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Moralism and Reproduction: Ten Infringements of Liberty

Moralism and Reproduction: Ten Infringements of Liberty

One of the great success stories of British science in the last 30 years was the introduction of In Vitro Fertilisation by Steptoe and Edwards in 1978. They should have won the Nobel Prize. Around 3% of babies are now born after IVF. Testing of and experimentation on early human embryos offers great prospects for improving not only the health of the next generation but how well their lives go. Today, a wide variety of genes which cause or contribute significantly to disease can be tested. Soon, it will be possible to test for all the genes an embryo has and choose embryos which start life with the least prospects of disease and greatest range of talents, abilities and capacities. And IVF has allowed individuals and couples to have children in new ways, expanding procreative liberty. Experimentation on embryos is yielding important knowledge of human development and contributing to the development of regenerative medicine, or stem cell therapies.

Assisted reproduction, including embryo testing, and research involving the embryo has been controlled by the Human Fertlisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). I recently wrote an evaluation of the performance of the HFEA. I argued that the HFEA was set up on the wrong premise: the embryo was said to have a special moral status. Regulation should be set up on the basis of preventing real, tangible and direct harm. Destroying some embryos but not others is not an example of preventing harm. Secondly, it has operated to enforce public morality, imposing moralism not preventing harm. This was kind of objectionable moralism that was employed by Lord Devlin to justify a ban on homosexuality. Thankfully, HLA famously disposed of that bad justification, at least in the case of homosexuality. Moralism, however, has been alive and well in the case of reproduction.Read More »Moralism and Reproduction: Ten Infringements of Liberty

Ad usum Delphini: should we Bowdlerize children’s books?

The Ture Sventon books are a series of Swedish children’s detective stories written by Åke Holmberg 1948-1973. They are locally well-known and appreciated, but henceforth Ture Sventon i Paris (1953) will likely not be republished. The reason is that the publisher Rabén & Sjögren wanted to remove the word “neger” in the book, and the Swedish Writers’ Union (who owns the copyright to the books) refused this change, since it would change the character of the book. They acknowledged that it was a word with a racist resonance but also a part of cultural history, and hence it could not be removed or replaced with “colored” or “black”. They suggested adding an explanatory introduction instead. The publisher choose not to reissue the book.

In English-speaking countries another recent controversy is about the new edition of Huckleberry Finn that replaces use of the word “nigger” with “slave” and “injun” to “Indian”. Again, literature experts complains that this fundamentally changes the novel (which after all is an anti-racist book) and might have deeply upset the author, yet others think that this will allow it to be read more in schools or public. Are we seeing examples of well-intentioned acts of “cultural vandalism and obscurantism that constricts rather than expands the life of the mind”, or just attempts to reduce impediments for the public to read the works?

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Will the protection of animals be left to corporations?

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There is a pair of interesting stories connected to animal ethics in the media at the moment. One is an exposé of bad practices that persist in many British abattoirs — a mix of cruelty and sloppiness that is against the rules but happens regardless. The other is an exposé on the bad effects of EU fishery laws. In order to stop overfishing, boats are not allowed to return to harbour with more than a certain amount of fish, and must have none at all of certain species.  The problem is that this leads to perverse behaviour among the fishing boats: the amount of fish caught is always a bit random and they want to get as many as possible, so they often catch too many and dump the excess overboard (which are typically dead by that point). We hear that this results in ‘as much as two-thirds of the fish caught being thrown back in the water’ (and I’d love to know what the overall average is).

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Reminder: Everyday philosophy

Quick reminder of a forthcoming talk at the Oxford Playhouse on the 11th February, given by Philosophy Bites author Nigel Warburton: What is philosophy? Who needs it? Writer and podcaster Nigel Warburton, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the Open University, discusses the relevance of philosophy to life today. From questions about the limits of free… Read More »Reminder: Everyday philosophy

All between the ears? Homeopathy and experimental treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome

On Monday,  Belgian endocrinologist Francis Coucke appeared before the ‘Orde van Geneesheren’, a national body responsible for enforcing standards within the medical profession. Dr Coucke risks a two year suspension from the profession because his treatment (gamma globulines and home TPN) of patients with the chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) has been deemed non-scientific: it has not been proven to work in large studies. Last year, he and a neuropsychiatrist colleague were required to pay a 635,000 euro fine for prescribing medicines not licensed for CFS to CFS patients. The fine was imposed even though special authorization for the prescriptions had been granted by the medical advisor to the national healthcare service.
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‘Spend a day with Charlie Teo’

Over the last few days the Australian media has been covering Sydney based Charlie Teo’s auction of ring side seats in his operating theatre. The auction is reported as raising about $1500 for a children’s cancer charity and while this might raise some eyebrows Teo has been clear about his commitment to ensuring that patient care is not compromised in any way.

He is a highly regarded neurosurgeon who has pioneered minimally invasive techniques and has a reputation for taking on very difficult cases. He’s also a prominent and respected public figure: he was a State finalist for Australian of the year in 2010, is the founder of the Cure for Life Foundation and was awarded Member of the Order of Australia. (The Australian Jan 26th 2011) Despite his high profile and assurances, he has attracted criticism from his peers.
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You want to publish? Let’s hear all your dirty secrets

By Charles Foster

Most scientific journals require contributors to declare any conflict of interest.

But what about ethicists? We are much more ambitious and presumptuous in our aims than most scientists. We purport to tell our readers not which drug will reduce their blood cholesterol, or which type of plate is best for their radial fracture, but how best to live: how to make right decisions about things that matter far more than cholesterol; how to be the right sort of people. If we write good papers, amounting to more than newspaper opinion pieces, the papers support their conclusions with supposedly objective reasoning. We try to look scientific. And yet, try as we might, we can’t escape from our own histories and tendencies. If an ethicist has been sexually abused as a boy by a paedophilic priest, or forced to watch US evangelical TV, he’ll never be able to think that religion is anything but evil or ridiculous, and his articles will argue, with apparent but wholly fake objectivity, towards that conclusion. If the Jesuits got him before the age of 7, and etched the catechism into his subconscious rather than buggering him, the man they made out of the boy will be theirs for ever, in the Journal of Medical Ethics just as devoutly as in the confessional. And yet there’ll be not a whisper of a warning next to their papers. Those influences are likely to be far more determinative of the views expressed than any financial conflict of interest in a drug trial ever was. Everything about an ethicist’s life raises a potential conflict of interest.Read More »You want to publish? Let’s hear all your dirty secrets

The Ethics of Gamification: Little Rewards for Everything

[note: the original version of this post contained some interactive code, which has been removed from the archives]

Notice that the first word of this post is red. Point your mouse cursor at the words as you read them, and each subsequent word will turn red as you read. You are now being graded on how quickly you read these words. And there’s a little visual reward in store for anyone who reads the first paragraph quickly. Now look to the right of this post, where it says ‘Top Posts’. One of the reasons we have that is to help readers to find the most popular posts on the blog. But another reason we have it is so that our contributors will be motivated to write more interesting and thought-provoking commentaries for the site. It is a high score table, and the winner is the philosopher with the most interesting post.

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Forgiveness: respect, autonomy and sovereignty

by Shlomit Harrosh

Five years ago Joanne Nodding was violently raped by a man she knew. As part of a restorative justice programme, she has recently met with the man at her own request and with his consent. Nodding told him of her experiences during the attack and of its effects on her family. The man offered what Nodding felt was a genuine apology. She chose to forgive him.

“I ended the meeting by telling him that I’d forgiven him and that I wanted him to forgive himself, if he hadn’t,” said Nodding, “because I wanted him to go on to have a successful life. Hatred eats you up, and you can’t change what’s happened.”

The subject of forgiveness has recently been addressed in an excellent piece by Charles L. Griswold. Griswold identifies the restoration of mutual respect as one of the goals of forgiveness. I want to further explore this idea, focusing on the way forgiveness can reorient a relationship compromised by grievous wrongdoing, like rape.

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Solving the Puzzle of the Moral Status of the Embryo and Fetus

In March 2006, 21 yo Cleveland man Christopher Challancin was driving home from a party with his 17 yo girlfriend, Jessica Karos. She was 4 months pregnant. They began to argue about her ability to care for their child. Challancin, who had been drinking, became angry. He began to weave high speed through traffic and crashed. Karos was left paralysed.  The baby died. Challancin was unhurt. Because he killed the baby, he was charged with homicide and sentenced to five years.

In 2005, Alison Miller and Todd Parrish sued their fertility clinic in Chicago. They had been having IVF treatment back in 2002 and stored 9 embryos. One of these was “mistakenly” discarded. The clinic apologised and offered the couple a free cycle of IVF. They sued for the “wrongful death” of their embryo.

Every year, about 100 000 fetuses are aborted. No one is charged over these deaths. Thousands of embryos are also destroyed. The law on IVF in England and Australia requires their destruction after a period of time, 5 to 10 years.

How can killing a fetus at once be homicide and yet no crime at all? How can the destruction of embryos be required by law and widely practised but also, in some places, the crime of wrongful death? How can one act – killing early human life – be both right and wrong? This is the puzzle of social practice involving early human life.

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