A fatal irony: Why the “circumcision solution” to the AIDS epidemic in Africa may increase transmission of HIV
By Brian D. Earp * Note: this article has been re-posted at various other sites, sometimes with minor edits. This is the original and should be referred to in case of any discrepancies. A fatal irony: Why the “circumcision solution”…
Read MoreWellcome Lecture in Neuroethics: Wayne Hall on the brain disease model of addiction
Wellcome Lecture in Neuroethics: The brain disease model of addiction: Assessing its validity, utility and implications for public policy towards the treatment and prevention of addiction Wayne Hall, NHMRC Australia Fellow, University of Qu…
Read MoreEuropean versus US attitudes to geoengineering
Casual observation suggests that among scientists researching geoengineering technologies there is a marked difference in attitude between Americans and continental Europeans. The United Sates is the home of the idea of the technofix, so Am…
Read MoreCrisis in the Catholic Church
Professor Tony Coady is Professorial Fellow in Applied Philosophy and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at Melbourne University. He is currently visiting the University of Oxford as Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Appli…
Read MoreKey moments of supreme importance
If you want to effectively change the world, it helps to know which levers to push, and which ones can be moved most effectively. For instance reducing HIV suffering through the treatement of Kaposi’s sarcoma is about a thousand times less …
Read MoreShould Peer Review be Rejected?
In most academic disciplines academics devote considerable energies to trying to publish in prestigious journals. These journals are, almost invariably, peer reviewed journals. When an article is submitted their editors send this out to exp…
Read MoreBad seed is a robbery of the worst kind: prolific sperm donation and screening
New York Times writes about “In Choosing a Sperm Donor, a Roll of the Genetic Dice”: recipients of sperm donation have found out the hard way that there is a risk of genetic disease affecting their children. In at least one case…
Read MoreA Girls’ Night Out
A couple of weeks ago my wife went out on what she described as ‘a girls’ night out’. Naturally, I was excluded (though I have a male friend who claims – bafflingly – that he’s been invited to several such gatherings).
Read More‘Marriage is ONLY between a Man and a Woman’
A series of events have brought the issue of gay marriage to the fore. Nudged by the Vice President, Barak Obama came out in support. North Carolina, by contrast, voted to prohibit it. Closer to home, Mayor Boris Johnson recently put his fo…
Read MoreThe Kansas Anti-Abortion Bill: An Affront to Autonomy
On Monday, the state of Kansas in the USA passed an anti-abortion bill which includes several morally controversial measures (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/04/kansas-abortion-bill_n_1478706.html). One measure receiving a great deal …
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