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…

A relationship counsellor, Gary McFarlane, 48, in Bristol was sacked in 2008 for refusing to provide sex therapy to a gay couple. He took action against his former employer, Relate Avon, arguing that it had failed to accommodate his C…

    In mid-April the airports of most major cities in Europe were closed for the better part of a week as a response to the presence of the volcanic ash cloud that spread over Europe as a consequence of the eruption of the Eyjaf…

Stephen Hawking made some headlines when he recently argued that although it’s highly probable that there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, it would be a grave mistake to try to actively try to establish contact with other inte…

By: Julian Savulescu Stephen Hawking, the Cambridge physicist, has recently argued, in a Discovery channel documentary, that alien life forms probably exist somewhere in the Universe, but we should avoid contact with them. (http://news.bbc.…

Kathleen Taylor has got an interesting recent piece in the Guardian about the importance of the emotion of disgust for our moral lives. “If you had a dog”, she asks, “and it died a natural death, how would you feel about roasting and eating…

The prospect of a hung parliament following the upcoming election has raised several interesting ethical issues. One such issue which has been discussed is what are the responsibilities of the party which holds the balance of power? Should …

A ruling by the Information Commissioner has ordered scientists at Queen’s University in Belfast to hand over copies of 40 years of research data on tree rings after a long battle with a climate sceptic. (PDF of the ruling) This is an impor…

25 May, 17:30, Lecture Theatre, Faculty of Philosophy, 10 Merton Street, Oxford 3rd Leverhulme Lecture "Are Addicts Responsible? Perspectives from Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience and Law" Professor Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (K…