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Abortion for Fetal Abnormality?
Abortion remains a crime for most Australians. Laws are inconsistent between states. In contrast, long ago the UK Abortion Act 1967 repealed and replaced its antiquated legal statutes on which much of Australian abortion law is still based. The government in the state of Victoria asked the Law Reform Commission to provide legislative options to…
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Cloning and animal exploitation
The Daily Mail reports this morning that 8 clone-offspring cows have been born in the UK. Also today, the first survey of public opinion on ‘clone farming’ has been released indicating significant unease and opposition to the idea of meat products or milk from cloned sources. There are strict prohibitions on reproductive cloning for humans…
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Betting on bad health (with inside information)
Personal DNA testing is here. For $1,000 you can send off a DNA sample to an american company and find out your genetic predispositions to a wide variety of illnesses and problems, from male pattern baldness to cancer. The Telegraph is running a story by a woman who has just ordered such a test and…
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Two approaches to climate control
The Guardian leader today drew what it called a crude distinction between “two sets of people who both want to fight climate change”. Some think we can carry on more or less as we are while pursuing technological means to counterbalance the accelerating impact of our species on the natural environment, while their opponents think…
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Conditional gifts for the NHS
The Royal Bank of Scotland has donated a state-of-the-art three dimensional CT scanner to an Edinburgh hospital, but with strings attached. The scanner will be available for use by NHS patients, but the Bank wants its staff to have priority access to up to 25% of the scanner’s capacity. Some politicians and academics are opposed…
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Personal Carbon Credits and Fairness Considerations
Not a day seems to pass without some news on the possible catastrophic impacts of climate change. International politics aims at establishing binding regulations for greenhouse gas emissions – but quite rightly gets accused of only paying lip service (though at least last weeks agreement of the G8 states to reduce greenhouse gas emissions might…
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False Hope? Greenpeace on Carbon Capture and Storage
Earlier this month Greenpeace released a report entitled ‘False Hope’ attacking carbon capture and storage (CCS) on the grounds that it ‘wont save the climate’ and that it therefore presents us with a false hope. (See: http://www.greenpeace.org/international/press/reports/false-hope ). Greenpeace argue that we should abandon attempts to develop CCS technology and that we should…
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Legal Abortion Time-Limits: Arbitrary Limits Harm Women
By Dr. Lachlan de Crespigny, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University of Melbourne The vote by the British parliament to keep the upper legal limit on abortion at 24 weeks was headline news around the world. An article in The Economist (1) considers that the British were spared America’s abortion wars partly because Britain is…
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Preventing Polka-Dot Problems: Should Measles Vaccination be Compulsory?
Jim Todd reports about his measles experience at BBC News. A number of years back such a report about how a case of adult measles feels would have been absurd, since so many had suffered it. A few years back it would have been absurd because measles was rare thanks to vaccination. But now, due…
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Brain Boosting and Cheating in Exams: Four Responses
A report by the Academy of Medical Sciences looking at different aspects of drug use and mental health has identified a growing trend for off-label use of drugs intended for the treatment of diseases including narcolepsy, ADHD and Alzheimer’s. The use of such drugs by a healthy individual can improve memory, alertness and concentration. While…