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Is Drug Addiction a Lifestyle Choice?

Is Drug Addiction a Lifestyle Choice?

According to BBC News this week, the brains of some people “may be wired for addiction.” A study has come out in the journal Science that presents evidence of abnormal brain structures that were found in drug addicts and their non-addicted siblings. The lead researcher, Dr Karen Ersche, was quoted by the BBC as saying that the study “shows that drug addiction is not a choice of lifestyle, it is a disorder of the brain and we need to recognize this.”

Has the Ersche et al study in fact shown that drug addiction is not a lifestyle choice? Has it proven that drug addicts should be treated as innocent patients with medical problems rather than being subject to moral censure for their failure to exert self-control, and for their irresponsible and often deeply anti-social behaviour? No! In fact, it is likely that no possible neuroscientific evidence could show such a thing.

Health warning: You may find brain scan images like these confusing!

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Oxford, Warsaw and Mock Tudor

Try this thought experiment.  Imagine three cities. A medieval city (something like Oxford). A city heavily bombed in World War II and completely rebuilt, with original materials etc. (e.g. the centre of Warsaw). A city constructed in 2012 to look just like the medieval city (e.g. .Poundbury the ‘traditional’ village Prince Charles has created in… Read More »Oxford, Warsaw and Mock Tudor

Contador’s Ban: The Death of Cycling?

Over 18 months after the race, Contador has been stripped of his 2010 Tour de France title, and banned for 2 years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, making Andy Schleck the winner of the 2010 race.

The ban is punishment for the traces of clenbuterol, an anabolic steroid were found in his blood. Initially  cleared by the Royal Spanish Cycling Federation back in February 2011, Contador blamed the traces on contaminated meat brought in by a friend- indeed the traces were small- 40 times lower than the minimum rate WADA insists labs must be able to register to gain accredited status. However, it is possible that Contador was blood doping using blood taken during a training phase that had been insufficiently washed, leaving traces of steroids behind. Plasticizers were also found in his blood and can be a sign of IV usage, though the doctor who invented the test believes these tests may not yet be legally binding. Floyd Landis was also excluded with a similar pattern of steroid detected during the final stages of the race, probably as a result of contaminated blood doping.

Eddy Merckx said to Eurosport: “Sad for him and cycling. I think someone wants the death of cycling. We’re going too far”

Read More »Contador’s Ban: The Death of Cycling?

‘No right not to be offended’?: Part Two

Thanks to everyone who commented on my earlier post, the one in which I cast doubt on the popular claim that ‘nobody has a right not to be offended’. Here – at last – are my responses to the various comments people have made. Should an apology be needed, could I apologise for having taken so long to reply.  Perhaps I should also apologise for the length of this reply, but, given the number of interesting responses to my earlier post, I can’t really see how I could have made it any shorter.

 

I think the best way to organise this response is to set out my original argument step by step, and then deal with the objections which people have raised against each step in turn.  Here, then, is my initial argument in brief summary.

 

Step One: It is easy enough to think of cases in which (i) one person, P, offends another, Q and which are also (ii) examples of behaviour which any person of normal moral sensibility must recognise as morally wrong. (In my initial post, I illustrated the point with the example of someone who hurls verbal abuse at randomly selected passers-by.)

 

Therefore, ….Read More »‘No right not to be offended’?: Part Two

Nothing to lose? Killing is disabling

In a provocative article forthcoming in the Journal of Medical Ethics (one of a new series of feature articles in the journal) philosophers Walter Sinnott Armstrong and Franklin Miller ask ‘what makes killing wrong?’ Their simple and intuitively appealing answer is that killing is wrong because it strips an individual of all of their abilities – acting, moving, communicating, thinking and feeling.

So what, you might ask? If this is right, say Sinnott-Armstrong and Miller, it means that it would be just as bad to commit an act that caused someone to be in a permanent vegetative state, as it would to kill them.Read More »Nothing to lose? Killing is disabling

Practical Ethics Given Moral Uncertainty

Practical ethics aims to offer advice to decision-makers embedded in the real world.  In order to make the advice practical, it typically takes empirical uncertainty into account.  For example, we don’t currently know exactly to what extent the earth’s temperature will rise, if we are to continue to emit CO2 at the rate we have… Read More »Practical Ethics Given Moral Uncertainty

Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Fundamental enhancement for humanity?

The idea of a simple, cheap and widely available device that could boost brain function sounds too good to be true.

Yet promising results in the lab with emerging ‘brain stimulation’ techniques, though still very preliminary, have prompted Oxford neuroscientists to team up with leading ethicists at the University to consider the issues the new technology could raise.

Recent research in Oxford and elsewhere has shown that one type of brain stimulation in particular, called transcranial direct current stimulation or TDCS, can be used to improve language and maths abilities, memory, problem solving, attention, even movement.

Critically, this is not just helping to restore function in those with impaired abilities. TDCS can be used to enhance healthy people’s mental capacities. Indeed, most of the research so far has been carried out in healthy adults.

More details from Oxford Press Release

My Comment:

This research cuts to core of humanity: the capacity to learn. The capacity to learn varies across people, across ages and with illness. Enhancing the capacity to learn of children and adults, with impairments and without. The ability to learn is a basic human good. This kind of technology enables people to get more out of the work they put into learning something.
 
This is a first step down the path of maximizing human potential. It is a very exciting development. We need to control the release of the genie. Although this looks like a simple external device, it acts by affecting the brain. That could have very good effects, but unpredictable side effects. We should aim to do better than we have with the development of pharmaceuticals. We should learn from our mistakes over the last forty years.
 
Of course, as with any powerful technology, not only is there the possibility of great benefit, there is potential for misuse and abuse. This has been used in other experiments to improve ability to lie.

Read More »Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation: Fundamental enhancement for humanity?

Choosing one’s own (sexual) identity: Shifting the terms of the ‘gay rights’ debate

Choosing one’s own (sexual) identity: Shifting the terms of the ‘gay rights’ debate

By Brian Earp (Follow Brian on Twitter by clicking here.)

UPDATE: See HuffPost Live debate on this topic here.

Can you be gay by choice? Consider the following, from the Huffington Post:

Former “Sex and the City” star Cynthia Nixon says she is gay by “choice” – a statement that has riled many gay rights activitists who insist that people don’t choose their sexual orientation.

Read More »Choosing one’s own (sexual) identity: Shifting the terms of the ‘gay rights’ debate

Skipping intuitively over the is-ought gap

By Charles Foster

I spent a lot of the weekend at a very good conference entitled Moral Evil in Practical Ethics.
There was, I think, a complete or almost complete consensus about many things. Here are two: (1) Evil exists, and is of a different quality from merely sub-optimal moral behaviour. (2) To recognise evil implied a duty to do something to combat it. Everyone in the room seemed to see (2) as a corollary of (1).
This second proposition is a classic ‘ought’ claim. But how did we get there? The audience included many distinguished philosophers. Were we all plunging naively but disastrously into the is-ought gap? Was the conclusion sloppily reached, and untenable?Read More »Skipping intuitively over the is-ought gap

10-year-old gets a tattoo, mother gets arrested

By Brian Earp

Follow Brian on Twitter by clicking here.

See Brian’s most recent prior post on this blog here.

See a list of all of Brian’s previous posts here.

 

Inking arms, piercing ears, and removing foreskins: The inconsistency of parental consent laws in the State of Georgia 

Gaquan Napier watched his older brother die in Acworth, Georgia after being hit by a speeding car. He was with him in those numbing final moments. And now Gaquan wants to keep his brother close to his own heart as he picks up the pieces and moves through life: in the form of a tattoo on his upper arm. Malik (that’s his brother’s name) plus the numbers from Malik’s old basketball jersey. Rest in peace. A memorial to his sibling and best friend, whose life was cut tragically short.

Gaquan is ten years old. So he asked his mother, Chuntera Napier, about the tattoo. She was moved by the request, by the sincerity and maturity of her son’s motivations. She assented. She took Gaquan to have the remembrance he wanted etched into his arm in ink.

Now stop the presses. Chuntera was arrested last week under child cruelty laws and for being party to a crime. Someone at Gaquan’s school had seen his tattoo and tattled to the authorities. But what was the offense?

Read More »10-year-old gets a tattoo, mother gets arrested