It has often struck me how the most common ethical issues surround us like smog, yet we never see them. And how science and some fairly simple and uncontroversial values could go a long way to solving them. How should we eat? What kinds of …

The title of Robin Dunbar’s recently published book asks a good question: How many friends does one person need? (http://www.faber.co.uk/work/how-many-friends-does-one-person-need/9780571253425/) Dunbar suggests that a human being can’t hav…

It is widely accepted that it is immoral to cause gratuitous harm to animals, and indeed there are many charities that have been set up around the world, such as the RSPCA (see: http://www.rspca.org.uk/home) to prevent harm to animals and t…

As The Times recently reports:   “British couples are to be offered a groundbreaking genetic test that would virtually eliminate their chances of having a baby with one of more than 100 inherited diseases. The simple saliva test, whic…

How should universities tackle the use of cognitive enhancement drugs by students? Professor Barbara Sahakian raised the issue in a recent talk. While hard numbers are hard to come by, it is likely that at least a few percent of university …

Back in November, I blogged about the case of Rom Houben, a man who after more than two decades in what was apparently a persistent vegetative state was found to be conscious. Following the newspaper reports of the time – as I noted at the …

We now consider a couple of testimonial virtues. Sincerity of testimony There has been reason to be worried about the sincerity of public testimony by climate scientists for twenty years, ever since Professor Schneider of Stanford (now a se…

By: Francesca Minerva Reading this news  about a couple that donated two embryos to another sterile couple, I started to ask myself if embryo donation is really the most moral way to use embryos. Some people, indeed,  suggest th…

In the Republic of Paternia there has, of late, been a vigorous debate on the question of whether the law should change to permit marital separation in some circumstances. Some desperate Paternian couples have been illegally travelling abro…

What’s in a name? Quite a lot, considering the huge commotion over proposed revisions to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Almost a thousand pages long, this psychiatric bible is used all over the world to cla…