When should people with a non-terminal illness be helped to die?
By Rachel Aviv
The New Yorker
Originally published June 22, 2015
Belgium was the second country in the world, after the Netherlands, to decriminalize euthanasia; it was followed by Luxembourg, in 2009, and, this year, by Canada and Colombia. Switzerland has allowed assisted suicide since 1942. The United States Supreme Court has recognized that citizens have legitimate concerns about prolonged deaths in institutional settings, but in 1997 it ruled that death is not a constitutionally protected right, leaving questions about assisted suicide to be resolved by each state. Within months of the ruling, Oregon passed a law that allows doctors to prescribe lethal drugs for patients who have less than six months to live. In 2008, Washington adopted a similar law; Montana decriminalized assisted suicide the year after; and Vermont legalized it in 2013.
The right-to-die movement has gained momentum at a time of anxiety about the graying of the population; people who are older than sixty-five represent the fastest-growing demographic in the United States, Canada, and much of Europe. But the laws seem to be motivated less by the desires of the elderly than by the concerns of a younger generation, whose members derive comfort from the knowledge that they can control the end of their lives.
The entire article is here.
Sunday, July 5, 2015
Saturday, July 4, 2015
What happened when Portugal decriminalised drugs
The Economist
Originally published June 11, 2015
Economist Films: For 20 years The Economist has led calls for a rethink on drug prohibition. This film looks at new approaches to drugs policy, from Portugal to Colorado. “Drugs: War or Store?” kicks off our new “Global Compass” series, examining novel approaches to policy problems.
Economist Films is a new venture that expresses The Economist’s globally curious outlook in the form of short, mind-stretching documentaries.
Originally published June 11, 2015
Economist Films: For 20 years The Economist has led calls for a rethink on drug prohibition. This film looks at new approaches to drugs policy, from Portugal to Colorado. “Drugs: War or Store?” kicks off our new “Global Compass” series, examining novel approaches to policy problems.
Economist Films is a new venture that expresses The Economist’s globally curious outlook in the form of short, mind-stretching documentaries.
Friday, July 3, 2015
AMA is finally taking a stand on quacks like Dr. Oz
By Julia Belluz
Vox.com
Originally posted June 13, 2015
Medical students and residents frustrated with bogus advice from doctors on TV have, for more than a year, been asking the American Medical Association to clamp down and "defend the integrity of the profession."
Now the AMA is finally taking a stand on quack MDs who spread pseudoscience in the media.
"This is a turning point where the AMA is willing to go out in public and actively defend the profession," Benjamin Mazer, a medical student at the University of Rochester who was involved in crafting the resolution, said. "This is one of the most proactive steps that the AMA has taken [on mass media issues]."
The entire story is here.
Vox.com
Originally posted June 13, 2015
Medical students and residents frustrated with bogus advice from doctors on TV have, for more than a year, been asking the American Medical Association to clamp down and "defend the integrity of the profession."
Now the AMA is finally taking a stand on quack MDs who spread pseudoscience in the media.
"This is a turning point where the AMA is willing to go out in public and actively defend the profession," Benjamin Mazer, a medical student at the University of Rochester who was involved in crafting the resolution, said. "This is one of the most proactive steps that the AMA has taken [on mass media issues]."
The entire story is here.
The rise of cognitive enhancers is a mass social experiment
By Emma A. Jane and Nicole A. Vincent
The Conversation
Originally posted June 15, 2015
Want to sign up for a massive human experiment? Too late. You’re already a lab rat. There was no ethics approval or informed consent. You weren’t asked, you never signed up, and now there’s no easy way to opt out.
We don’t want to be alarmist. We’re not suggesting you’re about to sprout wings, grow coarse hairs in surprising places and become a gruesome half-insect like the Brundlefly (the side effects of real life scientific experiments rarely impress like the special effects in David Cronenberg’s film The Fly).
But we do know not everyone wants to be a human lab rat. And yet we are all currently enrolled in a massive experiment involving cognitive enhancers.
(cut)
But what drugs, what devices? Well, take this guy, for instance, pumping electricity through his brain with a homegrown transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) device that emits a current so small it can run off a nine-volt battery. Or Elizabeth, the 20-something founder of a start-up who takes Adderall – a medication prescribed to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – except she doesn’t have ADHD.
The entire article is here.
The Conversation
Originally posted June 15, 2015
Want to sign up for a massive human experiment? Too late. You’re already a lab rat. There was no ethics approval or informed consent. You weren’t asked, you never signed up, and now there’s no easy way to opt out.
We don’t want to be alarmist. We’re not suggesting you’re about to sprout wings, grow coarse hairs in surprising places and become a gruesome half-insect like the Brundlefly (the side effects of real life scientific experiments rarely impress like the special effects in David Cronenberg’s film The Fly).
But we do know not everyone wants to be a human lab rat. And yet we are all currently enrolled in a massive experiment involving cognitive enhancers.
(cut)
But what drugs, what devices? Well, take this guy, for instance, pumping electricity through his brain with a homegrown transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) device that emits a current so small it can run off a nine-volt battery. Or Elizabeth, the 20-something founder of a start-up who takes Adderall – a medication prescribed to treat attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – except she doesn’t have ADHD.
The entire article is here.
Thursday, July 2, 2015
CIA torture appears to have broken spy agency rule on human experimentation
By Spencer Ackerman
The Guardian
Originally posted June 15, 2015
The Central Intelligence Agency had explicit guidelines for “human experimentation” – before, during and after its post-9/11 torture of terrorism detainees – that raise new questions about the limits on the agency’s in-house and contracted medical research.
Sections of a previously classified CIA document, made public by the Guardian on Monday, empower the agency’s director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research”. The leeway provides the director, who has never in the agency’s history been a medical doctor, with significant influence over limitations the US government sets to preserve safe, humane and ethical procedures on people.
CIA director George Tenet approved abusive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, designed by CIA contractor psychologists. He further instructed the agency’s health personnel to oversee the brutal interrogations – the beginning of years of controversy, still ongoing, about US torture as a violation of medical ethics.
The entire article is here.
The Guardian
Originally posted June 15, 2015
The Central Intelligence Agency had explicit guidelines for “human experimentation” – before, during and after its post-9/11 torture of terrorism detainees – that raise new questions about the limits on the agency’s in-house and contracted medical research.
Sections of a previously classified CIA document, made public by the Guardian on Monday, empower the agency’s director to “approve, modify, or disapprove all proposals pertaining to human subject research”. The leeway provides the director, who has never in the agency’s history been a medical doctor, with significant influence over limitations the US government sets to preserve safe, humane and ethical procedures on people.
CIA director George Tenet approved abusive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, designed by CIA contractor psychologists. He further instructed the agency’s health personnel to oversee the brutal interrogations – the beginning of years of controversy, still ongoing, about US torture as a violation of medical ethics.
The entire article is here.
Flawed Humans, Flawed Justice
By Adam Benforado
The New York Times
Originally posted June 13, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Our justice system must be reconstructed upon scientific fact. We can start by acknowledging what the data says about the fundamental flaws in our current legal processes and structures.
Consider the evidence that we treat as nearly unassailable proof of guilt at trial — an unwavering eyewitness, a suspect’s signed confession or a forensic match to the crime scene.
While we charge tens of thousands of people with crimes each year after they are identified in police lineups, research shows that eyewitnesses chose an innocent person roughly one-third of the time. Our memories can fail us because we’re frightened. They can be altered by the word choice of a detective. They can be corrupted by previously seeing someone’s image on a social media site.
The entire article is here.
The New York Times
Originally posted June 13, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
Our justice system must be reconstructed upon scientific fact. We can start by acknowledging what the data says about the fundamental flaws in our current legal processes and structures.
Consider the evidence that we treat as nearly unassailable proof of guilt at trial — an unwavering eyewitness, a suspect’s signed confession or a forensic match to the crime scene.
While we charge tens of thousands of people with crimes each year after they are identified in police lineups, research shows that eyewitnesses chose an innocent person roughly one-third of the time. Our memories can fail us because we’re frightened. They can be altered by the word choice of a detective. They can be corrupted by previously seeing someone’s image on a social media site.
The entire article is here.
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Schools told to end religious instruction and teach morality instead
By Richard Garner
The Independent
Originally published June 15, 2015
Religious instruction should be banned from schools and be the preserve of Sunday schools, madrassas or the home, according to proposals by the former Education Secretary Charles Clarke for a radical overhaul of religious education and the way faith schools operate.
Legislation compelling schools to hold a daily act of “predominantly Christian” worship in assemblies should also be scrapped, the Labour former frontbencher argues in a report jointly compiled with the religious education expert Professor Linda Woodhead, from Lancaster University.
In recommendations that will be studied keenly by faith and schooling experts, they argue that the emphasis should shift away from merely religious education, with pupils being taught religious and moral education instead.
The entire article is here.
The Independent
Originally published June 15, 2015
Religious instruction should be banned from schools and be the preserve of Sunday schools, madrassas or the home, according to proposals by the former Education Secretary Charles Clarke for a radical overhaul of religious education and the way faith schools operate.
Legislation compelling schools to hold a daily act of “predominantly Christian” worship in assemblies should also be scrapped, the Labour former frontbencher argues in a report jointly compiled with the religious education expert Professor Linda Woodhead, from Lancaster University.
In recommendations that will be studied keenly by faith and schooling experts, they argue that the emphasis should shift away from merely religious education, with pupils being taught religious and moral education instead.
The entire article is here.
The new neuroscience of genocide and mass murder
By Paul Rosenberg
Salon.org
Originally posted June 13, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
“Almost 20 years later I’m revisiting this issue in Paris,” Fried told Salon, saying several things motivated him, beginning with advances in neuroscience. “In neuroscience we’re moving more and more towards affective and social neuroscience; we are trying to address more complex social and psychological situations,” Fried said. “There has been some accumulation of knowledge in areas such as dehumanized perception, areas like theories of mind, the ability of other human beings to have a theory of mind of what is in another person’s mind—obviously this is completely obliterated in a situation of Syndrome E—and our understanding of neural mechanisms of empathy, a development which occurred over the last 10 years.” He added, “I think people are looking more at neuroscience correlations of interactions between people, so for instance the mirror neurons, the whole idea of mirror neurons, and what happens when you look at somebody else, what happens to your own brain.” He cited institutional developments as well—new organizations and journals supporting social cognitive research—all of which helped make the time ripe for a new look at Syndrome E.
But Fried also pointed to the ability to engage more robustly with criticisms across disciplinary fields. “I saw a renewed interest and ability to raise this question, because after I raised it initially there was really, some people were offended that I was giving a biological explanation to something that for them was just a bunch of scum shooting at innocent people, which it is, to some extent,” he admitted. Now, however, Fried sees a greater willingness to argue things through. “People are more attuned to the question of what is the relationship of neuroscience to the legal system, to the issue of responsibility—what is the definition of the responsible self—our sense of identity, our sense of responsibility. There are a lot of these types of questions which are raised with the development of neuroscience.”
The entire article is here.
Salon.org
Originally posted June 13, 2015
Here is an excerpt:
“Almost 20 years later I’m revisiting this issue in Paris,” Fried told Salon, saying several things motivated him, beginning with advances in neuroscience. “In neuroscience we’re moving more and more towards affective and social neuroscience; we are trying to address more complex social and psychological situations,” Fried said. “There has been some accumulation of knowledge in areas such as dehumanized perception, areas like theories of mind, the ability of other human beings to have a theory of mind of what is in another person’s mind—obviously this is completely obliterated in a situation of Syndrome E—and our understanding of neural mechanisms of empathy, a development which occurred over the last 10 years.” He added, “I think people are looking more at neuroscience correlations of interactions between people, so for instance the mirror neurons, the whole idea of mirror neurons, and what happens when you look at somebody else, what happens to your own brain.” He cited institutional developments as well—new organizations and journals supporting social cognitive research—all of which helped make the time ripe for a new look at Syndrome E.
But Fried also pointed to the ability to engage more robustly with criticisms across disciplinary fields. “I saw a renewed interest and ability to raise this question, because after I raised it initially there was really, some people were offended that I was giving a biological explanation to something that for them was just a bunch of scum shooting at innocent people, which it is, to some extent,” he admitted. Now, however, Fried sees a greater willingness to argue things through. “People are more attuned to the question of what is the relationship of neuroscience to the legal system, to the issue of responsibility—what is the definition of the responsible self—our sense of identity, our sense of responsibility. There are a lot of these types of questions which are raised with the development of neuroscience.”
The entire article is here.
Tuesday, June 30, 2015
Weary of Relativity
By Frank Bruni
The New York Times
Originally posted May 23, 2015
Here are two excerpts:
Then there’s the moral jujitsu that American voters have become especially adept at in these polarized times. Many of them unreservedly exalt their party’s emissary — and inoculate him or her from disparagement — simply because he or she represents the alternative to someone from the other side. Being the lesser of evils is confused with being virtuous, though it’s a far, far cry from that.
(cut)
There are standards to which government, religion and higher education should be held. There are examples that politicians and principled business people should endeavor to set, regardless of whether their peers are making that effort. There’s right and wrong, not just better or worse.
And there’s a word for recognizing and rising to that: leadership. We could use more of it.
The entire article is here.
The New York Times
Originally posted May 23, 2015
Here are two excerpts:
Then there’s the moral jujitsu that American voters have become especially adept at in these polarized times. Many of them unreservedly exalt their party’s emissary — and inoculate him or her from disparagement — simply because he or she represents the alternative to someone from the other side. Being the lesser of evils is confused with being virtuous, though it’s a far, far cry from that.
(cut)
There are standards to which government, religion and higher education should be held. There are examples that politicians and principled business people should endeavor to set, regardless of whether their peers are making that effort. There’s right and wrong, not just better or worse.
And there’s a word for recognizing and rising to that: leadership. We could use more of it.
The entire article is here.
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