We take pills and potions for everything from a bad back to depression. Why shouldn’t we adopt the same approach to love and the miseries it may cause? Oxford ethicist Brian Earp has proposed that we should…
We read a lot these days about corruption, self-interest and personal tragedies. The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the first time explicitly considers climate change…
A recent discrimination case has highlighted the difficulty of balancing the rights of disabled medical students with the rights of the community to safe medical and health care. In the BKY v The University…
Allowing people with incurable and unsupportable illness to die is ethically acceptable to most people, even though it’s unlikely there will ever be unanimity about when and how we allow such deaths. But…
For 60 years, clinical trials have provided the gold standard of evidence for showing whether new treatments work and whether they are safe before they are rolled out on a large scale. Trials are used…
Robots, and autonomous systems in general, can cause anxiety and uncertainty, particularly as their use in everyday tasks becomes a more immediate possibility. In order to lessen at least some of that…
TESTING ALTERNATIVE THERAPIES - La Trobe University’s decision to accept funding from Swisse for a new centre to research alternative medicines has sparked controversy. This article considers the ethical…
BAE Systems has revealed that it has successfully test-flown Taranis, its prototype Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. The test has some people understandably hot under the collar. But while there is much to debate…
Sydney will host its 19th biennale from March 21. It’s one of the most significant international art events on the local calendar. But questions have arisen over its connection to Australia’s policy of…
Darryl Woodford, Queensland University of Technology and Katie Prowd, Queensland University of Technology
The launch of the current series of My Kitchen Rules has undoubtedly been successful, both in terms of television ratings and in capturing a social media audience, clearly winning the battle for the Twitter…
Friends of Science in Medicine, an association that lobbies for evidence-based medicine, has called on La Trobe University to abandon planned research into Swisse supplements amid claims industry funding…
However 4.2 kilograms of marijuana made its way into Indonesia in a body board bag in 2004, the story of Schapelle Corby’s arrest, conviction and subsequent jailing for drug smuggling is known by every…
As Asafa Powell faces the Jamaica Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel, we already know his defence – that he was given a supplement called Epiphany D1 by his former physiotherapist, Chris Xuereb, without his…
Ethical issues are rife in medicine. Arguments about abortion, organ donation and euthanasia regularly take their turn in the headlines, normally prompted by media scare-stories or an arising controversy…
Should the Australian government require Colin Russell to repay at least some of its costs for acting on his behalf when the Russians imprisoned him and 29 other Greenpeace activists and journalists, known…
2013 was an auspicious year for medical research. A new vaccine for malaria was developed, there was a revolution in DNA analysis, and there was a major advance in human cloning when stem cells were produced…
Breaking up is hard to do, especially with social media. But thousands of people are doing just that, and with the new year and its inevitable resolutions just around the corner, it might be a good time…
Organic, cage-free or home-grown? We think about our purchasing ethics in many areas of daily life, but not often about technology. As with any product, though, we should think about the effects of our…
This week a dozen protesters travelled from Malaysia to Australia to protest outside the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Lynas Corporation, an Australian rare earth mining company, for the third year running…
Visiting Professor in Biomedical Ethics, Murdoch Children's Research Institute; Distinguished Visiting Professor in Law, University of Melbourne; Uehiro Chair in Practical Ethics, University of Oxford
Professor of Bioethics & Medicine, Sydney Health Ethics, Haematologist/BMT Physician, Royal North Shore Hospital and Director, Praxis Australia, University of Sydney