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When you prick me do I not cry?

When you prick me do I not cry?

A fascinating study in the Lancet this week has suggested that a very commonly used and simple analgesic in newborn infants may not actually be preventing them from experiencing pain. The study’s authors suggest that this medicine should no longer be used routinely in newborn infants. A headline in the Guardian reads “Newborn babies should not be given sugar as pain relief”. But there are scientific, philosophical and ethical reasons why this conclusion, though possibly correct, is premature.

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Enhancement – Keep the Game, Change the Basis

Paradoxically, elite sports is largely about seeking for inequality, but simultaneously trying to level the playing field in order to equalize the opponents. So, how is it possible to cultivate inequality through equality? Anti-doping activists argue that enhancing substances falsify the individual and naturally given capability to perform in a competition. As a result, there might be a lack of equal opportunities. In contrast, enhancement advocates underline that doping might be able to level the playing field by removing the effects of genetic inequality, and therefore provides equality.[1] In fact, both arguments imply the noble aspiration of equality. So then, equality must be the ultimate aim.

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Broken hearts and obsession, why giving up on your ex mate is so hard as overcoming drug addiction

A study recently
published on the Journal of Neurophysiology investigated
a group of 15 people recently abandoned by their partners to understand the
process of unreciprocated love and romantic rejection. The researchers “used
functional magnetic resonance imaging to study 10 women and 5 men who had
recently been rejected by a partner but reported they were still intensely
"in love." Participants alternately viewed a photograph of their
rejecting beloved and a photograph of a familiar, individual, interspersed with
a distraction-attention task. Their responses while looking at their rejecter
included love, despair, good, and bad memories, and wondering why this
happened”.

Read More »Broken hearts and obsession, why giving up on your ex mate is so hard as overcoming drug addiction

Should doctors come clean? Religion makes a difference to end-of-life decisions

In a paper released today in the Journal of Medical Ethics, a large survey of UK doctors found that doctors’ religion influenced their views and practice of end-of-life care. Why does this matter? A number of headlines highlighted that atheist or agnostic doctors were more likely to report having participated in “ethically contentious end-of life actions”: ie taking part in terminal sedation or in actions that they expected or partly intended would hasten the patient’s death. But other headlines emphasised the obvious flip-side: doctors who identified themselves as ‘very religious’ or ‘extremely religious’ were about 35% less likely than non-religious doctors to report having taken this sort of step.

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Ethics and Economics

The failing of economics have been widely discussed in the last few years, and now Professors Kim and Yoon have suggested in the Financial Times that ‘an eminent philosopher…should be appointed to take charge of economics’ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/32c10a50-a8c3-11df-86dd-00144feabdc0.html. Don’t all rush at once. I doubt they really mean it. And even if they do, we mustn’t fall for our own propaganda: philosophers don’t exactly have a good track record on practical matters.

 

The grounds for their suggestion is that economics is ‘not a science that only describes, measures, explains and predicts human interests, values and policies – it also evaluates, promotes, endorses or rejects them’ and for these kinds of reasons ‘economics is a dimension of ethics’ and ethics should be ‘organically incorporated into economic discourse’. This all sounds very exciting but I fear it is misleading.

 

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Cosmetic Surgery – What is the Matter with Dr Salesman?

Written by Roman Gaehwiler

Reconstructive plastic surgery to correct ravages of disease and injuries as well as gross physical abnormalities constitutes a core medical practice. Reconstructive procedures, however, lie along a continuum, without any clear boundary between therapeutic reconstructive surgery for diagnosable problem and purely cosmetic surgery.[1]

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The NHS Should Make and Sell its own Homeopathic Remedies and Homeopaths Should be Paid the Minimum Wage

In March this year I blogged on the topic of NHS funding for homeopathic remedies. Even though I agreed with the critics of homeopathy, that there is no credible evidence for the efficacy of homeopathic remedies and that it is irrational to use these in preference to medical treatments that have actually been proven to work, I argued that the NHS should continue to subsidise the cost of homeopathic remedies. My basic line of argument was anti-paternalist. People should have the choice to be irrational if they want. What is important is that people are provided with all information relevant to their decision making. However, if they go ahead and choose to behave irrationally, then, provided that they are not harming others, their actions should not be interfered with. It is not the State’s role to prevent people from making such choices.

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Numeracy vs feel-good

Most people would agree that increasing energy efficiency is a sensible thing to do, both as a cost-saving measure, to conserve limited fossil fuels and to lower climate impacts. But being willing to save energy does not mean one is efficient in doing so: a new study shows that people are bad at estimating how large energy savings are (or, as The Register put it more forcefully, "People have NO BLOODY IDEA about saving energy"). People tended to think that curtailment (e.g. turning off lights, driving less) was more effective than efficiency improvements (e.g. installing better light bulbs or appliances). They tended to overestimate the benefits of small savings like removing cellphone chargers and underestimate the benefits of large savings such as reducing heating. The study authors somewhat predictably concluded that well-designed efforts to improve public understanding of energy savings would be useful. But would they?

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Is it criminal not to breastfeed?

by Rebecca Roache

The Brazilian
model Gisele Bundchen recently—and controversially—claimed that mothers should
be required by law to breastfeed their babies for the first six months of their
lives. 
A few days later, she partially retracted the claim on her blog, insisting that her talk of a breastfeeding law should
not be taken literally.  It was simply a way of expressing her belief in the
importance of doing the best for her child. 
After all, legally enforcing breastfeeding would be madness, right?

Not
according to the Indonesian government. 
It recently passed a law giving babies the right to six months of
exclusive breastfeeding,
except in cases where medical problems prevent their mothers from breastfeeding.  Mothers who do not comply face a year in
prison or a fine of 100,000,000 Rupiahs (around £7,100), and those who prevent
mothers from fulfilling their breastfeeding obligations also face punishments.  Scientists and health professionals generally
agree that breastfeeding is healthier for babies than the alternatives (see,
for example, here),
that not enough mothers do it (see here),
and governments around the world invest huge sums trying to get mothers to
breastfeed.  But is criminalising non-breastfeeding mothers a good idea?

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