Published on
12 October 2011
Two events tend to occur more or less regularly throughout history: wars and epidemics. Sometimes they occur separately and sometimes together. Both have caused and indeed continue to cause, devastating damage in terms of loss of life, physical and psychological suffering, famine, mass emigration and overall impoverishment of the affected populations. Although numbers do not […]
Published on
28 April 2010
What has happened? – The rising demand for euthanasia, assisted suicide and ‘the right to die’. Over the last few years there have been a number of cases of death by ‘euthanasia’ or ‘assisted suicide’ and an apparent increase in requests for a ‘right to die’. Dignitas takes ill and not-so-ill people to Switzerland, where they can […]
Published on
9 December 2009
What is a genome? The fact that many diseases can now be traced to genetic makeup makes sequencing of personal genomes a useful diagnostic tool. This legitimate endeavour, together with recent developments in next generation sequencing techniques, is dramatically altering aspects of clinical practice. In the UK, the rise of personalised medicine is evident from […]
Published on
30 June 2009
Neil Scolding trained in Medicine in Cardiff and in Neurology in Cardiff, Cambridge and Queen Square, London. He has been Burden Professor of Clinical Neurosciences in Bristol since 1999. He is also a past Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics. He has a clinical and research interest in […]
Published on
25 March 2009
Charles Darwin was a brilliant naturalist privileged to live in extraordinary times, when intrepid voyagers like himself would return from their circumnavigations around the world with their ships’ holds filled with tens of thousands of never previously described species of insects, fish, plants and mammals. This revelation of the astonishing diversity of the living world extended […]
Published on
9 December 2008
Dr. Tom Pink: Many thanks for writing this very interesting book, which addresses questions to do with human identity and fulfilment about which I am deeply concerned myself, but from a very different starting point. To be realistic, I suspect that unfortunately not everyone here will have read the book, so I thought to begin with […]
Published on
11 October 2006
1 The first vehicle of hype and deception I want to discuss tonight is the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), and I will take this opportunity also to tell you briefly about the founding of Comment on Reproductive Ethics (from now on referred to as CORE). As an organisation, CORE has tried for more […]
Published on
14 June 2006
Formerly, when religion was strong and science weak, men mistook magic for medicine; now, when science is strong and religion weak, men mistake medicine for magic. Thomas Szasz (1973:115) 1. Introduction: No less a figure than Francis Fukuyama recently labelled Transhumanism as ‘the world’s most dangerous idea’. Such an eye-catching condemnation almost certainly denotes an […]