminster from the inside. I was lucky to end up listening to a hearing in the Parliamentary Science and Technology Select Committee about whether the government was really pursuing evidence based medicine when it funds homepathic medicine…
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News from the future: you will have in vitro meat hamburgers within five years
A group of Dutch researchers has announced a few days ago that they have produced the first in vitro meat. Attempts to create in vitro meat started in 2001 and the Dutch government put $2 to support research in this field, while PETA offered a $1 prize to the first team of researchers that could…
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Climate scientists behaving badly? (Part 1)
Global warming hawks claim the moral high-ground, claim to speak for what is right against grubby self-interest. It behooves those who take the high ground to behave well themselves. Do they? Data and email exchanges between climate scientists have been stolen from the servers at University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit and published…