-
Has Violence Declined? John Gray on Steven Pinker
Steven Pinker, the well-known Harvard evolutionary psychologist, has a new book just out, The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence has Declined, published by Viking. The claim which Pinker defends, that violence is declining and has declined over the course of human history will come as a surprise to many readers who are used…
-
JOB: postdoc in law for the “Enhancing Responsibility” project- TU Delft and University of Oxford
**Deadline: 31 October 2011** Applicants are sought for a law postdoc position of 2.5 year duration to work on the international interdisciplinary research project “Enhancing Responsibility: the effects of cognitive enhancement on moral and legal responsibility” funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). A brief description of this project’s aims and inter-disciplinary approach…
-
Meat is Murder?
Katherine Viner of the Guardian has just chosen The Smiths’ Meat is Murder as her favourite album. The album came out in 1985, in the middle of a decade in which I myself was an enthusiastic advocate of vegetarianism. I began by being swayed by the arguments of Stephen Clark, but it was the horrible…
-
Settling the Final Reckoning for Organ Donors
In the news this week, the Nuffield Council on Bioethics suggests that the NHS should test the idea of paying for the funerals of organ donors who have previously signed the organ donor register, in order to try to encourage more of the public to sign up. When I was asked to write about this…
-
Are Dopers better Sports(wo-)men?
by Roman Gaehwiler The crusade against artificial performance enhancement in sports is varicoloured and almost exhaustively debated. Nevertheless, there are still several approaches from the athlete’s perspective which are worth to consider. On the one hand, there is the noble and doubtlessly essential pedagogic approach fostering the educative aspect implying that the misapplication of pharmaceuticals…
-
Pheasant Shooting: Bad for Pheasants, Worse for Humans?
At the beginning of this month, the pheasant shooting season began. Pheasant shooting is little discussed – it’s usually seen just as a harmless country pass time. However, it’s far from clear that it really is as unobjectionable as this neglect implies.
-
Using Close Genes: A Suggestion
Today, if a gay couple wants to have a child, they have two main options: Either (1) they adopt a child or (2) they get an egg from a donor, have it fertilized in a laboratory, and have a surrogate mother carry and give birth to their child. These are both good options. Imagine, however, that…
-
Prize After Death
On Friday, Dr. Ralph Steinman died. On Monday, he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine. This posed a problem for the Nobel committee. Per the award foundation’s bylaws, prizes may not be awarded posthumously. The committee met in emergency session, and resolved to avoid the heartless option of rescinding the dead man’s prize. This seems a…
-
Should ‘Ecocide’ Be a Crime?
Today, my colleague Michael Mansfield QC appears in a mock trial in the Supreme Court that considers the crime of ‘ecocide’. The project is the brainchild of lawyer Polly Higgins. Ecocide is defined as: ‘The extensive damage, destruction to or loss of ecosystems of a given territory, whether by human agency or by other causes,…