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Is there a moral argument for including more common behavioural phenomena in the DSMV?

“Shyness, bereavement and eccentric behaviour could be classed as a mental illness under new guidelines, leaving millions of people at risk of being diagnosed as having a psychiatric disorder, experts fear,”

reads the title of a news article earlier this month in the wake of the publication of the most recent draft of the American Psychiatric Association’s proposed revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is used as a handbook for psychiatrists in the United States.

With this blog post, I hope that we can begin a discussion of a) the reasons undergirding fears of being “diagnosed as having a psychiatric disorder” and b) whether  – counter intuitively – there might be a moral reason to include common behaviors in the DSM,  because doing so might  help us avoid these feared consequences.

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Vegetarians Have Moral Obligation to Eat “Frankenmeat”

The Daily Telegraph reports:

Prof Mark Post, of Maastricht University in the Netherlands, yesterday announced the world’s first test tube hamburger would be served up in October. Heston Blumenthal, the experimental chef, will cook the patty grown in a lab from a cow’s stem cells. Each portion will cost £220,000, but Prof Post hopes if the burger is a success he can develop the technology on an industrial scale.

“This is meat produced without the cruelty, carbon footprint or waste of resources,” said Alistair Currie, a spokesman for the vegan campaign group.
“It’s a hugely beneficial development for animals. We welcome this development, which shows this is a viable idea.”

He added the charity had no ethical objections to the fact that the test-tube patty will technically be a meat product.
He said: “Peta [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] has no objection to the eating of meat. Peta objects to the killing of animals and their exploitation. I personally don’t fancy eating this, but if other people do that’s fine.”

Even though Mr Currie doesn’t fancy eating Frankenmeat, he has a moral obligation to do so. It is not just other people who should eat this meat, vegans also have a moral obligation to eat it. Here is why.

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EVENT: Wellcome Lecture in Neuroethics: Neural chemical systems mediate social behaviour in the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’: implications for ethics and the clinic.

Prof. Robert Rogers, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience, Senior Research Fellow, Jesus College Oxford 29 February, 5.30 p.m. Seminar Room 1, Oxford Martin School, 34 Broad Street (Map: http://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/contact/) Recent research has highlighted the role of neurochemical systems, such as serotonin and oxytocin, in the expression of value-laden behaviours involving ‘trust’ or ‘fairness’, in dyadic exchanges… Read More »EVENT: Wellcome Lecture in Neuroethics: Neural chemical systems mediate social behaviour in the ‘Tragedy of the Commons’: implications for ethics and the clinic.

Warsi on ‘militant secularism’.

Here are my initial thoughts on Baroness Warsi’s recent outburst on the subject of ‘militant secularism’. There are two.

The first relates to her reference to ‘totalitarian’ regimes. Can anyone out there tell me what ‘totalitarianism’ is? Does the term  refer to a distinct category of regime, or is it simply a fancy new name  for something quite familiar, namely good old fashioned tyranny or dictatorship?Read More »Warsi on ‘militant secularism’.

Reflexiones sobre el caso Contador

Dick Pound afirma, en su autobiografía titulada Inside Dope que repasa los años que pasó luchando contra el dopaje al frente del Comité Olímpico Internacional (COI) y de la Agencia Mundial Antidopaje (AMA), que un periodista de L’Equipe solía referirse a él como “el sheriff del salvaje oeste”, porque se concibe como el chico bueno de la ciudad que tiene que atrapar a los chicos malos: los deportistas que se dopan.

Dick Pound fue el ideólogo, principal promotor y primer presidente de la AMA. Dedicó todos sus esfuerzos a declarar una guerra total al dopaje, sin importar los medios, las formas y, sobre todo, la realidad que vive el deporte de élite –incluso las investigaciones criminales encubiertas le parecían “excitantes”. Lo importante es que, como él mismo afirma en su otra biografía Inside the Olympics, “los tramposos podrán correr, por un tiempo,  pero no podrán esconderse para siempre”. El problema es que la AMA y todas las asociaciones deportivas que apoyan su guerra contra el dopaje han heredado la agresividad y beligerancia de la posición de su fundador.Read More »Reflexiones sobre el caso Contador

Reflections on Contador’s case

Dick Pound says in his autobiography Inside Dope, that a L’Equipe journalist used to call him the “sheriff from the Wild West”. The reason for this nickname is that Dick Pound thought of himself as the good guy who was in charge of catching the bad guys: the athletes who used enhancing-performance substances.

 

Dick Pound was WADA’s ideologue as well as its main promoter and first president. He spent his entire career developing a bellicose anti-doping campaign. The actual situation of athletes in contemporary sports or the means used to fight against that “evil” did not matter to him –in fact, he found the idea of undercover criminal investigations “exciting”. The only important thing to him was, as he assured the world in another autobiography, entitled Inside the Olympics; that “the cheaters may run, for a while, but they can no longer hide”. Read More »Reflections on Contador’s case

Oxford, Warsaw and Mock Tudor

Try this thought experiment.  Imagine three cities. A medieval city (something like Oxford). A city heavily bombed in World War II and completely rebuilt, with original materials etc. (e.g. the centre of Warsaw). A city constructed in 2012 to look just like the medieval city (e.g. .Poundbury the ‘traditional’ village Prince Charles has created in… Read More »Oxford, Warsaw and Mock Tudor

Contador’s Ban: The Death of Cycling?

Over 18 months after the race, Contador has been stripped of his 2010 Tour de France title, and banned for 2 years by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, making Andy Schleck the winner of the 2010 race.

The ban is punishment for the traces of clenbuterol, an anabolic steroid were found in his blood. Initially  cleared by the Royal Spanish Cycling Federation back in February 2011, Contador blamed the traces on contaminated meat brought in by a friend- indeed the traces were small- 40 times lower than the minimum rate WADA insists labs must be able to register to gain accredited status. However, it is possible that Contador was blood doping using blood taken during a training phase that had been insufficiently washed, leaving traces of steroids behind. Plasticizers were also found in his blood and can be a sign of IV usage, though the doctor who invented the test believes these tests may not yet be legally binding. Floyd Landis was also excluded with a similar pattern of steroid detected during the final stages of the race, probably as a result of contaminated blood doping.

Eddy Merckx said to Eurosport: “Sad for him and cycling. I think someone wants the death of cycling. We’re going too far”

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‘No right not to be offended’?: Part Two

Thanks to everyone who commented on my earlier post, the one in which I cast doubt on the popular claim that ‘nobody has a right not to be offended’. Here – at last – are my responses to the various comments people have made. Should an apology be needed, could I apologise for having taken so long to reply.  Perhaps I should also apologise for the length of this reply, but, given the number of interesting responses to my earlier post, I can’t really see how I could have made it any shorter.

 

I think the best way to organise this response is to set out my original argument step by step, and then deal with the objections which people have raised against each step in turn.  Here, then, is my initial argument in brief summary.

 

Step One: It is easy enough to think of cases in which (i) one person, P, offends another, Q and which are also (ii) examples of behaviour which any person of normal moral sensibility must recognise as morally wrong. (In my initial post, I illustrated the point with the example of someone who hurls verbal abuse at randomly selected passers-by.)

 

Therefore, ….Read More »‘No right not to be offended’?: Part Two