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Reverse Prostitution: cognitive biases and conditional cash transfers
Stuart Rennie writes a thoughtful blog on bioethics.net, Can you buy changes in health behaviours? on how the World Bank backs an anti-AIDS experiment paying young people to not contract sexually transmitted infections. The basic idea is not new, conditional cash transfer programs in poor countries have had successes in improving health and education but…
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Football screens and genes: Should genetic discrimination in sport be banned?
There are several possible solutions to genetic discrimination in sport. Legislation, like that passed this week in the US could be used to prevent clubs from using genetic screening in recruitment. However that would still allow clubs to discriminate indirectly on the basis of genetic attributes, in the way that they do currently. Alternatively, in…
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New hope or false hope for vegetative patients?
A BBC documentary screening this evening on the ‘Inside Out’ program reports on what it describes as a breakthrough for patients in a vegetative state. It is based upon research by a group of neuroscientists in Cambridge, who have used sophisticated brain scans (functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)) to look for signs of consciousness in…
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The Dignity of the Carrot
What are you allowed to do to plants? At least in Switzerland you are not allowed to do research that deeply offend the dignity of plants. The Swiss federal Gene Technology Law stipulates that any scientific research should respect the "dignity of creation". All plant biotechnology grant applications must now state how they take plant…
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The Lewis wind farm and the need to compromise environmental values
After steering the Lewis wind farm proposal though a six year development process, the Scottish Government has decided not to consent to the proposal. The Scottish Energy Minster is reported as saying that the proposal by Lewis Windpower to build a 181 turbine wind farm on the Western Isles of Scotland would have a ‘serious…
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What computer simulations can tell us about the success of international treaties
International negations on climate change sometimes give the impression that a lot of hot air is raised for nothing: Politicians, policy makers and scientists alike gain air miles on their way to countless conferences, thereby emitting non-negligible amounts of greenhouse gases, only to arrive at the lowest common denominator satisfying none of the parties. International…
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Do we own our bodies? Should we?
There was a sad story last week about a young woman who died unexpectedly at the age of 19. She was on the organ donor register, and her own mother was on the waiting list for a kidney donation, but the mother was refused one of the kidneys. Even the transplant coordinator was ‘crying her…
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Ban Cosmetic Surgery in Children?
The Queensland Government, in Australia, has announced it will ban cosmetic surgery in people under 18 years of age. Other states, such as New South Wales, have stated they will also consider restricting access by teenagers to cosmetic enhancement. This is problematic in a number of ways.
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Trading on Testosterone: Doping and the Financial Markets
Two cambridge researchers have found that found that the amount of money a male financial trader makes in a day is correlated with his testosterone level. The pair – John Coates and Joe Herbert – also found that a trader’s testosterone at the beginning of a day is strongly predictive of his success that day,…
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Academic Integrity and Vioxx
Drug company Merck and its product Vioxx are in the news again. An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has examined the documents from the legal proceedings against Merck in connection with the withdrawal of Vioxx from the market in 2004. From their analysis, a significant number of journal articles –…