Katherine Viner of the Guardian has just chosen The Smiths’  Meat is Murder as her favourite album. The album came out in 1985, in the middle of a decade in which I myself was an enthusiastic advocate of vegetarianism. I began by being sway…

In the news this week, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics suggests that the NHS should test the idea of paying for the funerals of organ donors who have previously signed the organ donor register, in order to try to encourage more of the pub…

by Roman Gaehwiler The crusade against artificial performance enhancement in sports is varicoloured and almost exhaustively debated. Nevertheless, there are still several approaches from the athlete’s perspective which are worth to consider…

At the beginning of this month, the pheasant shooting season began. Pheasant shooting is little discussed – it’s usually seen just as a harmless country pass time. However, it’s far from clear that it really is as unobjectionable as this ne…

“Morality is just social convention, so torture isn’t wrong.” Hearing that thought was a sobering recent experience, especially when you’re trying to get people to care and worry about existential risks. But that’s just a vivid and extreme …

Today, if a gay couple wants to have a child, they have two main options: Either (1) they adopt a child or (2) they get an egg from a donor, have it fertilized in a laboratory, and have a surrogate mother carry and give birth to their child…

On Friday, Dr. Ralph Steinman died. On Monday, he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. This posed a problem for the Nobel committee. Per the award foundation’s bylaws, prizes may not be awarded posthumously. The committee met in emergency sess…

Today, my colleague Michael Mansfield QC appears in a mock trial in the Supreme Court that considers the crime of ‘ecocide’. The project is the brainchild of lawyer Polly Higgins. Ecocide is defined as: ‘The extensive dama…

By Charles Foster Three years ago Ana Mejia bore a son, Bryan Santana. To her surprise he had no arms and only one leg. I should have been warned about this, she recently told a Florida court. It was negligent not to warn me. Had I been war…