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With great documentary power comes great responsibility

With great documentary power comes great responsibility

On July 1 professor Steve Mann from University of Toronto got into an altercation at a Paris McDonald’s, apparently because employees objected to his camera glasses. McDonald’s denies any wrongdoing, while professor Mann has posted his account online – complete with footage from his glasses. The event has caused a great deal of interest, with some calling it the world’s first cybernetic hate crime. Exactly what happened and why is unclear and does not concern this post. Whether it was a cybernetic hate crime, rules-obsessed employees or a clash of personality and culture is fairly irrelevant. What is interesting is the ethics of documenting one’s environment, and how to deal with disparities in documentary power.

Read More »With great documentary power comes great responsibility

Replying to a critic: My last circumcision post (for a while) – with video debate

By Brian D. Earp

See Brian’s most recent previous post by clicking here.

See all of Brian’s previous posts by clicking here.

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VIDEO DEBATE LINKED TO BELOW – ARI KOHEN AND I DISCUSS THE ETHICS OF RELIGIOUSLY-MOTIVATED CIRCUMCISION

Ari Kohen doesn’t like my recent post about circumcision—the one in which I argue that it is unethical to remove healthy tissue from another person’s body without first getting his permission. I then go on to say that religious justifications cannot override this basic principle. Here’s that post again.

Ari is a professor of political theory and human rights at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. In this blog post, he takes me to task for failing to take seriously the religious commitments of Jews in framing my arguments. And while he gets some things wrong about, for example, the relevance of “sexually-sensitive tissue” to my overall reasoning; and while he misses the point of my bringing up female genital cutting entirely (I’ve since edited my post to clear up any lingering ambiguity) – he is probably right that my approach to debating this issue is unlikely to win me any converts from within the ranks of the religious.

Read More »Replying to a critic: My last circumcision post (for a while) – with video debate

Parkinson’s medication blamed for sexual offences

Adrian Carter and Wayne Hall, from the Neuroethics group at the University of Queensland Centre for Clinical Research, Australia

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The medication that provides significant relief from debilitating motor disturbances in people with Parkinson’s disease appears to cause a range of psychiatric disturbances that are as distressing and difficult to treat as the motor symptoms they aim to relieve.

Parkinson’s disease is usually treated with dopamine replacement therapy (DRT). This involves daily dosing with either levodopa (a precursor to the neurotransmitter, dopamine) or dopamine agonists (such as pramipexole and ropinirole) that mimic the effects of dopamine in the brain. The aim of DRT is to reduce the effects of the loss of dopaminergic neurons in specific regions of the brain involved in controlling bodily movement. However, dopamine is also a key neurotransmitter in a range of cognitive processes from executive control and memory to motivation and bonding. It is perhaps unsurprising that many Parkinson’s patients experience adverse psychiatric and cognitive side-effects from taking large doses of dopamine every day. 

Parkinson’s patients can experience severe anxiety, depression and mania and have a higher risk of suicide. A significant minority of Parkinson’s patients treated with dopamine replacement therapy will also develop impulsive and compulsive behaviours that appear to be caused by their medication. These include pathological gambling and hypersexuality, and compulsive eating and shopping. In rare cases, patients have committed criminal offences. Read More »Parkinson’s medication blamed for sexual offences

Mind Over ‘Dark’ Matter – The Higgs-Boson & The Value of Theoretical Academic Enquiry

CERN’s recent discovery of a particle consistent with the long sought-after Higgs boson has been hailed as a momentous achievement in physics. According to press releases, the finding provides substantial support for the standard model of the universe, since it explains why the particles proposed by the standard model should have mass. Although the complex physics underlying this explanation may be beyond non-physicists (such as myself), even we lay-people can understand that this finding represents a huge step forward in our understanding of the universe.Read More »Mind Over ‘Dark’ Matter – The Higgs-Boson & The Value of Theoretical Academic Enquiry

Stop Persecuting Armstrong: Time for a Doping Amnesty in Cycling

By Julian Savulescu and Bennett Foddy

The anti-doping witch hunt being perpetrated by the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is ruining cycling. There is a simple solution: an amnesty for dopers and relax anti-doping laws.

The Story So Far

Lance Armstrong has accused the USADA of running a vendetta amidst claims from a Dutch newspaper that 4 former team mates are witnesses against him, all of whom are riding in this year’s Tour de France. Speculation on what was offered to these riders in exchange from their testimony has focussed on a six month ban, delayed until after the Tour de France, though this has been denied. USADA has refused to name any of the 10 witnesses. Lance Armstrong, in a tweet, has labelled the anonymity and immunity offered in exchange for testimony against him as ‘selective prosecution’ and a ‘vendetta’.

Armstrong stands accused of doping violations between 1998 and 2005, and, if found guilty, will face losing all his seven wins, with accusations including the use of EPO, blood transfusions and steroids, following his treatment for cancer and throughout his Tour de France wins. His former team mates Hincapie, Leipheimer, Vande Velde and Zabriskie did not stand for consideration for the United States Olympic team. A two year federal investigation resulted in no charges filed and Armstrong has not failed any drug tests but has been dogged by rumours and accusations for many years.

The fact is though that every winner of the Tour de France has been implicated in doping since Miguel Indurain, except Cadel Evans and Andy Schleck.

Read More »Stop Persecuting Armstrong: Time for a Doping Amnesty in Cycling

Should minimally conscious patients be allowed to end their lives?

Two recent articles by neurobiologist and science writer Mo Costandi raise ethical quesions about the treatment of brain-damaged patients in the light of new research. Doctors distinguish between patients in a vegetative state, who are completely unresponsive and assumed to lack conscious awareness, and patients in a minimally conscious state, who some degree of responsiveness and are assumed to have some awareness – although it is unclear what their experiences are like and what mental abilities they have. A third category of patients are those in a “locked-in” state. These people are fully aware and awake, but paralysed and unable to communicate except through eye movements. Patients in a persistent vegetative state are highly unlikely to recover from it, and in most countries the law allows, under certain conditions, passive euthanasia for this group, for example by disconnecting a feeding tube that provides life support. But is this policy ethically defensible, and should we also allow euthanasia for patients with the other diagnoses?
Read More »Should minimally conscious patients be allowed to end their lives?

Reducing Religious Conflict conference podcasts now available

  Dear all, Podcasts of the papers presented at the recent ‘Reducing Religious Conflict’ conference held in Oxford 18-19 June 2012 are now available at: http://www.src.ox.ac.uk/2012-2conf.htm Presentations at the conference included: Scott Atran, Anthropology (University of Michigan and National Center for Scientific Research Paris) Religious and Sacred Imperatives in Human Conflict Liz Carmichael (Faculty of Theology,… Read More »Reducing Religious Conflict conference podcasts now available

Artificial organs: “good guys” finish last to technology

It is hardly a keen insight to note that there are a lot of problems in the world today, and that there are also lots of suggested solutions. Often these can be classified under three different labels:

  • “Good guy” solutions which rely on changing individual people’s attitudes and behaviours.
  • Institutional solutions which rely on designing good institutions to address the problem.
  • Technological solutions which count on technology to resolve the problem.

In this view, it is tremendously good news that scientists are getting closer to producing artificial organs. If this goal is achieved, it will be a technological solution to the problem of transplant organ shortages – and technological solutions tend to be better than institutional solutions, which are generally much better than “good guy” solutions. The “good guy” solution to organ donation was to count on people to volunteer to donate when they died. Better institutions (such as an opt-out system where you have to make a special effort not to be a donor, rather than a special effort to be a donor) have resulted in much improved donation rates. But cheap artificial organs would really be the ultimate solution.

Of course I don’t denigrate the use of getting people on your side, nor the motivations of those who sincerely want to change things. But changes to people’s attitudes only tend to stick around as long term solutions if this is translated into actual institutional or technological changes.

Take slavery, for instance. Read More »Artificial organs: “good guys” finish last to technology

Après nous, le déluge: legislating science

The North Carolina senate tried to pass a bill in June banning state agency researchers from using exponential extrapolations in predictions of sea level, requiring them to just using linear extrapolations. After being generally laughed at, the legislators settled for a compromise: state agencies were forbidden to base any laws or plans on exponential extrapolations for the next three to four years. Now a new report shows that sea levels are rising faster near North Carolina than anywhere else on Earth.

Read More »Après nous, le déluge: legislating science