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Curbs on Alcohol Ads?
The British Medical Association has called for a complete ban on alcohol advertising. Wait for the knees to jerk: calls deriding the ‘nanny state’ and its paternalism will soon follow. One common theme, I predict, will be that the recommendations are infantilizing. We should trust responsible adults to be capable of making their own decisions.…
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Vacancy: Postdoc Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute
Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Science or Philosophy University of Oxford, Faculty of Philosophy, Future of Humanity Institute, James Martin 21st Century School Grade 7: £28,839 – £38,757 per annum (as at 1 October 2008) The Future of Humanity Institute is a multidisciplinary research institute. It is part of the James Martin 21st Century School,…
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Justice and Mercy
The moral debate about whether Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing, should have been released has now morphed into a political debate about who wanted what and who said what to whom: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/sep/07/ed-balls-abdelbaset-al-megrahi . But the moral debate itself remains unresolved. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that (a) Megrahi was…
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The Age of Enhancement
Should we use drugs to prolong loving relationships? Should we use drugs to weaken traumatic memories? Research Associate David Edmonds’ article on enhancement for Prospect magazine is available online. The article cites both Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu (Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals Between Us). It suggests that many of the arguments made against…
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How to be happy
What makes us happy? There is a lot of data on the question now, and some surprising conclusions. One surprising conclusion is cheering: almost all of us (around 95% of people in developed countries) rate ourselves as quite happy or better. The only countries to record high levels of unhappiness are countries in which living…
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Genocide: just a word?
By: David Edmonds In April 1915 there were hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Eastern Turkey: a year later they were gone. One historian told me that this fact was the relevant one. And whether or not we call what occurred a ‘genocide’ is a matter of semantics – of secondary significance. The family of…
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When politics meets bioethics
Ethicists disagree about very many things, but they broadly agree on how it is we should disagree: by finding flaws in the reasoning that leads others to a contrary conclusion, by putting forward arguments of our own, and so forth. The thought (perhaps the illusion) is that through this process of critical discussion, we will…
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Telling porkies: should the doctor tell her patient where the medicine comes from?
In a column in the New York Times this week Randy Cohen fields a question from an anaesthetist. Should the doctor ask a devoutly religious patient whether he minds that his anticoagulant (heparin) is derived from pigs? In reply Cohen suggests that the doctrine of informed consent requires the doctor to consider the non-medical preferences…
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Should NHS Medical Services be Rated Like TripAdvisor?
The website TripAdvisor (See: http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ ) allows viewers to access (and contributed to) popular ratings of hotels, restaurants and other travel related facilities all over the world. The NHS is now operating a website – NHS Choices – that performs a similar service in respect of NHS medical services: www.nhs.uk. It contains a mix of…
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Non-lethal, yet dangerous: neuroactive agents
An article and editorial in Nature warns about the militarization of agents that alter mental states. While traditional chemical weapons are intended to hurt or kill people, these agents are intended to disable. For example, they might induce confusion, sleepiness or calm. The Chemical Weapons Convention contain a loophole for using biochemical agents for law…