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Unpopular policy and public rationality

Unpopular policy and public rationality

The BBC
reports that the Japanese
town of Kamikatsu
has become the first ‘zero waste’ town. Residents
compost all of their food waste, and must sort the rest of their rubbish into
34 different categories—all of which they must take to public waste centres,
since there are no rubbish collections from people’s homes. It seems that the inhabitants of the town are
generally enthusiastic about the scheme, which offers small financial rewards
for recycling, and has encouraged people to make an effort to reduce the
rubbish they produce.

This is one
of those relatively rare, uplifting stories about a scheme designed to reduce
environmental damage that is not only successful, but supported by the
community. Could something similar work
in the UK? Recently, many UK councils reduced domestic refuse
collections from once-weekly to once-fortnightly, with recyclable waste being
collected in the intervening weeks. Whilst this has boosted the amount of rubbish being recycled,
some news reports
reveal that the new measures are unpopular, and some councils have bowed to
public pressure by re-introducing weekly collections. Given the environmental impact of adding to
landfill waste sites, ought the government to placate the public by relaxing
measures designed to reduce waste, or should unpopular measures be enforced
regardless of public opinion?

Read More »Unpopular policy and public rationality

Paying to top up NHS treatment

The BBC has this week published a story on co-payment in the UK’s National Health Service. Sue Matthews, a Buckinghamshire woman with terminal bowel cancer, would like to top up her NHS care by paying for a £30,000 course of cetuximab – a drug which could extend her life, but which is not funded by her NHS trust. However, if she does so, she may also have to pick up the tab for her standard NHS treatment. That’s because the NHS guidelines advise against allowing such co-payments: they require that a given instance of treatment be either fully privately funded, or fully publicly funded.

Should co-payments be banned?

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Sport, Sudden Cardiac Death and Liberty

Sport, like life, is dangerous. Several fit young footballers have died of sudden unexpected heart attacks. Doctors are now calling for mandatory testing using ECGs of all athletes. Italy has been pursuing mandatory testing for 25 years. This has revealed over 5% have some abnormality. Some people have congenital heart rhythm abnormalities which place them at high risk of sudden heart attack during or after sport. The call for mandatory testing is a sensible one. The interesting question is what is to be done with the results.

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Activists and acts of mercy

In Germany this week, and in Australia recently, there has been public
concern and significant media attention about the actions of euthanasia
activists. A former government official and lawyer, Roger Kusch, went
public in Germany with a video of an elderly woman who he had helped to
die. In Australia, Phillip Nitschke has been criticised for his
involvement and subsequent comments about the death of Graeme Wylie a
man suffering from Alzheimer’s disease whose partner and close friend
have been found guilty of manslaughter.

Opponents of euthanasia have used these cases to argue against liberalisation of laws on assisted suicide or euthanasia.

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Education and the Fairness of Capital Punishment

Regardless of their views on capital punishment most people desire it to be centred on due process and fairness. But a software experiment, by showing that the likelihood of execution of people on death row can be predicted to high accuracy, paradoxically suggests a great degree of arbitrariness in how the death penalty is applied in the US. A death sentence is essentially a lottery ticket: the condemned will be executed with a certain probability and otherwise suffer a long and uncertain imprisonment. But different convicts get different probability tickets, even when the legal system and all criminal circumstances are the same.

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Here’s why you’re not smart enough

An interesting
article in The New York Times
describes how the way in which the brain forms memories can, over time,
lead to false information from noncredible sources being reinterpreted as true. The article notes that this may explain why
smear campaigns can be so effective in politics: those who spread misinformation ‘know that if
their message is initially memorable, its impression will persist long after it
is debunked’—and the rehashing of false information by victims during their defence simply adds to its plausibility in
the long term.  It seems, then, that
what we believe may often be based not on truth or credibility, but on repetition and emotional
resonance. 

Read More »Here’s why you’re not smart enough

Duck and cover: how expensive does impact safety have to be?

This week is Tunguska week: on June 30 1908 a large meteoroid or comet exploded with the force of 5-30 megatons above the Tunguska River in Russia. The journal Nature celebrates it with several articles about impacts, ranging from a discussion of a controversial meteorite artwork to the confirmation that most of the northern hemisphere of Mars is a gargantuan crater.

From an ethics perspective the most interesting issue is how we should protect ourselves from rare but very destructive events. Had the Tunguska impactor hit an inhabited area it could easily have killed
millions, and larger impacts could imperil our species. But big impacts are rare: how much should we pay to detect and avoid them?

Read More »Duck and cover: how expensive does impact safety have to be?

Behavioural Internet Advertising

A recent article in The Economist reports the development of a new behavioural approach to targeted internet advertising being developed by companies such as Phorm, NebuAd and FrontPorch (see http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11482452 ). The current market leader is Phorm who have recently signed up the three biggest internet service providers (ISPs) in the UK, BT, Virgin Media and TalkTalk to use their technology. The ISPs can use the technology supplied by behavioural advertising companies to record information about the web pages that a user visits. This information is used to build up a profile of the user that is then used to select targeted advertising. So, if a user visits a number of sites for online booksellers and webpages concerning literature this information is added to his or her profile. Subsequently, the user will receive a high proportion of advertising that is targeted at people who have a greater than average interest in literature.

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When autonomy trumps sense: the costs of refusal to allow withdrawal of life support.

In Canada this week, an 84 year old man died after 9 months of treatment
in an intensive care unit. He had severe brain damage and multi-organ
failure, but his family sought a legal injunction to prevent doctors in
the intensive care unit from withdrawing life-support. Over the course
of his long intensive care stay, intensive care beds at a major trauma
centre were closed so that nurses could used instead to support his
care, and three doctors resigned from the hospital in protest at being
required to provide what they felt was ‘unethical’ treatment.

Read More »When autonomy trumps sense: the costs of refusal to allow withdrawal of life support.