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Are Electoral Pacts Undemocratic?
By Ben Davies In the early hours of Friday morning last week, the long-Conservative UK constituency of North Shropshire caused some political upset (and no little political joy) by electing a Liberal Democrat, Helen Morgan. It is hard to exaggerate quite how significant a swing this was: the previous Conservative MP, Owen Paterson, whose resignation…
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Shaming unvaccinated people has to stop. We’ve turned into an angry mob and it’s getting ugly
Written by Alberto Giubilini and Julian Savulescu. Cross-Posted from The Conversation Shutterstock Julian Savulescu, University of Oxford and Alberto Giubilini, University of Oxford Unvaccinated mother, 27, dies with coronavirus as her father calls for fines for people who refuse jab. This is the kind of headline you may have seen over the past year, an…
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Putting your Philosophical House in Order
by Roger Crisp For some, the end-of-year holiday offers a little time for relaxation, and perhaps also some general reflection independent of the particular issues one has been thinking about over the year. I’d like to recommend starting with the concepts you use, both to frame ethical questions, and to answer them.
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Cross Post: Why the UK Shouldn’t Introduce Mandatory COVID Vaccination
Written by Julian Savulescu, Dominic Wilkinson, and Jonathan Pugh As coronavirus infections surge across Europe, and with the threat of the omicron variant looming, countries are imposing increasingly stringent pandemic controls. In Austria, citizens will be subject to a vaccine mandate in February. In Greece, meanwhile, a vaccine mandate will apply to those 60 and…
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Omicron Travel Restrictions Are Not Ethically Justified
Written by: Alberto Giubilini, Julian Savulescu *A version of this blogpost appears as an article in the Spectator* Governments are at it again. It has become an involuntary reflex. A few days after South Africa sequenced and identified the new Omicron variant, England placed some South African countries back in the ‘red list’. Quarantine has…
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Cross Post: Omicron: Better To Be Safe (And Quick) Than Sorry
Written by: Dominic Wilkinson, and Jonathan Pugh On discovering the omicron variant, many countries moved quickly to impose travel restrictions and other public health measures, such as compulsory mask wearing. But, given the lack of data, is this the best course of action? These measures have tangible costs, and some have argued that they are an over-reaction.…
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Writing Is Not That Easy: Grammarly As Affordance.
Written by Neil Levy I recently received an email from someone about a grant application in which I’m involved. In this email, the person coordinating the grant asked recipients to suggest revisions to the text, but noted that as it stood it had a score of 100% on Grammarly. He asked that any changes be…
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Event Summary: Vaccine Policies and Challenge Trials: The Ethics of Relative Risk in Public Health
St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Presented by Dr Sarah Chan, 18 November 2021 In this St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Dr Sarah Chan explores three key areas of risk in ‘challenge trials’ – the deliberate infection of human participants to infectious agents as a tool for vaccine development and improving our knowledge of disease biology. …