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Obesity and Responsibility

Obesity and Responsibility

There has been a good deal of discussion about obesity recently, since the Royal College of Surgeons criticized access to weight loss operations in the UK as a ‘postcode lottery’: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/21/morbid-obesity-gastric-bands-nhs-costs

One common response – for example by Catherine Bennett in The Observer (  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/jan/24/homeopathy-obesity-gastric-bands ) has been that the question of unfairness shouldn’t be permitted to arise in the first place. Obesity, since it is self-inflicted, should not be treated by the NHS at all. Rather, the money should be spent on treatments for involuntary ailments, such as cataract operations or hip replacements.

Against this, it could be argued that interventions to cause weight loss, such as gastric bands, are in fact a highly effective use of NHS resources, since (a) they tend to work pretty well and (b) they save the costs of further treatment down the line for conditions which would otherwise have been caused by the obesity. This argument, however, fails to deal with the original deflection of responsibility for obesity onto the sufferers themselves. If they bring obesity on themselves, which then gives rise to further medical problems, then plausibly they have brought those problems on themselves as well. The NHS should refrain from treatment throughout.

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The judge is out on juries

Is the traditional jury system in trouble? The first crown court criminal trial in England and Wales without a jury in 350 years is being held right now, dealing with the Heathrow robbery of 2004. The Guardian discusses the problem of keeping potentially prejudicial Internet information from modern juries. Are we seeing an erosion of having fair trials by one's peers, or the start of updating an old system to modern standards?

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The Disease Industry

In a recent article, “Sure, It’s Treatable. But Is It a Disorder?” the New York Times warns its readers to “brace yourselves for P.E. – shorthand for premature ejaculation”. If the pharmaceutical industry is to be believed, that may not be bad advice, since according them, “One in three men actually have the condition.” But the advice is not meant to be taken literally. What the reporter really meant was, “brace yourselves for ‘P.E.’ – shorthand for ‘premature ejaculation’”. According to the article, just as the makers of Viagra have in recent years introduced into the popular lexicon the name of a “modern man’s malady” and it’s acronym – ‘erectile dysfunction’, or ‘E.D.’, we can expect a similar effect as a result of the development and marketing of Priligy: a new pill for “men who ejaculate before copulating or within seconds of beginning.”Read More »The Disease Industry

Killing is killing – or is it?

In the
headlines this week is the tragic story of Frances Inglis, whom a jury at the Old Bailey found guilty of murdering her disabled son Tom
and sentenced to nine years in jail. Tom Inglis had been left severely
braindamaged after falling from a moving ambulance in 2007, throwing his mother
in a state of deep distress. She refused to believe an (apparently isolated)
encouraging prognosis from one of the doctors at the hospital, and concluded
that it was her duty to release her son from the “living hell” in which he found himself. Horrified on learning that the only legal way of
allowing her son to die was an application to the High Court for Tom’s food and
water to be withdrawn, Frances Inglis decided to take action on her own. After
a first unsuccessful attempt 14 months earlier, she took her son’s life by
injecting him with a lethal dose of heroin in November 2008.

 

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Shame on Bioedge

It may be naïve to hope for better, but the world cannot afford sly pandering to lying propaganda. Failures of epistemic integrity have real practical consequences, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the middle east. Consider this: ‘In August Sweden’s leading daily newspaper, Aftonbladet, alleged that Palestinians were being killed for their organs.… Read More »Shame on Bioedge

Climate scientists behaving badly? Part 3: the conduct of enquiry.

Part 1

Part 2  

 

Now we move on to virtue in the conduct of enquiry.

honest dealing in the conduct of enquiry

There is some evidence giving cause for concern

·        There is evidence of dogmatism: ‘The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.’[1] Now it is indeed possible that the data is wrong, but the lack of a continued warming trend (since 1998?) is contrary to the predictions of the models on which IPCC predictions are based, and a common variety of dogmatism is to deny evidence that doesn’t fit your preconceived beliefs.

·        There is evidence of arbitrary data manipulation: ‘Another serious issue to be considered relates to the fact that the PC1 time series in the Mann et al. analysis was adjusted to reduce the positive slope in the last 150 years … At this point, it is fair to say that this adjustment was arbitrary.’[2]

·        In the computer code there is evidence of data manipulation conducted in order to get a pre-conceived result.

·        Remarks from a programmer writing code indicate serious problems with collection and recording of original data ‘another problem that's based on the hopeless state of our databases’[3]

·        For some time there has been controversy over the selective use of data. For a recent example from a Russian institute commenting on the CRU use of Russian data (report here ): the continuous data records from Russia which taken in their entirety show warming of 1.4 C since 1860 versus CRU use of only 25% of that data to show 2.06C rise since 1860; the use by CRU of stations with incomplete and interrupted data where such data shows warming versus the omission of stations with complete and continuous data which doesn't.  

·        More broadly, local scientists in Australia and New Zealand have found broadly constant original temperature data on which a rising official temperature record has been based through the use of methods of data manipulation originating in or influenced by CRU practices. See this discussion of the problems in raw data and controversy over claims of inhomogeneity in that data  and adjustments made to produce estimates of historical temperatures from weather stations in Northern Australia: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/08/the-smoking-gun-at-darwin-zero/

None of these examples demonstrate straightforward dishonesty. For example, all sorts of junk gets left in computer code. People put bits in that they call ‘fudge factors’ because they think they know the broad shape of some other correction process which is not yet coded, so in early drafts a ‘fudge factor’ procedure stands as a proxy for some real adjusting factor. They are, however, evidence that more subtle vices may yet be in play.

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LIES AND THE IRAQ WAR

By: David Edmonds

The
current British inquiry into the Iraq war – led by Sir John Chilcot – is a
cathartic exercise.  No issue since New
Labour was elected in 1997 has been so divisive.   The war split friends, families and
political parties.   While the
catastrophic impact of the war is still being felt in Iraq, in Britain the
inquiry – it is hoped – will bring some closure.

Many
critics of the war are looking for one finding. 
They don’t want to hear that the former Prime Minister Tony Blair
miscalculated.  They want to have
confirmed their belief that he intentionally misled – even that he lied.   Oddly, a verdict of ‘lie’ would be regarded
as incomparably more serious than a verdict of ‘miscalculation’.   The ‘Liar’ headline would curdle the
nation’s blood.

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Climate scientists behaving badly? Part 2: Objectivity

As promised at the end of part 1 (here ), I shall now run over the evidence for the failings of epistemic character among climate scientists. I shall be breaking this up into loosely related groups: objectivity, the conduct of enquiry, what is owed to other enquirers and virtue in testimony.  

impartiality

The emails show that these particular climate scientists are neither objective nor impartial. One even harbours violent urges towards a critic: ‘Next time I see Pat Michaels at a scientific meeting, I'll be tempted to beat the crap out of him. Very tempted.’[1]

 

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When Patients Should be Obliged to Participate in Medical Research

In a recent article on the BBC News website Professor Anthony Mathur, Head of Advanced Cardiac Imaging at Barts and the NHS Trust, argues that cardiac patients should be obliged to take part in medical research (See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8399763.stm). It seems that it is difficult to get patients to agree to participate in clinical trials, however research subjects are required if new heart stem cell therapies are to be developed. Professor Mathur’s proposal has been given short shrift by David Hunter, writing on the BMJ Group Journal of Medical Ethics blog (See http://blogs.bmj.com/medical-ethics/2009/12/09/should-patients-be-obliged-to-participate-in-research/). Hunter suggests that Mathur’s proposal amounts to a failure to respect autonomy and he further suggests that the way to solve this problem is to devote more time and resources to recruitment, rather than relying on cardiac patients agreeing to participate. Michael Cook writing on BioEdge describes a possible defense of Mathur’s proposal in radical utilitarian terms. (See http://www.bioedge.org/index.php/bioethics/bioethics_article/8777/). On such views, if the benefits of research outweigh the costs then, all things being equal, the proposal is morally justified, regardless of concerns about respect for individual autonomy.


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