A month ago, the Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, called for the introduction of forced chemical castration for sex offenders. The call followed a particularly nasty case of incest and paedophilia in the country: a 45 year old man was fo…

By Julian Savulescu and Dominic Wilkinson Imagine you could save 6 lives with a drop of your blood. Would you have a moral obligation to donate a drop of blood to save six people’s lives? It seems that if any sort of moral obligation exists…

Prospective parents will be able to screen embryos for almost any known genetic disease using a revolutionary “universal test” developed by British scientists, led by Prof Alan Handyside  The £1,500 test, called karyomapping, which sho…

In a recent article in The Observer, philosopher Mary Warnock makes an eloquent plea for assisted suicide in relation to the case of Daniel James, a 23-year old rugby player from Worcester who requested to be helped to die after an accident…

A new test for carriers of variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease is under development, but it raises an ethical problem: should we test for untreatable deadly illnesses? And might it reduce the amount of blood donations?

In Australian newspapers today a Melbourne intensive care physician, Jim Tibballs is reported as criticising current organ donation guidelines on the grounds that donors are not actually dead at the time that organs are removed. Other docto…

In my last blog I commented on the call for virtuous behaviour and reliable role models in troubled times. My example then was the financial crisis but I would like to continue this theme as I believe I have spotted a similar move in anothe…

Do the different staffing levels reflect a different priority for newborn infants in the allocation of health resources? Are there relevant differences that would justify a lower staffing level in newborn intensive care compared to adult or…

Do players in online games have a right to their virtual possessions? As discussed by Erin Hoffman in an essay the matter is a legal quagmire. Real money is involved, people have assaulted each other over virtual thefts, China now recognize…

The BBC reports today that increasing numbers of people are using prescription drugs like Ritalin—intended as a treatment for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)—to boost alertness and brain power.  Reports of…