Scary clones and space-ready humans – the genome debate hots up
Hopes and fears around new developments in genome editing have sparked a fresh round of arguments about the ethics of eugenics. Until recently, a great deal of ethical thinking about genomics focused on what would happen if scientists ever worked...
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Secrets and Disclosures
When it comes to the ethics of identity and confession, theatrical performers and social researchers live in very different places. Over the last few months I have seen a lot of performance art. The kind of thing that often involves a...
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HIV : How will things change with the arrival of do-it-yourself home-testing kits?
According to official estimates, there are more than 25,000 people in the UK who are currently unaware that they are HIV positive. From a Public Health point of view, this is not a good position for the country to be...
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Last throw of the dice…?
Is the granting of new rights to desperate patients and their doctors in the Medical Innovations Bill a valiant attempt to save lives – or will it turn the NHS into an unethical guinea-pig farm?
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Antibiotic Resistance. A Dire Emergency on Planet Earth – (fixable if the price is right…)
The issue of ineffective anti-biotics is one driven more by market economics than treatment resistant diseases. A change of spending priorities could change the face of global health, but given the profit margins, this is unlikely to happen.
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We’re all doomed! – What happens when normality is so dangerous that it might kill you?
When driving through the town of Omagh the other day I found myself (somewhat unsuccessfully!) trying to quote the great Ulrich Beck from memory. We had just driven past a health promotion poster showing the midriff of a man wearing...
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“Processed meat” – it is advisable to engage brain before opening mouth
When the number crunchers at the EPIC project noticed a significant statistical association between processed meat consumption and premature death, someone involved thought it was a good idea to go public. And what better way to draw their findings to...
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“Public Health a la carte” – Why social scientists should be interested
The UK Faculty of Public Health defines public health as “the science and art of promoting and protecting health and well-being, preventing ill-health and prolonging life through the organised efforts of society.” The Faculty’s approach is based on the assertion...
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Public Health à la carte
New guidance on breast screening will stress the importance of individual choice in the context of access to (and understanding of) scientific information. It is now official NHS policy to draw attention to the fact that population-based breast cancer screening...
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Cookery, Control and Contemporary Displays of Culinary one-up-person-ship…
One of the fascinating aspects of food technology is that the acts of cooking and eating have long been relatively easily readable socio-cultural markers in hierarchical societies. In contemporary British society an interesting facet of this is that the discourse...
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A page-turner about Primitive Natives, Mad Scientists...
Anna Patchett 2012 State of Wonder. Bloomsbury The Big Battalions of the international pharmaceutical industry will stop at nothing in their pursuit of profit, right? And megalomaniac scientists living in ethics-free zones are the ones who call the shots, yeah?...
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You and Your Genetics