The rights and wrongs of life-and-death children cases

BIOMEDICAL ETHICS AND LAW

SEMINAR

Launch of a new seminar series in the medical humanities:

University of Hull Department of Humanities, Institute of Applied Ethics

and Faculty of Health and Social Care

Sponsored by the Royal Institute of Philosophy

Wednesday 22 March 2006

5.15 pm

Meeting Room 1, Dearne Building

University of Hull, Cottingham Road

PROFESSOR MARTYN EVANS

University of Durham

Professor of Humanities in Medicine in the School for Health

Editor of Medical Humanities

Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners

'The practice of medicine is an art, not a trade; a calling, not a business:

a calling in which your heart will be exercised equally with your head.'

- William Osler (1849-1919)

Enquiries:  Wendy Darnell  01482 464575    w.darnell@hull.ac.uk 

NEWS

The Institute of Applied Ethics has funds available through a SRIF-2 grant to support research infrastructure in applied ethics. Some of this funding will be used to establish a physical centre for the Institute at the University. Funds have also been directed towards updating and enhancing the library holdings in applied ethics and other equipment.  

Award of Fellowship

Dr Luca Malatesti has been awarded a Research Fellowship, funded by the Wellcome Trust, for the next eighteen months.  Dr Malatesti’s project is titled ‘A Philosophical Investigation of Psychological Explanation and its Importance for Responsibility and Personality Disorders’, and he describes it as follows:

‘Framing appropriate public policy for managing individuals with antisocial personality disorders is a notoriously difficult task. In particular, one of the central issues is whether such people should undergo compulsory treatment. This project aims to provide a significant and constructive contribution to this practical concern by addressing the philosophical issue of moral responsibility and its relationship to psychological description and explanation.’

‘The justification for certain social responses to people with antisocial personality disorder must be grounded in principles that correlate the kind of explanations available of their behaviours with their degree of responsibility. Arguably, compulsory treatment appears to be dependent upon a person’s diminished responsibility or capacity to act accordingly to a treatment decision, together with the risk to themselves or to others. The project will critically evaluate this type of justification and its applicability to individuals with antisocial personality disorder.’