The question of the social utility of the financial services and of the appropriate modes of remuneration of its actors has occupied a central place at the G20 meeting held in Pittsburgh. Indeed, the G20 leaders expressed a shared willingne…

Kerrie Wooltorton is believed to have been the first person to use a living will as part of a successful attempt to commit suicide: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2009/oct/01/living-will-suicide-legal . The 26-year-old wrote her will, an…

Prominent authors like Susan Greenfield and Roger Scruton have raised worries about the rise of virtual worlds such as Second Life, which they fear might have a negative impact on human relationships, as people increasingly spend their live…

Question: When is a crime not a crime? Answer: when it will never be prosecuted. The release this week by the Director of Public Prosecutions of his interim policy on prosecution of assisted suicide raises a number of questions – as discuss…

Are there neuroethical issues in sports? Dr Judy Illes thinks so, in a talk given in Canada on September 17. People are using neuroimaging to assess ability (which may also pick up unsuspected pathologies in the brain), intervening against …

As a result of a court ruling requiring clarification of the law, the UK's Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Keir Starmer, yesterday issued some guidelines concerning the legal grey area of assisted suicide. The DPP published a lis…

Chris Packham has recently (and not for the first time) suggested that we should stop trying to save the panda — an expensive exercise — and instead put our efforts and resources to ‘better use.’ This suggestion is worth some unpacking. His…

Economists have long used Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita as a proxy measure for the average level of wellbeing within a country. GDP is a measure of the goods and services produced in a country and is a fairly good proxy for materi…

A recent article in the New Scientist raises the prospect that alongside ‘gluten-free’, ‘GM free’, ‘sugar free’, and ‘dairy free’ our supermarket shelves may soon contain ‘pain-free’ meat. American philosopher Adam Shriver, writing in Neuro…

Should scientists be allowed to publish anything, even when it is wrong? And should there be journals willing to accept everything, as long as it seems interesting enough? That is the core of a debate that has blossomed since the journal Me…