A new study in the journal Clinical Ethics claims that permitting assisted dying would substantially benefit both those seeking assisted suicide and the public. Two Scottish academics, Dr David Shaw of the Universities of Basel and Maastricht, and Professor Alec Morton of the University of Strathclyde, posit three economic arguments: the cost to terminally-ill patients of a poor quality […]
For those old enough or educated enough to remember, humanity still lives very much in the shadow of the bloody 20th century (the most murderous in human history) with its failed political ideologies and the resulting huge loss of life. It was democracy that won out, proving much more effective at protecting human life, based as it was […]
In a double decision made public on Thursday 12 March 2020 on the cases of Grimmark and Steén v. Sweden, three judges of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) deprived European midwives of the guarantee of their right to conscientious objection to abortion. This decision can apply, by extension, to the entire medical profession. […]
The T.C. Beirne School of Law at the University of Queensland was established by a £20,000 donation from Thomas Charles Beirne, a devout Catholic businessman and Papal Knight who was warden of the University from 1928 to 1941. The vast tract of beautiful riverside land on which the university sits in St Lucia was donated by pioneering doctor […]
Perhaps it is an age thing but one of the most irritating, vacuous songs considered to be a rock classic must surely be Imagine written by John Lennon with the assistance of the deeply weird Yoko Ono. It will be 50 years old next year. Lennon was a key part of the then contemporary zeitgeist […]
The term International Child Abduction is generally used to describe situations where one parent (the abducting parent) removes a child from the state where the child usually lives to another state without the consent of the child’s other parent or in breach of a court order. It is a phenomenon that afflicts families right across […]
President Putin moves to support traditional marriage by adding it to the Russian constitution and, predictably, the UK’s ‘impartial public service broadcaster’ paints it in as negative a light as possible. Apparently unable to accept that another country might hold different values from their own, the BBC insist it cannot be to do ‘with reflecting current values […]
A professor of economics at the University of Exeter, England, has been accused of transphobia after tweeting that “only female people menstruate”. The conflict began when Dr. Poen responded to a tweet which said: “Not everyone who menstruates is female. Not everyone who is female menstruates. Let’s shift our language.” Dr. Poen replied by saying: […]
In Australia, as elsewhere in the developed world, doctors and parents are perplexed about an epidemic of young people, mostly teenage girls, who want to change gender. Back in August the Federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, asked the The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) for advice on how to treat gender dysphoria in children […]
When it became clear that the novel coronavirus coming out of China was destined to be a pandemic, international concern quickly zeroed in on how countries with weak health systems, most of which are in Africa, would be affected. It was feared that they would be quickly overwhelmed by the virus and left reeling. The […]
No voluntary organisation in the world does more work in the fields of education, healthcare, poverty relief, etc. than the Catholic Church, led in many cases by the Church’s religious orders. Amidst all the criticism of the Church, this basic fact is often forgotten. Cara, a research body at Georgetown University in the US, compiles the […]
What are the relationships between the judges of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) and leading non-governmental organisations, and what should the Court be doing about them, particularly in cases in which doubts as to the judges’ impartiality might arise? This is the topic of this post, which is worthy of interest and needs […]