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 […]

At the age of fifty-six – thirteen months after his resignation as Lord Chancellor of England, ten months before his arrest, and two years before his death – Thomas More wrote the epitaph for his tomb, had it engraved in stone, and sent a written copy to Erasmus for publication. More explained this odd action […]

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 […]

I must say I gave this title partly to shock people. Famously, just before he became Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger spoke out against moral relativism, and just this last week in Poland the Pope has again spoken out against relativism. What he means by this, I take it, is that we should reject ethical views that […]

Banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies Thomas Jefferson Introduction An army’s main purpose, either in a democracy or, indeed, in a dictatorship has changed little from that of the armed bands of our pre-historic ancestors who defended their territories against intruders. That is still the principal task of any army today. But if […]

From the outset, I would like to give you a sense of what this issue is about and why it arises the way it does before moving on to talk about the larger and more conceptually oriented issues. Many of you probably know that the United States constitution is founded on the separation of the […]

When I applied for the post of Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights I was asked a question right at the start of my interview by a distinguished Oxford professor who was acting as external adviser. Given that I was an extreme opponent of Human Rights law, why I had I thought I […]

It is my great pleasure and honour to be invited, by the Thomas More Institute, to share with you our experience in rebuilding justice and reconciliation after the genocide of 1994 in Rwanda. Rwanda’s history was characterized by a highly centralised and autocratic system of government that institutionalised ethnic differences. This culminated in the 1994 […]