Don’t tax the fat!
by Rebecca Roache Dr Philip Lee, Conservative MP for Bracknell and a practising GP, today suggested that people whose lifestyle choices lead to medical problems should have to contribute towards their healthcare costs. He apparently highlig…
Read MoreCondom County: Porn, Condoms and Liberty in Los Angeles
On November 6th, while most of the world focused on the United States’ presidential election, the citizens of Los Angeles County confronted a slightly more explicit question at the voting booth: should porn performers be required to wear co…
Read MoreTony Coady on Religion in the Political Sphere: Part 1
In the last twenty years, there has been great interest in the dangers religion presents to liberal democracies, in particular as a result of terrorist attacks, and the political success of the religious right in the United States. Religion…
Read MoreTreating ADHD may reduce criminality
Pharmaceutical treatment of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is associated with reduced criminality according to a study published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine. The study of over 25,000 Swedish adults with…
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Armstrong the Good Giraffe and the Moral Value of Effort
Let me introduce you to Armstrong the Good Giraffe. Appearing in the news last week due to his goodness (and probably his giraffeness), Armstrong is a man in a costume who goes around voluntarily doing good deeds. Throwing himself into help…
Read MoreJanet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex: Part 2
In the second of her Uehiro lectures on the topic of feminism in the 21st century (which you can listen to here), Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards addresses the question of how the sexes may be said to differ in the light of a shift in ou…
Read MoreA Dyslexic boy in a Trojan horse
‘Come in’, said the Well Known Educational Psychologist. We did. ‘Please sit down’, she said, and we did. She didn’t waste time, and quite right too. We wanted to know. ‘Tom and I have had a very interesting afternoon.’ That sounded bad. ‘H…
Read MoreFGM and the Golden Rule
When Binta Jobe [not her real name] was nine, she was taken into the Gambian bush where she suffered female genital mutilation at the hands of an amateur surgeon without anaesthetic. She is now a 23-year-old asylum seeker in the UK, trying …
Read MoreJanet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex
In the last two centuries, there has been a massive shift in the legal, social and institutional norms surrounding sex – both in terms of women’s rights and regulation of sexual activity. And, undoubtedly, there will be more su…
Read MoreThe Bad Seed: Facts and Values in the Study of Childhood Antisocial Behaviour
Podcast of Uehiro Seminar given by Gwen Adshead ‘The Bad Seed’ was a popular 1954 novel in which a well brought up young girl begins to manifest behaviour characteristic of a criminal psychopath. As the plot develops, the girl’s mother disc…
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