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Don’t tax the fat!

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 highlighted type 2 diabetes – which can be brought on by an unhealthy diet, being overweight, and lack of exercise, although some people are genetically disposed to it – and is quoted in the Huffington Post as saying, ‘If you want to have doughnuts for breakfast, lunch and dinner, fine, but there’s a cost’.

At first glance, the idea that those who lead unhealthy lifestyles should bear the burden of their own resulting health problems seems fair. But there are serious problems with this idea. Let us consider two of them.Read More »Don’t tax the fat!

Tony 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 is difficult to define and its appropriate role in the public domain is frequently disputed. Violence is frequently attributed to religious absolutism however, in the first of the annual 2012 Leverhulme Lecture Series entitled ‘Religion and Politics’, Professor Tony Coady discusses why this sweeping claim can ultimately be rejected. The first lecture occurred on November 15 (you can listen to the podcast here), with two further lectures on November 22 and 29.

Read More »Tony Coady on Religion in the Political Sphere: Part 1

Treating 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 the disorder found that men undergoing pharmaceutical treatments had a 51% chance of committing at least one crime in a 4-year period compared to 63% for those not in treatment. The risk of criminality for women with ADHD was 25% for those taking medication, and 31% for those not in treatment. It’s possible, of course, that the reduction in criminality associated with treatment was due not to the treatment itself, but to other factors, such as desire to improve behaviour, which could have both motivated treatment and reduced criminality. However, even when the investigators adjusted for likely confounders, they found that treatment was associated with significantly reduced criminal offending. Thus, their findings are at least suggestive of a causal relationship between medication and reduced crime.

It will be interesting to see how such a relationship, if it can be further supported, will be viewed by the general public and medical profession. Will it be seen as strengthening or weakening the case for ADHD treatment?

Read More »Treating ADHD may reduce criminality

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 helpful tasks – such as providing free water and bananas to runners, picking up litter from beaches, and cleaning cages at cats and dogs homes – Armstrong clocks up an impressive number of non-trivial good deeds. Most impressively of all, he reportedly enjoys it.

He comments that doing these good deeds makes him feel ‘happy’ and ‘cheery’ and that this is why he does them. At first glance, this may make us think he is particularly remarkable: he not only goes about investing more time and energy into being helpful than most would reasonably expect of a person, but he also relishes it. But, I want to ask, are people like Armstrong really at the top of the moral ranks? Is there not something about effort – about having to try – that we value?Read More »Armstrong the Good Giraffe and the Moral Value of Effort

A 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.

‘He’s a very able child indeed’. That sounded worse, because it came with the emphatic pause that always indicates a big ‘but’.

In the pause I wondered why we’d done this. Why we’d taken a little boy out of the woods and out of his playground to have someone fumble inside his head with blunt tools: indices, probes, inventories, and assumptions about normality.

‘He’s quite dramatically dyslexic, I’m afraid.’ My wife shared her fear. There was a lot of it sloshing around. ‘But his IQ is so high that he’ll be able to use lots of coping strategies. And he’s still very young: there’s lots that can be done.’ And she told us what it was. Regulations could be invoked, tribunals could be convened, cards could be flashed, phonemes could be chanted. He could be imprinted like other children. It would just take longer. It would be hard work, for Tom and for us, but there was every reason to be hopeful of a ‘good result’.

And what the hell did that mean? I asked myself. I was too polite to ask her. I didn’t want a result. I wanted my son.Read More »A Dyslexic boy in a Trojan horse

FGM 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 to prevent her three-year-old daughter from a similar experience if she is forcibly returned to the Gambia.Read More »FGM and the Golden Rule

Janet 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 such shifts in the future – the sexual norms that emerge in the future may well make even the most strident liberals of today blush.  What to make of this complex and sometimes confusing landscape?  This is the subject of the 2012 Annual Uehiro Lecture Series, entitled ‘Sex in a Shifting Landscape’ and delivered over the next three weeks by Professor Janet Radcliffe Richards.  The first lecture occurred on November 14 (you can listen to the podcast here and here), with two more to follow on November 21 and 28.  Read More »Janet Radcliffe Richards on the past, present and future of sex

The 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 discovers that her own mother was a serial killer who was executed when she was herself a… Read More »The Bad Seed: Facts and Values in the Study of Childhood Antisocial Behaviour