MAiD and IJFAB: Why Bioethical Discourse is Not Endorsement
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In the past few months, a number of posts and Tweets from the Biopolitical Philosophy blog have stated that the International Journal of Feminist Bioethics (IJFAB) has ‘promoted’ medical assistance in dying (MAiD) along with the legislation currently being considered … Continue reading

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Disablism In a Time of Pandemic: Some Things Don’t Change
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The Covid-19 pandemic is currently accompanied by a parallel outbreak of bioethical and clinical ethical discussion offering guidance for the difficult decisions that healthcare professionals and others face as the pandemic develops. Right at the moment there is a strong … Continue reading

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Not up for grabs: disabled folks respond to unwanted touching
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A couple of days ago the BBC’s online magazine on disability, Ouch!, published an article about the phenomenon of unwanted touching by nondisabled people that is endured by many people with disabilities. The prompt for the article was the report … Continue reading

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Profiling the genomes of embryos? It (almost) doesn’t matter if it works or not
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Jackie Leach Scully is Professor of Social Ethics and Bioethics, Director of the Policy, Ethics and Life Sciences (PEALS) Research Centre at Newcastle University, UK Earlier in February Erik Parens, Paul Appelbaum and Wendy Chung commented on some of the … Continue reading

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“I keep telling you… I can’t get in the building”
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In this recent article from The Guardian, Frances Ryan (who reports frequently on disability issues) draws attention to the following Kafka-esque situation. Disabled people in the UK whose eligibility for benefits has to be assessed (ie, to check they are … Continue reading

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IJFAB’s Pronoun Policy: Singular ‘they’ or gender-neutral forms such as ‘ze’ or ‘zir’… just be consistent within your paper
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Editor’s Note: In the past year, IJFAB Blog has featured several blog entries on shifting pronoun usage not only in the English language but in the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics itself.  IJFAB Editor Jackie Leach Scully brings us this reflection on IJFAB’s revised pronoun … Continue reading

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Critical Reflections on “Huntgate”

The Nobel prize-winning Cambridge biochemist Tim Hunt caused uproar this week, with some comments — which he later said were intended self-deprecatingly and humorously — to an audience of scientists, many of them women, on the topic of women in … Continue reading

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Disability, the UK General Election, and what it means for bioethics

It may not have escaped your notice that Britain has just had a general election. The result decides the flavour of the government, probably for the next 5 years. The outcome on 8 May was widely unpredicted: the polls had … Continue reading

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On Leelah Alcorn and Neat Narratives

Over the last week or so, the blogosphere has seen a lot of comment about the tragic (and it is tragic) story of Leelah Alcorn. According to most of the Internet versions, this is a story of a child born … Continue reading

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The Rise of Problem Drinking Among UK Women

I suspect that many of us will read this recent piece from The Guardian, “‘I didn’t feel drunk, not even tipsy’: The rise of female drink-drivers,” with a slightly nervous, guilty eye, mentally totting up where we stand in the drinking stakes and … Continue reading

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UN Investigation into Britain’s Violation of Disabled People’s Human Rights

Things have come to a dismal pass for disabled people in Britain. That this country, once seen as a pioneer in the promotion of human rights (admittedly you have to go back to the 1950s and 60s for that, but … Continue reading

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Ebola, and the ethics of research in pandemics and other disasters

The current outbreak of Ebola in west Africa has prompted a fair amount of debate around the ethics of epidemic control, containment, and intervention. Some of this discussion looks at what kind of intervention (use of experimental treatment? compassionate use? … Continue reading

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