The British Medical Association has called for a complete ban on alcohol advertising. Wait for the knees to jerk: calls deriding the ‘nanny state’ and its paternalism will soon follow. One common theme, I predict, will be that the recommend…

Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Science or Philosophy University of Oxford, Faculty of Philosophy, Future of Humanity Institute, James Martin 21st Century School Grade 7: £28,839 – £38,757 per annum (as at 1 Octo…

The moral debate about whether Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the man convicted for the Lockerbie bombing,  should have been released has now morphed into a political debate about who wanted what and who said what to whom: http://www.guardian…

Should we use drugs to prolong loving relationships?  Should we use drugs to weaken traumatic memories?  Research Associate David Edmonds’ article on enhancement for Prospect magazine is available online.  The articl…

What makes us happy? There is a lot of data on the question now, and some surprising conclusions. One surprising conclusion is cheering: almost all of us (around 95% of people in developed countries) rate ourselves as quite happy or better.…

By: David Edmonds In April 1915 there were hundreds of thousands of Armenians in Eastern Turkey: a year later they were gone. One historian told me that this fact was the relevant one.  And whether or not we call what occurred a ‘geno…

Ethicists disagree about very many things, but they broadly agree on how it is we should disagree: by finding flaws in the reasoning that leads others to a contrary conclusion, by putting forward arguments of our own, and so forth. The thou…

In a column in the New York Times this week Randy Cohen fields a question from an anaesthetist. Should the doctor ask a devoutly religious patient whether he minds that his anticoagulant (heparin) is derived from pigs? In reply Cohen sugges…

The website TripAdvisor (See: http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ ) allows viewers to access (and contributed to) popular ratings of hotels, restaurants and other travel related facilities all over the world. The NHS is now operating a website – …

An article and editorial in Nature warns about the militarization of agents that alter mental states. While traditional chemical weapons are intended to hurt or kill people, these agents are intended to disable. For example, they might indu…