Ilina Singh and colleagues argue that the use of drugs such as Ritalin among young people is becoming so common that family doctors should be able to prescribe them as study aids to school pupils aged under 18.(1) While the Guardian article…

Politics is the art of compromise, but rarely has compromise been so necessary a political virtue in Britain as it is today. Very soon we’ll know who’s done a deal with whom. The Liberal Democrats are the king-makers: ultimately they’ll dec…

by Dominic Wilkinson and Julian Savulescu There are 8000 patients on transplant waiting lists in the UK. Every year 400 patients die while waiting for an organ to come available. We are all far more likely to be in need of an organ transpla…

There is a shrill, unpleasant new sound in the UK church. It is the sound of conservative Christians saying that they are persecuted. It’s the voice of a minority. And as Rowan Williams trenchantly observed: ‘The Church of England is like a…

Tomorrow will see the closest election in the UK for many years and there is considerable debate about whether tactical voting is acceptable (see here, here, here). This is a particularly big issue this election as the Liberal Democrats (th…

Is it wrong for documentary film makers to film intimate moments in the lives of non-human animals? David Attenborough has used fibroptic cameras to obtain views of the inside of a platypus’ nest, providing never-before-seen images of the b…

Dominic is right thataddicts are competent to decide on sponsored sterilisation. I have argued that addicts can be autonomous and can consent to research trials involving drugs of addiction (Foddy, B., Savulescu, J.. (2006). ‘Addiction and …

The Nuffield Council on Bioethics has recently published a consultation paper entitled Give and Take? Human Bodies in Medicine and Research: https://consultation.nuffieldbioethics.org/fileLibrary/pdf/Human_bodies_in_medicine_and_research_co…

Two abortion bills passed by the Oklahoma legislature made the headlines recently. The first of these bills requires a doctor to force a patient seeking for an abortion to first undergo an ultrasound and listen to a detailed description of …

A controversial US-based charity that pays drug addicts to undergo sterilisation or long-term contraception has recently opened for business in the UK. Project Prevention pays drug users $300 if they provide a medical certificate of drug de…