Australia was one of the most authoritarian countries in the world from 2020 onward. This week, however, we can celebrate a victory that reflects what Australians used to epitomize – no-nonsense courage and jovial determination.
Ethics
Parallels between the end of life bill and the lockdowns
The lockdowns and the assisted dying bill caused profound societal changes. Both centre on fear of death and both leverage emotional appeals to justify extreme measures.
The Assisted Dying Bill in the UK
The Assisted Dying Bill poses one of the most significant moral challenges of our time. Advocates argue for compassion and autonomy, but the consequences of legalizing euthanasia stretch far beyond the individual. This is not merely a legislative debate; it is a battle for the soul of our nation.
The Curse of Masks in Health and Social Care:
Why are some care homes still restricting visitors and insisting on mask wearing? Have the elderly residents not suffered enough? This article includes testimony from the Scottish Covid Inquiry.
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill
Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill had its frist reading on 16th October. Yhe Welsh parliament have voted against it. An open leeter to the Prime Minister is included in this article.
RIP Dr Jackie Stone, The COVID Hero
On Thursday 3rd October 2024, Dr Jackie Stone ended her life and a light went out in the world. Hounded by the medical authorities for seeking to give her patients the best care she could offer and stripped of her medical licence and her raison d’être. A shocking indictment of the world we live in.
Does mother know best?
The cost-benefit decisions that drive NHS spending can be hard to reconcile. On one hand, loving parents face roadblocks from courts and medical experts when seeking life-saving treatments for their children. On the other, vast sums are spent on COVID-19 interventions, raising the question: What is a life truly worth, and who gets to decide? Shouldn’t loving parents have more say when the stakes are so high?
Spiking via a spiked drink
A young adult with learning difficulties has been sedated and vaccinated against the wishes of him or his parents and at a time when this was not even a JCVI recommendation. His mother is appealing for help in her court case to prevent further doses being given.
Were the unvaccinated treated (literally) differently from the vaccinated?
If the unvaccinated were treated differently from the vaccinated, yet another bias could creep into the outcomes.
The Academic Whistleblower
According to Dr Elliott, a bioethicist at the University of Minnesota, “individuals don’t stumble into whistleblowing; rather, they are reluctant casualties of a corrupted system.”
Bring back moral red lines
There’s a good reason for moral red lines but in a society which lacks moral leaders, politicians and others have been crossing these lines without any thought for the consequences. It is time to bring back moral red lines and stick to them.
Informed Consent: Ethical Principles of Medicine
It is a basic requirement in medicine that before any procedure, a screening intervention or treatment is undertaken, the individual must consent. To do so, they must be informed of both the benefits and the risks before deciding whether to proceed.
HART Ethics
Several members of HART are authors of a new pre-print on ethics. It takes an in-depth look at the historical and ethical framework that has guided medical practices for centuries—from the Hippocratic Oath to modern legal standards like the Nuremberg Code and the Declaration of Helsinki.
Book Review – Will Ellsworth-Jones’ We Will Not Fight (2008)
Like with so much history that is shrouded by the mists of time, the detailed tales of the thousands of British men who refused to fight in the First World War make for fascinating reading. These conscientious objectors came from all walks of life – socialists, communists, pacifists, Quakers, Jehovah’s witnesses, Methodists, the Bloomsbury Set – and found a unity of purpose in their protest, allowing them – for a time being at least – to put aside quite substantial ideological differences.
The Cape Byron Lighthouse Declaration
In early 2023, three Australian health professionals who had all been ‘struck off’ for speaking out against their government’s pandemic response, decided they must speak up for medical ethics and freedom of debate. They met and set up the Cape Byron Lighthouse declaration. The declaration’s four aims would have been uncontroversial only a few years ago.
NUDGE DENIALISM: Why are the state’s psychological experts distancing themselves from behavioural science?
The state’s reliance on behavioural science strategies – ‘nudges’ – to facilitate the public’s compliance with covid restrictions has been widely documented. The many psychologists and behavioural scientists advising the government during the covid event (such as those in the SAGE subgroup, SPI-B, and the Behavioural Insight Team, BIT ) have, reasonably, been assumed to hold a significant degree of responsibility for using these methods of persuasion in communication campaigns
Trying to bargain away the excess deaths problem
Politicians fancied themselves as heroes in 2020. They were saving lives. Having played doctor with the population they are now being shown the fallout and it is not pretty. They are working through the stages of grief.
Unvaccinated children barred from Birmingham schools
The new face of coercion Unvaccinated children sent home from school as a ‘National incident’ is declared. Does that ring any bells? Well maybe if you had lived in Lithuania or California during the recent pandemic. But here in the UK, those strident voices warning of ‘consequences’ for citizens declining an offer of a covid […]
