If you look at the comments thread in the post about Kerrie Wooltorton, you’ll see that there’s been an interesting debate between me and someone who calls himself “Dr No”. I don’t think that No and I will ever see eye-to-eye on quite a lot of stuff, but, then again, I don’t see eye-to-eye on […]
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Philosophy of Medicine Workshop, Bristol, 28.x.09
This looks like it could be interesting… Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol This is an informal workshop on topics in the philosophy of medicine. Everyone is welcome. •09.45–11.00 Kevin Brosnan (Cambridge) “Does nothing in medicine make sense except in light of evolution?” •11.15–12.30 Jeremy Howick (UCL) “Defining a role for mechanistic reasoning in EBM” […]
More on Science Journalism…
This thought hit me over the weekend in Tesco’s car-park; I was still mulling over the reliability, or lack thereof, of science reporting in the media. I was also thinking about the PCC and how powerless it is, largely because it’s simply a boys’ club for editors. However, in my finding-a-trolley reverie, it occurred to […]
Night Thoughts on Journalism
There’s an illuminating item that’s recently been posted on Enemies of Reason about the way that the press has been handling H1N1, and the way in which the distinction between deaths from and deaths with the illness has been blurred. And it’s very easy to look at the newspaper stands and laugh at the manner in which […]
Incentivising Healthy Lifestyles, the Tough Love Way
At least the Trolley Problem has been solved. (Hat-tip to Brian Leiter for the pointer.) […]
Can Saving a Life be the Wrong Thing to Do?
Doubtless many of you will have heard by now of Kerrie Wooltorton, who, apparently depressed by her fertility problems, drank anti-freeze, called an ambulance, and handed a living will to staff at A&E. Her story is reported by the Telegraph under the headline “Suicide woman allowed to die because doctors feared saving her would be assault” […]
Book Review: Singer & Viens (eds.), “The Cambridge Textbook of Bioethics”
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009; 538+xv pp £40, pb A couple of months ago, Cambridge UP tried to post a cheeky advert for this book in the comments to one of the posts on this site. I sabotaged the link, but offered to restore it in return for a freebie, which CUP asked me to review. […]
Acronym Overload: the CLC on the DPP and the ECHR
In the wake of the DPP’s publication on Wednesday of guidance about assisted suicide, the Telegraph is reporting that the Christian Legal Centre is considering launching legal action to halt the implementation of that guidance. The nub of their claim is that Lord Phillips, who had ruled in the summer that clearer guidance ought to […]
DPP’s Interim Policy on Assisted Suicide Published
The Director of Public Prosecutions has today published interim guidelines on prosecutions for assisted suicide in England and Wales – they’re available here (and Northern Ireland will get its own consultation process). I’ve not had time to consider them in full, but there’s a number of things that stand out to me as worthy of comment. […]
ECHR Rulings: Keeping the Faith
I’m going a bit off-topic with this, I think, but John Coggon’s reply to today’s earlier post has got me thinking. His reply pointed out that [i]t might be worth noting that Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights (presumably the key right under issue) states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of […]