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X Factor Abortion: Is it Wrong?

X Factor Abortion: Is it Wrong?

by Julian Savulescu

Paije Richardson's dreams of a new life were crushed tonight as the public voted him from the X Factor final rounds. On Dec 9, the fate of another young hopeful will be decided by the people’s choice. But this time it will be a life and death choice. A couple have allegedly given the life of their baby over to popular vote; they are considering having an abortion and have created a public poll which will decide whether they have an abortion or not (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1330860/Should-abortion–decide-U-S-couple-set-website-unborn-child.html) 

The abortion vote has been described as “spine-chilling.” The baby is 17 weeks gestation and a healthy boy called “Wiggles.” One pro-lifer was outraged:

'This is shocking.The first thing that came to my mind when I heard of this was the Roman Colosseum, when the mob picked who lived and who died. They are talking about a baby that is 17 weeks old, it has a beating heart, its brain is working and nerve endings throughout its body' 

Deciding human life by vote is shocking, but is it wrong?

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Unintentional contraception

by Anders Sandberg

The pope approves of the use of condoms to fight AIDS: according to an upcoming book he says it is acceptable when the intention is to reduce the risk of infection. While he still views abstinence as the proper way of fighting the disease, "In certain cases, where the intention is to reduce the risk of infection, it can nevertheless be a first step on the way to another, more humane sexuality." Now, how does this fit with the doctrine of double effect? According to this doctrine, it is sometimes permissible when acting towards a good result to bring about a foreseen side effect that on its own would be impermissible. Is contraception hence a permissible side effect of trying to reduce infection risk?

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Reframing Sacred Values and Making Political Compromises

Steve Clarke 

Scott Atran’s Talking to The Enemy (HarperCollins: New York, 2010) has recently been published. This is a big, sprawling and very readable book which has much that is important to say about religious behaviour and the role of religion in inspiring, and also in preventing, terrorism and conflict in general. I recommend it to anyone who wants to know more about religious conflict ‘on the ground’. One of the many intriguing issues that is discussed in the book is the issue of compromising over sacred values. When a religious group asserts that a particular city, or geographical feature which they control is sacred or holy, they are typically also asserting that they are not prepared to give up control of that site, regardless of the costs to them. And if they do not control it then they are prepared to do whatever is necessary to regain control of it, regardless of costs. The same can be said for possession of sacred artifacts and the right to practice sacred rituals.

 

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Against Open Mindedness

Lots of people believe in psychic powers, but there has never been any convincing evidence for their existence.  Though there are many anecdotes attesting to their existence (below I will say something about why we ought not to be impressed by these stories), there has never been any genuine evidence in their favour. That is, until now. The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the most influential journal in social psychology, is about to publish a study that presents evidence for the existence of psychic phenomena.

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Stem Cell Trial for Stroke: Is It Cannabilizing Human Beings?

By Julian Savulescu

Reneuron has today announced the first transfer of stem cells in the UK to treat stroke. This follows quickly from Geron’s recent trial in spinal cord injury.

This is a historic moment which may be viewed in the same way as the first attempts to use antibiotics. Stem cells offer the door to entirely new form of medical treatment called regenerative medicine. When cells (the building blocks) or tissues of the body are damaged, they are generally not replaced. The dead tissue is replaced by scar that holds the rest of the organ together. So when a person has a stroke (or heart attack) a blood vessel to an area of brain is typically blocked and that area of the brain dies, being replaced by a scar that is functionless. Stem cell therapy offers the hope of replacing that dead or damaged tissue and cells with functioning new cells, in this case nerve cells. This trial is the very first stage to see if the transfer can be done safely.

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Lethal Ethics: When Philosophical Distinctions Kill

by Julian Savulescu

Teresa Lewis died on the 24th of September after being a lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Centre in Virginia. The 41-year-old was convicted of plotting to kill her husband, Julian Lewis, and her stepson, Charles Lewis. She persuaded two men to carry out the murders in return for sex and money. The two men received life sentences. The execution went ahead in spite of protests from lawyers, celebrities and others who argued that she should have been given clemency because of her low IQ. Under US law, anyone with an IQ of 70 avoids the death penalty. Lewis was judged to have an IQ of 72.

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Focussing on diseases

Further to Julian’s article about Giving What We Can, an important part of helping people as much as possible is to find out which charities do the most good for a certain amount of money. This has been in the news recently with this article. It claims that we are missing out on doing a lot of good by focussing exclusively on certain high-profile diseases, while other diseases impose a greater burden and are much cheaper to treat. This raises the question of why some diseases get much more attention and support than others.

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Palmistry for the genome: genetic fundamentalism fights on

by Charles Foster
A recent paper in Social, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience has the self-explanatory title Investigating the genetic basis of altruism: the role of the COMT Val158Met polymorphism. 1. The German authors aren’t as cautious in their claims as they should have been. They should have noted, nervously, the reception given to the infamous ‘God gene’ hypothesis,2 and entitled the paper something along the lines of ‘Some not very statistically significant correlations (from which we can’t begin to infer a causative relationship) between the COMT Val 158 Met polymorphism and some behaviour that might be markers of, amongst other things, being nice, whatever that means, ignoring other non-correlations with other more plausible markers of being nice.’

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Living in Plato’s Cave

Roger Crisp writes …

Plato’s allegory of the Cave (Republic 514a-517a) is perhaps the most famous image in the history of philosophy. Socrates describes a group of people living underground, bound so that they can see only in front of them. Behind them burns a fire, and in front of the fire there is a path with a barrier. Other people carry objects that project above the barrier, casting shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. Naturally, the prisoners believe the truth to be nothing other than the shadows. ‘Strange prisoners’, says Socrates’s companion, Glaucon. ‘They’re like us’, Socrates answers.

This passage resonated with me during the recent mid-term elections here in the US. Liberal commentators were already expecting the worst after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in January, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that the government cannot limit corporate funding of independent political broadcasts. That ruling was described by President Obama as ‘a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans’. During the most recent elections, for example, Goldman Sachs (which you may remember received $10 billion in George Bush’s ‘Troubled Asset Relief Program’) gave the Republican party $1.2 million.

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Smoking and yellow teeth

With at least one airline announcing this week that it was stepping up screening on Yemeni passengers, I want to return to a topic I’ve touched on before: profiling.

What interests me is ‘rational profiling’. If a security guard believes, for no good reason, that members of racial/ethnic/national group R are more likely than average to pose a danger to the public, and this assumption is false, then we have a straightforward example of prejudice. But suppose there is indeed a greater risk from members of R? It then seems rational to focus more attention on R-members.

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