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Regulation

Stop that painting!

A painting thought to be by Peter Paul Rubens has been barred from export this week. The ban on selling it to a foreign buyer lasts until March, with the possibility of an extension, and is intended to give British museums a chance to raise the money to buy it. The committee which advises the government on which pieces of art should be barred from export must find a piece to be of high quality and to have a significant British connection, if it is to be barred. The British connection which allows this painting to qualify is that it has a wax seal on the back showing that it was in a British collection in the 1840s (it also has one showing it was in Venice in the early 1800s). Given that connection, how could Britain justify preventing the export of this painting?Read More »Stop that painting!

Hypothetically donated organs

Every day three people die in the UK while waiting in the transplant queue. In the face of the urgency to increase the organs available, some propose introducing economic incentives. A more moderate solution consists in choosing a public policy with an appropriate default option, that is, a condition that is imposed on individuals when they fail to make a decision. A default option influences policy-outcomes in two ways: a) it can have a direct impact on people’s choices because they might interpret it as the option recommended by society; b) the effort involved in making a decision as opposed to accepting one –e.g. filling a form, having to think about one’s death, etc.- nudges people towards the default option.

Regarding organ transplantation, legal systems are divided between opt-out systems in which everybody is an organ donor unless she has registered not to be, and the so called opt-in systems that consider that nobody is an organ donor unless they have registered to be one. Countries with an opt-out system like Austria, Belgium or Spain tend to have higher organ donation rates. This fact is often used as a strong argument in favour of taking consent as the default option. Unlike the countries mentioned, UK has an opt-in policy. However, the Welsh are trying to pass a piece of legislation that would allow them to establish an opt-out system. Their initiative reopens the debate about the pros and cons of the two systems. Those who oppose introducing an opt-out system in the UK make the following claims:

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If North Africa Starves Next Year, I’ll be Rich!

Inflation is swinging upward in the UK and it will surely cause us some irritation soon in the supermarkets. But most of us do not have difficulty putting enough food on the table for our families, and it’s easy for us to forget that things are different elsewhere. During the past few years sharp rises in food prices have contributed to widespread hunger in the third world and to civic unrest, including the recent toppling of the government in Tunisia,  and riots in countries including all of these: Algeria, Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Côte d’Ivoire, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonsia, Kenya, Mozambique, Senegal, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Read More »If North Africa Starves Next Year, I’ll be Rich!

Can Liberals Support a Ban on Sex Selection?

Australia essentially bans sex selection, except to prevent babies being born with serious sex-linked disorders. The National Health and Medical Research Councils also prohibits it in its guidelines.

A couple in the state of Victoria is currently appealing to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to allow them to access IVF and to deliberately have a girl. The couple have had three boys naturally and lost a daughter soon after birth. They recently had IVF which resulted in a twin pregnancy. The twins were boys. They aborted the pregnancy.

I argued over 10 years ago there are no good reasons to oppose sex selection in countries like Australia.

Read More »Can Liberals Support a Ban on Sex Selection?

Is it ethical to force-feed prisoners on a hunger strike?

by Alexandre Erler

The question, which generated debate a few years ago in the context of the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, is now arising again in Switzerland, where imprisoned cannabis farmer Bernard Rappaz has been on hunger strike for about three months now, in protest against a prison sentence he considers excessive. Rappaz was sentenced to five years and eight months behind bars for trading in cannabis and various other offenses. The Federal Court, Switzerland’s highest instance, has ruled that Rappaz should be force-fed if necessary, but doctors in charge of him have refused to obey those orders. A criminal law Professor has argued that according to the Swiss Penal Code, these doctors should be prosecuted, as their refusal amounts to civil disobedience. How should we regard such a legal implication? Is it ethically acceptable, perhaps even required, to force feed someone like Bernard Rappaz?

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Lethal Ethics: When Philosophical Distinctions Kill

by Julian Savulescu

Teresa Lewis died on the 24th of September after being a lethal injection at the Greensville Correctional Centre in Virginia. The 41-year-old was convicted of plotting to kill her husband, Julian Lewis, and her stepson, Charles Lewis. She persuaded two men to carry out the murders in return for sex and money. The two men received life sentences. The execution went ahead in spite of protests from lawyers, celebrities and others who argued that she should have been given clemency because of her low IQ. Under US law, anyone with an IQ of 70 avoids the death penalty. Lewis was judged to have an IQ of 72.

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Living in Plato’s Cave

Roger Crisp writes …

Plato’s allegory of the Cave (Republic 514a-517a) is perhaps the most famous image in the history of philosophy. Socrates describes a group of people living underground, bound so that they can see only in front of them. Behind them burns a fire, and in front of the fire there is a path with a barrier. Other people carry objects that project above the barrier, casting shadows on the wall in front of the prisoners. Naturally, the prisoners believe the truth to be nothing other than the shadows. ‘Strange prisoners’, says Socrates’s companion, Glaucon. ‘They’re like us’, Socrates answers.

This passage resonated with me during the recent mid-term elections here in the US. Liberal commentators were already expecting the worst after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in January, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, that the government cannot limit corporate funding of independent political broadcasts. That ruling was described by President Obama as ‘a major victory for big oil, Wall Street banks, health insurance companies, and the other powerful interests that marshal their power every day in Washington to drown out the voices of everyday Americans’. During the most recent elections, for example, Goldman Sachs (which you may remember received $10 billion in George Bush’s ‘Troubled Asset Relief Program’) gave the Republican party $1.2 million.

Read More »Living in Plato’s Cave

Retaining privacy: the EU commission and the right to be forgotten

Do we have a right to be forgotten? That was the question posed to me by BBC Newsnight in the light of the EU Commission's latest draft framework for data protection policies. EU Commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding stated that “The protection of personal data is a fundamental right”, and set out to fix current privacy protection measures in the light of changing technology and globalization. Among other things users should be able to give informed consent to the use of their personal data, and have a "right to be forgotten" when their data is no longer needed or when they want their data deleted.

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Why Bioenhancement of Mathematical Ability Is Ethically Important

by Julian Savulescu

In a paper just released today, Cohen Kadosh and colleagues (Cohen Kadosh et al., Modulating Neuronal Activity Produces Specific and Long-Lasting Changes in Numerical Competence, Current Biology (2010), doi:10.1016/j.cub.2010.10.007) described how they increased the numerical ability of normal people by applying an electrical current to a part of the skull. So what? Most of us don’t do that much maths after leaving school and manage just fine.

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What is a pet worth?

by Russell Powell

Imagine that you leave your sprightly canine companion to the vet for a routine teeth cleaning, only to learn that due to spectacular negligence on the part of the veterinary staff, he was confused for another terminally ill dog and was accidentally ‘euthanized.’ Imagine another even more horrific scenario, in which a malevolent neighbor steals your feline friend and feeds her to his wood chipper, Fargo-style. For many owners who have extremely close relationships with their companion animals, these would be traumatic events of a life-altering nature. Unfortunately, in both scenarios there is little you could do about it, institutionally speaking.

Read More »What is a pet worth?