Should we use drugs to prolong loving relationships? Should we use drugs to weaken traumatic memories? Research Associate David Edmonds’ article on enhancement for Prospect magazine is available online. The article cites both Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu (Neuroenhancement of Love and Marriage: The Chemicals Between Us). It suggests that many of the arguments made against… Read More »The Age of Enhancement
What makes us happy? There is a lot of data on the question now, and some surprising conclusions. One surprising conclusion is cheering: almost all of us (around 95% of people in developed countries) rate ourselves as quite happy or better. The only countries to record high levels of unhappiness are countries in which living standards have declined appreciably, such as some of the countries in the former Soviet Union and its sphere of influence. To be sure, there is some room for scepticism about how much insight people have into their happiness. Dan Haybron notes how susceptible happiness ratings are to environmental infuences – for instance, the weather on the day the person is asked to rate their happiness – and argues that we cannot take these ratings of subjective well-being (as psychologists calls them) at face value. But even Haybron concedes that the differences across large groups provide us with an insight into real causes of happiness.
Ethicists
disagree about very many things, but they broadly agree on how it is we should
disagree: by finding flaws in the reasoning that leads others to a contrary
conclusion, by putting forward arguments of our own, and so forth. The thought
(perhaps the illusion) is that through this process of critical discussion, we
will gradually approach the truth, the truth about what it is we ought to do.
Another assumption, and perhaps a greater illusion, is that all of this intense
debate will also eventually influence what people actually do—that it will
improve policy and practice.
It is now possible to detect fetal problems with just a sample of the pregnant woman’s blood. Women will probably be offered this test routinely in the first trimester. But the breakthroughs are said to raise serious ethical questions.
In 2008 Fan et al. (Proc. Natl Acad. Sci.USA 2008; 105:16266–16271) non-invasively diagnosed fetal chromosome abnormality from cell-free DNA in maternal blood. Recently, at least two companies have announced plans to introduce non-invasive prenatal diagnosis (NIPD) into health care.
The clinical role of NIPD is unclear. It could be used either as a screening test (with CVS or amniocentesis still required as a follow up diagnostic test) or it might replace invasive tests. Less likely, it might be interposed between current screening and invasive tests.
The most exciting, and potentially controversial, role of NIPD is if it can replace current invasive tests. Prenatal (cyto)genetic diagnosis could be achieved much earlier in pregnancy.
Read More »Should early non invasive prenatal testing be opposed?
The Guardian yesterday reports on the struggles of independent secondhand bookshops to compete with what one of its interviewees describes as “the Tesco of the second-hand book world”: Oxfam. It may come as a surprise to you to learn that Oxfam is now the biggest secondhand book retailer in Europe (though perhaps it shouldn't given that this is not a market with many large players). Apparently many small second-hand bookstores are complaining about what they see as Oxfam's unfair competition.
When the ethical implication of some scientific or technological advance are debated, it is common for someone to remark that it’s a waste of time to debate whether this technology should be pursued—it will be developed anyway, won’t it, and if we want to spend our time fruitfully, we should ask, not whether this technology should be developed or used, but how it might be best used. I have occasionally been tempted by this line of thought myself, but on reflection, it’s rather puzzling. I’d like to try to get a bit clearer about it.
Victoria, Australia – where I write these words – is apparently right now in the grip of an epidemic of swine flu – an epidemic significant enough to play an important role in the World Health Organisation’s decision to declare a pandemic. ‘Pandemic’ sounds pretty serious, but in fact it is very difficult to get a sense of just how worried we should be. The World Health Organisation has warned Australia to prepare for deaths, but deaths from flu are perfectly normal occurrences at this time of the year. WHO says it is “concerned about current patterns of serious cases and deaths that are occurring primarily among young persons, including the previously healthy and those with pre-existing medical conditions or pregnancy”, but in Australia there have been no deaths. Indeed, outside of Mexico the death rate has been in line with what one might expect from a normal seasonal flu. Given this fact, it is probable that the death rate in Mexico is not a reflection of high virulence, but of high infection rate. Most people who come down with the flu in Mexico probably don’t routinely go to a doctor; thus, it is only the serious cases that are being counted.
It would be foolish of me to attempt to say anything substantive about the ethics of abortion in a blog post. But I do want to comment on Obama’s recent foray into the question, as well as on one interpretation of those comments. Addressing the graduating class of Notre Dame University, a traditionally Catholic university, and in the face of demonstrators denouncing him for his ‘pro-choice’ views, Obama called for each side to be respectful of the other. We can, he said, avoid demonizing one another, and work together on common causes. In particular, he said, we can work to reduce the number of abortions, by reducing the number of unintended pregnancies, and work also to make the lives of women who go ahead with pregnancies in difficult situations more bearable.
Andy Miah calls the “surge in popular activism, broad democratic demands and institutional reforms” an “ethical turn”. I’m not at all convinced, particularly about the activism. Rather, and feeling most cynical, it seems that a particular middle-class liberal conception of what is valuable and good has had a marketing success by managing to monopolise the term ‘ethical’.
The English Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, is reported to be considering scrapping the lotteries which determine whether parents get their first choice of schools for their children. Balls is quoted as saying that the lottery system can feel “arbitrary” and “random”. Well, give that man a dictionary. The Telegraph adds that he ‘admitted that they were "unfair"’,… Read More »Lotteries and Fairness
