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Euthanasia and Perverse Incentives
Debbie Purdy is a British woman suffering from multiple sclerosis. Worried about her degenerating condition, she has planned to end her life at the Swiss clinic, Dignitas, which practices euthanasia for people with crippling medical conditions. The story entered the media when she challenged the British High Court to specify whether or not they would…
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Travelling for Treatment
A BBC report today suggests that “many” UK couples are going overseas to choose the sex of their children. What seems most odd about this is that in some cases they go to places where sex selection is illegal. What is interesting here is the fascination with what people do when they go overseas or…
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Compulsory chemical castration for sex offenders
A month ago, the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, called for the introduction of forced chemical castration for sex offenders. The call followed a particularly nasty case of incest and paedophilia in the country: a 45 year old man was found to have sexually abused his 21-year-old daughter over a period of six years, and…
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Death Fiction and Taking Organs from the Living
By Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson Imagine you could save 6 lives with a drop of your blood. Would you have a moral obligation to donate a drop of blood to save six people’s lives? It seems that if any sort of moral obligation exists, you have a moral obligation to save six lives with…
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Preimplantation Genetic Screening: One Step Closer to the Perfect Baby?
Prospective parents will be able to screen embryos for almost any known genetic disease using a revolutionary “universal test” developed by British scientists, led by Prof Alan Handyside The £1,500 test, called karyomapping, which should be available as early as next year, will allow couples at risk of passing on gene defects to conceive healthy…
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The objections to assisted suicide are misguided
In a recent article in The Observer, philosopher Mary Warnock makes an eloquent plea for assisted suicide in relation to the case of Daniel James, a 23-year old rugby player from Worcester who requested to be helped to die after an accident at a training session last year left him paralyzed from the chest down,…
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Finding holes in the brain: to test or not to test for Creutzfeldt-Jakob?
A new test for carriers of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is under development, but it raises an ethical problem: should we test for untreatable deadly illnesses? And might it reduce the amount of blood donations?
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The paradox of organ donation consent
In Australian newspapers today a Melbourne intensive care physician, Jim Tibballs is reported as criticising current organ donation guidelines on the grounds that donors are not actually dead at the time that organs are removed. Other doctors have called Professor Tibballs’ comments “irresponsible” on the grounds that they might cause a significant fall in organ…
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Saving pennies and saving premmies
Do the different staffing levels reflect a different priority for newborn infants in the allocation of health resources? Are there relevant differences that would justify a lower staffing level in newborn intensive care compared to adult or paediatric intensive care? Is it justifiable to give preference in terms of funding to adults or children (say)…