Eve Richardson, chief executive of the National Council for Palliative Care and the Dying Matters coalition, argues that the government needs radically to improve end-of-life care in the UK, and makes several excellent suggestions about how…

The lord of the manor is not a typical peasant, and doesn’t have the same responsibilities. Nowadays, it is quite fashionable to see humans as part of the natural world, part of a cycle of life, dependent on a nature that could eradic…

In the US, Randall Terry is challenging Obama for Democratic leadership. Strangely, his reason for doing so is in order to be able to show graphic anti-abortion adverts  featuring aborted foetuses, holocaust victims, and a black person bein…

The title of this post is an edited version of a headline that appeared this week at ABC news. The story behind it is that a Californian politician named Mary was caught shoplifting, and her lawyer says that her impaired judgment may have b…

A friend of mine recently returned from a visit to a beautiful and imposing villa, now the British ambassador’s residence in Rome. During World War II it housed the German embassy, and prisoners were tortured in the cellars. The swimming po…

It was probably hard for the US National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB) to avoid getting plenty of coal in its Christmas stockings this year, sent from various parties who felt NSABB were either stifling academic freedom or …

‘There is no right not to be offended!’: It’s a popular  slogan.  At least, it must be if Google is anything to go by. I typed the phrase ‘no right not to be offended’ into ‘advanced search’ and came up with ‘about’ 1,780,000 sites.  The sl…

Christmas is about giving.  But giving how much?  £50 might seem like a lot for a Christmas present.  But how about giving 50% of your annual wage? There are now-familiar arguments that we in rich countries ought to give a lot more to the d…

The airwaves buzzed last week on BBC radio about biological predispositions towards violence, brain-based lie detection systems, tumors associated with pedophilia, and psychopaths.  The BBC looked to the Neuroethics Centre’s own Walter Sino…