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ethics

Guest Post: Is it Time for Ethics Experts in Lack of Consent Cases?

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Written by Daniel Sokol

 barrister and medical ethicist at 12 King’s Bench Walk, Temple, London

This article was first published in the Personal Injury Brief Update Law Journal on 12th October 2015 (http://www.pibriefupdate.com)

Following the landmark case of Montgomery v Lanarkshire Health Board [2015] UKSC 11, I have been instructed on several cases of alleged failure to obtain valid consent.

At present, consultants in the relevant specialty are asked to produce expert reports on the quality of the consent process.  The reports are, generally, of dubious value.

Medical expertise is not ethical expertiseRead More »Guest Post: Is it Time for Ethics Experts in Lack of Consent Cases?

Guest Post: Should the army abandon their zero-tolerance policy on substance use?

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Written by Anke Snoek

Macquarie University

In the UK around 500 soldiers each year get fired because they fail drug-testing. The substances they use are mainly recreational drugs like cannabis, XTC, and cocaine. Some call this a waste of resources, since new soldiers have to be recruited and trained, and call for a revision of the zero tolerance policy on substance use in the army.

This policy stems from the Vietnam war. During the First and Second World War, it was almost considered cruel to deny soldiers alcohol. The use of alcohol was seen as a necessary coping mechanism for soldiers facing the horrors of the battlefield. The public opinion on substance use by soldiers changed radically during the Vietnam War. Influenced by the anti-war movement, the newspapers then were dominated by stories of how stoned soldiers fired at their own people, and how the Vietnamese sold opioids to the soldiers to make them less capable of doing their jobs. Although Robins (1974) provided evidence that the soldiers used the opioids in a relatively safe way, and that they were enhancing rather than impairing the soldiers’ capacities, the public opinion on unregulated drug use in the army was irrevocably changed.Read More »Guest Post: Should the army abandon their zero-tolerance policy on substance use?

Don’t write evil algorithms

Google is said to have dropped the famous “Don’t be evil” slogan. Actually, it is the holding company Alphabet that merely wants employees to “do the right thing”. Regardless of what one thinks about the actual behaviour and ethics of Google, it seems that it got one thing right early on: a recognition that it was moving in a morally charged space.

Google is in many ways an algorithm company: it was founded on PageRank, a clever algorithm for finding relevant web pages, scaled up thanks to MapReduce algorithms, use algorithms for choosing adverts, driving cars and selecting nuances of blue. These algorithms have large real world effects, and the way they function and are used matters morally.

Can we make and use algorithms more ethically?

Read More »Don’t write evil algorithms

Rugby and the Love of the Underdog

The Rugby World Cup is now well underway in England and Wales, and rugby fans have possibly already seen one of its most surprising results and entertaining games. On the second day of the tournament, Japan defied the odds to earn a narrow 34-32 victory over South Africa. The result stunned the rugby world – prior to the result, South Africa had been hailed as possible tournament winners, having been already been crowned world cup champions in 1995 and 2007, whilst few outside the Japanese camp gave them a serious chance of success, with bookmakers classing them as 80-1 underdogs. It truly was a victory of Goliath-slaying proportions.

Read More »Rugby and the Love of the Underdog

Guest Post: Performance enhancers and smart drugs in e-sports

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Written by Toni Gibea

Research Center in Applied Ethics, University of Bucharest

My aim is to show that the decision made by ESL (Electronic Sports League) to ban Adderall in e-sport competitions is not the outcome of a well-reasoned ethical debate. There are some important ethical arguments that could be raised against the ESL decision to ban Adderall, arguments that should be of great interest if we are concerned about the moral features of this sport and its future development.

In the first part of this post I will explain why and when doping became a primary concern for e-sports and I will also sum up some of the officials’ reactions. After that I’ll present the main arguments that could be raised against the idea that the use of Adderall is an obviously impermissible moral practice. My conclusion is that we should treat this subject matter with more care so that in the future decisions in this area will have a stronger moral grounding.Read More »Guest Post: Performance enhancers and smart drugs in e-sports

1 in 4 women: How the latest sexual assault statistics were turned into click bait by the New York Times

by Brian D. Earp / (@briandavidearp)

* Note: this article was originally published at the Huffington Post.

Introduction

As someone who has worked on college campuses to educate men and women about sexual assault and consent, I have seen the barriers to raising awareness and changing attitudes. Chief among them, in my experience, is a sense of skepticism–especially among college-aged men–that sexual assault is even all that dire of a problem to begin with.

“1 in 4? 1 in 5? Come on, it can’t be that high. That’s just feminist propaganda!”

A lot of the statistics that get thrown around in this area (they seem to think) have more to do with politics and ideology than with careful, dispassionate science. So they often wave away the issue of sexual assault–and won’t engage on issues like affirmative consent.

In my view, these are the men we really need to reach.

A new statistic

So enter the headline from last week’s New York Times coverage of the latest college campus sexual assault survey:

“1 in 4 Women Experience Sex Assault on Campus.”

But that’s not what the survey showed. And you don’t have to read all 288 pages of the published report to figure this out (although I did that today just to be sure). The executive summary is all you need.

Read More »1 in 4 women: How the latest sexual assault statistics were turned into click bait by the New York Times

“The medicalization of love” – podcast interview

Just out today is a podcast interview for Smart Drug Smarts between host Jesse Lawler and interviewee Brian D. Earp on “The Medicalization of Love” (title taken from a recent paper with Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu, available from the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, here). Below is the abstract and link to the interview: Abstract What is love? A… Read More »“The medicalization of love” – podcast interview

Sex and death among the robots: when should we campaign to ban robots?

Today, I noticed two news stories: BBC future reported about the Korean work on killer robots (autonomous gun turrets that can identify, track and attack) and BBC news reported on the formation of a campaign to ban sex robots, clearly mirrored on the existing campaign to stop killer robots.

Much of the robot discourse is of course just airing hopes and fears about the future, projected onto futuristic devices. But robots are also real things increasingly used for real applications, potentially posing actual threats and affecting social norms. When does it make sense to start a campaign to stop the development of robots that do X?

Read More »Sex and death among the robots: when should we campaign to ban robots?

Guest Post: Bullying in Medicine

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Written by Christopher Chew

Monash University

Today, the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons (RACS), the peak representative organization for the surgical profession in Australia, released the results of the Expert Advisory Group convened to investigate allegations of bullying, harassment, and sexual assault earlier this year.

Shockingly, of nearly half its members  who responded to a survey, including trainees and full members (fellows), a full 49 percent reported that they had been subjected to bullying, discrimination, or sexual harassment. The burden fell disproportionately on junior, female, and minority surgeons, with senior surgeons and consultants being reported as the main source of these issues.Read More »Guest Post: Bullying in Medicine

Guest Post: Pervitin instead of coffee? Change in attitudes to cognitive enhancement in the 50’s and 60’s in Brazil  

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Written by Marcelo de Araujo

State University of Rio de Janeiro

CNPq – The Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development

How does our attitude to drugs in general shape our reaction to “smart drugs” in particular? Ruairidh Battleday and Anna-Katharine Brem have recently published a systematic review of 24 studies on the effect of modafinil on healthy individuals. They concluded that “modafinil may well deserve the title of the first well-validated pharmaceutical ‘nootropic’ agent.”[1] This publication has rekindled the debate on the ethics of “smart drugs”. Of course further studies are necessary for a better assessment of the safety and efficacy of modafinil. But if modafinil, or some other drug, proves safe and effective in the future, are there reasons to oppose its widespread use in society?

Read More »Guest Post: Pervitin instead of coffee? Change in attitudes to cognitive enhancement in the 50’s and 60’s in Brazil