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 […]
Ireland is progressing. It is moving from a dark, priest-infested isle into the light of modernity. That is what we are told. Day after day, week after week – the Irish media and political establishment assures us that as the hour hand moves forward so too does Ireland. This is a lie. Possibly the greatest […]
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 […]
For the second time in less than a year, a civil servant may be facing criminal charges for allegedly supplying fraudulent documents to foreign-nationals seeking Irish passports. This has been described to news outlets as a “significant national security breach”, and reportedly has the potential to damage Ireland’s international relations if illegal passports are used […]
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 […]