New Abortion Regulations in Texas

“The Texas Department of State Health Services finalized strict new abortion regulations on Friday, claiming that none of Omega-3 fatty acids – If you want to save money, have more than one 100 mg tablet in a day can increase … Continue reading

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Peter Singer and the Make-a-Wish Foundation

Peter Singer on the difference between “heartwarming” charities, and charity work that has the greatest impact. get free viagra The Earth supplies anything we have to have far more than adequate knowledge of several procedures. These are also the reasons … Continue reading

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Drug Store Ethics?

Last summer, David Lazarus wrote in the L.A. Times about CVS’s prescription drug rewards program, which requires patients to sign a HIPAA release form in order to obtain rewards.  Neither Walgreen’s nor Rite-Aid require a release for their programs, so … Continue reading

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Adjunct professors in dire straits with low pay, lack of full-time jobs

A great post from Aljazeera on the crises facing adjuncts and contingent faculty. It does an especially nice job of pointing out how the university system discourages women and people of color from looking for academic jobs. “They [the universities] … Continue reading

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Teaching about disability

In the wake of Adrienne Asch’s passing, I take the opportunity to share some of my thoughts about the contributions of disability studies to my teaching. I teach an introductory class in ethics and the goal is to get the … Continue reading

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Adjuncts and Other Contingent Labor in the University

As academics concerned with systems of oppression, the situation facing adjuncts and contingent labor in the university is both troubling and hits very close to home. This is especially true because it is this labor that makes many of our … Continue reading

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Legal Personhood and the Beginning of Life in Northern Ireland: Can the coroner inquire into the death of someone who was never born?

This is a guest post by Nathan Emmerich. Nathan Emmerich is a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast where he has been working on Bioethical Expertise. He took his PhD from Queen’s and this was recently published as a book entitled ‘Medical Ethics Education.’

On Thursday the 21st of November the Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland (NI) gave its judgement in a case between the Attorney General for NI, John Larkin, and the Senior Coroner for Northern Ireland. The case concerned whether the Attourney General could compel the coroner to convene an inquest into a still-birth. The coroner had declined to do so, arguing that it did not fall within the remit of his office. Briefly, as the role of the coroner is to investigate deaths there had to be an individual who was, legally speaking, alive and had subsequently died. Thus coroners in NI and, for that matter, the UK have not historically held inquests into still-births. A lower court had previously upheld the position of the coroner and that judgement alluded to some of the concerns I raise here.

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The question of when life and, in particular, human life begins and ends has been persistent and contentious in biology, philosophy, theology and law. In bioethical thought there are a number of different accounts where it is common to distinguish between the start of life and the point at which a human organism attracts moral importance. Furthermore we might think that the human organism has different moral weights depending on the state of its development or, for that matter, demise. Such consdierations lead in a variety of directions, not least to the provocative argument that neonates might not meet the requirements for ‘personhood’ and therefore should not be considered (full) members of the moral community. It is not easy to resolve these ethical conundra and they will continue to trouble bioethical scholarship for the foreseeable future. However, the law cannot afford the luxury of uncertainty. Whilst we might recognise some degree of complexity and attempt to mediate between competing demands, ultimately the law has to adopt a position on when the ‘human organism’ becomes an individual, recognised by law and, therefore, a (legal) person.

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UNAIDS calls for an end to gender-based violence

It’s truly gratifying to see an international United Nations agency taking a strong interest in women’s health and rights.  UNAIDS (the Joint United Nations Programme on It afflicts individuals of viagra samples from doctor nearly every race, gender and age. … Continue reading

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