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Sport, Sudden Cardiac Death and Liberty
Sport, like life, is dangerous. Several fit young footballers have died of sudden unexpected heart attacks. Doctors are now calling for mandatory testing using ECGs of all athletes. Italy has been pursuing mandatory testing for 25 years. This has revealed over 5% have some abnormality. Some people have congenital heart rhythm abnormalities which place them…
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Activists and acts of mercy
In Germany this week, and in Australia recently, there has been public concern and significant media attention about the actions of euthanasia activists. A former government official and lawyer, Roger Kusch, went public in Germany with a video of an elderly woman who he had helped to die. In Australia, Phillip Nitschke has been criticised…
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Comprehensive treatment for all: The NHS Constitution
The proposed NHS Constitution was published on Monday as a part of a consultation process to shape the future direction of the NHS. Daniel Finklestein in today’s Times suggests that the new constitution is an irresponsible document. Some of his criticisms, however, are wide of the mark.
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Education and the Fairness of Capital Punishment
Regardless of their views on capital punishment most people desire it to be centred on due process and fairness. But a software experiment, by showing that the likelihood of execution of people on death row can be predicted to high accuracy, paradoxically suggests a great degree of arbitrariness in how the death penalty is applied…
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Here’s why you’re not smart enough
An interesting article in The New York Times describes how the way in which the brain forms memories can, over time, lead to false information from noncredible sources being reinterpreted as true. The article notes that this may explain why smear campaigns can be so effective in politics: those who spread misinformation ‘know that if…
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Duck and cover: how expensive does impact safety have to be?
This week is Tunguska week: on June 30 1908 a large meteoroid or comet exploded with the force of 5-30 megatons above the Tunguska River in Russia. The journal Nature celebrates it with several articles about impacts, ranging from a discussion of a controversial meteorite artwork to the confirmation that most of the northern hemisphere…
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Behavioural Internet Advertising
A recent article in The Economist reports the development of a new behavioural approach to targeted internet advertising being developed by companies such as Phorm, NebuAd and FrontPorch (see http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11482452 ). The current market leader is Phorm who have recently signed up the three biggest internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, BT, Virgin Media…
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When autonomy trumps sense: the costs of refusal to allow withdrawal of life support.
In Canada this week, an 84 year old man died after 9 months of treatment in an intensive care unit. He had severe brain damage and multi-organ failure, but his family sought a legal injunction to prevent doctors in the intensive care unit from withdrawing life-support. Over the course of his long intensive care stay,…
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The Clash of Environmental Values
GMO and climate change seem currently one of the more upsetting issues not only for environmentalists, but for the wider public as well. Carbon tax proposals like the one released by Canada’s opposition party last week (e.g Financial Times) or requests to the EU by Britain to embrace a more liberal attitude towards GM crops…
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Discrimination and infertility treatment
It has been reported in the newspapers today that in many parts of the country smokers have been refused access to in-vitro-fertilisation treatment. This appears to be contrary to the national evidence-based guidelines for fertility treatment. Is this unfair?