by Liz Sanders We have reluctantly taken the decision to postpone this year’s Festival of Arguments. We apologise for the inconvenience and hope you will understand our decision in light of the uncertainty arising from recent global e…

by Anders Sandberg In Scientific American Zeynep Tufekci writes: Preparing for the almost inevitable global spread of this virus, … , is one of the most pro-social, altruistic things you can do in response to potential disruptions of …

Written by Neil Levy Originally published in The Conversation I recently watched an interview with David Attenborough, in which he was asked whether there is hope that things can get better for our planet. He replied that we can only slow d…

Dominic Wilkinson, University of Oxford It is mid-March 2020. James is a 29-year-old junior doctor working in a London hospital. Last week, James cared for a man who had become sick after returning from abroad. The man had been treated in i…

With all the concern at present about the coronavirus outbreak in China (and the rest of the world), we will host a special series on the blog relating to ethical issues during pandemics. We last ran a series on this topic in 2009 during th…

Co-authored with Daniel D’Hotman de Villiers In the first St. Cross seminar of the term, Dr. Neil Armstrong talked about ethical challenges raised by mounting bureaucratic processes in the institutional provision of mental healthcare.…

Thanks to a generous grant from Open Philanthropy, last year the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities co-sponsored a workshop with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (R…

By César Palacios-González @CPalaciosG  More than a year after the fallout from He Jiankui’s announcement to the world that he had edited human embryos in order to made them resistant to HIV, the debate on whether we should move ahead with …

By Ben Davies Most people accept that patients have a strong claim (perhaps with some exceptions) to be told information that is relevant to their health and medical care. Patients have a Right to Know. More controversial is the claim that …

Written by Gabriel De Marco Suppose that two patients are in need of a complicated, and expensive, heart surgery. Further suppose that they are identical in various relevant respects: e.g., state of the heart, age, likelihood of success of …