A recent editorial in the British Medical Journal (Grubin D,
Beech A, BMJ 2010; 340:c74) discusses the efficacy and ethics of chemical
castration for sex offenders.
Its efficacy is not in doubt. Recidivism rates of less than
5% over long periods are consistently reported. The expected rate, absent ‘treatment’,
is 50% or more.
But is it treatment? And if it is not, should doctors
participate in it?
Julian mentioned in passing the other day that he thought it would not obviously be immoral, and perhaps even morally desirable, to eliminate all shark species from the earth. The reasons he gave related to their limited ecological role, the fact that sharks only serve to further deplete the already under-populated reserves of bony fish (especially large pelagics like tuna and mackerel), and the suffering they inflict on other vertebrates (including other fish, aquatic birds and mammals, and higher cognitive mollusks) in the course of feeding. Lamentably (in my view), Julian’s off-the-cuff prescription is currently being fulfilled, if unintentionally: Humans are currently killing sharks at the rate of around 40 million per year (mostly for their fins alone), and since most sharks (unlike bony fish) have small numbers of offspring at a time, these rates of killing are quite likely unsustainable. Here I want to briefly touch upon the moral value of sharks, especially at the level of species.
By: Julian Savulescu
In an article in the New York Times, Lisa Belkin relates the story of Laurie Strongin Allen Goldberg who tried to use PGD to create a sibling to provide bone marrow to treat their son, Henry, suffering from Fanconi anemia. Congress, however, shut down the lab that was working on P.G.D., calling it illegal stem-cell research. “That led to an 18-month delay that may well have cost Henry his life. Laurie went through nine in vitro fertilization cycles before and after that pause, and each time the embryos transferred were not only free of the genetic flaw that threatened Henry but were also his bone-marrow match. Nine attempts failed to take, and Henry had to settle for an imperfectly matched unrelated donor. He died in 2002 at the age of 7.”
Read More »Our Lethal Moral Ideals: Having a Child to Save Another
There has been a recent controversy in the UK over proposed cuts to university Arts and Humanities budgets (see here, here, here). These cuts are to the scale of £600 million by 2013 and are joined with a call for stronger ties between universities and business. There are also moves to make research funding depend upon the 'impact' of previous research in that university department (see here). The moves have been very unpopular with researchers in Arts and Humanities and prompt questions about whether it is right to measure these areas in terms of their contributions to the world.
Read More »Do the Arts and Humanities need to justify their existence?
“He has a heart of gold.” “There’s
not a mean bone in her body.” “They’re rotten to the core.”
“We’re going to show them what we’re made of.”
What do all these statements have in
common? They all cluster around the idea that people contain fundamental
moral properties that define who they are and determine how they behave.
In other words, they form a conceptual metaphor that understands morality
as essence. There are other common conceptual metaphors for morality
as well: morality as bounds (leading astray, deviating
from the path, transgressing bounds) or morality as uprightness
(an upstanding citizen, a lowly thing to do). These moral
metaphors can tell us quite a lot, according to George Lakoff, a cognitive
linguist and author of numerous influential books like Metaphors We
Live By and Moral Politics. In fact, Lakoff argues, metaphors may be
the key to understanding much of politics, culture, and human thought
itself.
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 friends should we have? Should we take drugs? How should… Read More »Sleepy ‘Ordinary Ethics’
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 have more than about 150 friends (or ‘acquaintances’, as the book itself somewhat revealingly puts it). But of course it all depends on who we count as a ‘friend’. If we are talking about people with whom one spends a good deal of one’s time, then the number would usually be significantly lower; whereas if we allow friends to include what Aristotle called philoi, it could be much larger. People are philoi when they have some kind of goodwill to one another, and are mutually aware of that goodwill (Nicomachean Ethics VIII.2). On this generous view, even Facebook ‘friends’ one has never met might be genuine, if those extending and accepting the invitation do have some real concern for one another.
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 to promote animal welfare. Some organisations want to go further than mere protection of animals, however, and seek to promote the idea that we should recognize various ‘animal rights’. For example, the participants in the ‘Great Ape Project’ argue that non-human ‘great apes’ – chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans and bonobos – should share the human right to life, the human right to the protection of individual liberty and the human right not be tortured. See: http://www.greatapeproject.org/en-US. Advocates of rights for great apes have had some modest success. In 2007 they convinced the parliament of the Balearic Islands, an autonomous province of Spain, to grant some rights to the great apes (See: http://www.cbc.ca/news/viewpoint/vp_rose/20070802.html).
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, which identifies whether
prospective parents carry genetic mutations that could cause life-threatening
disorders such as cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy or sickle-cell
anaemia in their children, is to be launched within weeks in Britain… If the
procedure, which will cost about £400 per person or £700 for a couple, is
widely adopted, it could dramatically reduce the incidence of 109 serious
inherited conditions that collectively affect one in every 280 births.”
Surely we should be delighted at such great news?
Surprisingly, not everyone agrees. Some experts object that the test, devised
by the Californian company
Councyl, could lead to “back door eugenics”.
They also argue that the
diseases it detects are too rare for most people to need screening, and that it
will cause needless alarm. Finally, they fear that it will raise demand for
embryo screening and abortion.
Read More »Eugenics or ‘reprogenetics’? Call it what you will, but let’s do it
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 students take drugs believed to improve cognitive ability. This may give them advantages that could be unfair (if some have access while others haven't) or would have coercive effects (if you don't take the drug but your classmates are, you will be at a disadvantage). Are enhancer use among students inherently unfair and coercive?
