Uehiro Oxford Institute

In this talk, Neil Armstrong uses ethnographic material of NHS mental healthcare to raise some questions about autonomy, risk and personal and institutional responsibility. Neil Armstrong's research investigates mental health. He is particularly interested in how the institutional setting shapes so much of mental healthcare. His research aims to find ways that we might improve healthcare institutions rather than just focussing on developing new healthcare interventions. He is also concerned with methodological questions: how anthropological work can be of clinical value, and how best to produce anthropological knowledge in an inclusive way.

In this talk, Neil Armstrong uses ethnographic material of NHS mental healthcare to raise some questions about autonomy, risk and personal and institutional responsibility. Neil Armstrong's research investigates mental health. He is particularly interested in how the institutional setting shapes so much of mental healthcare. His research aims to find ways that we might improve healthcare institutions rather than just focussing on developing new healthcare interventions. He is also concerned with methodological questions: how anthropological work can be of clinical value, and how best to produce anthropological knowledge in an inclusive way.

In this talk, Prof. Peter Sandøe argues that, from an ethical viewpoint, gene editing is the best solution to produce hornless cattle. There are, however, regulatory hurdles. Presented at the workshop 'Gene Editing and Animal Welfare, 19 Nov. 2019, Oxford - organised by the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, funded by the Society for Applied Philosophy.

Respecting patients' autonomy is increasingly important in the digital age, yet researchers have raised concerns over the barriers of access to medical data useful for data-driven medical research. Respecting patients and their autonomy, a primary obligation of medical professionals, is increasingly important in the digital age. Yet biomedical and bioethical researchers have raised concerns over the barriers of access to previously stored medical data useful for epidemiological and other data-driven medical research. These barriers were introduced to protect the privacy and autonomy of patients but have had the unintended consequence of widespread and often severe selection bias, undermining research quality. This talk introduces novel advances in computer science and cryptography, notably blockchain, as a proposed solution to the dilemmas raised by consent requirements to retroactive epidemiological research. It describes how these technologies can be used to reduce or eliminate data breach risks as well as radically enhance control over medical data for those who possess it. Ethics and the law of most nations allow for consent waivers for research with minimal risk. If implemented properly, blockchain- and smart-contract based tools could reduce the privacy risk of most, if not all, records-based research to minimal, thus potentially freeing up the legislative space for a large-scale facilitation of records-based research. Importantly, the technology described in this talk could also be used to radically enhance the control that individuals and other data owners have over their pseudonymous medical data. These insights are critical to the increasingly important policy issues concerning access to, and control over, biomedical data.

These affordances of novel technologies should be widely discussed in the medical and policy professions to ensure that they are used for the furtherance of ethical principles. This talk aims to open preliminary discussion on these topics.

Professor Julian Savulescu and Dr Katrien Devolder discuss the use of genetic testing to select which children to bring into the world. Should we use genetic testing to choose which children to bring into the world, and if so, how should we choose? Is it acceptable to choose a deaf child? Should we choose our children on the basis of non-disease traits such as intelligence or fitness, if we can? Does genetic selection put too much pressure on prospective parents? In this interview with Katrien Devolder (Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics), Professor Julian Savulescu, director of the Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, defends his controversial view that we should select those children, from among the children we could have, that will have the best chance at the best life.

In November 2018, a Chinese scientist announced the birth of the world’s first gene-edited babies and sparked outrage across the world. Professor Nie considers how China's complex socio-ethical approach paved the way for this controversial experiment. Among numerous ethical issues, editing heritable germline genomes of otherwise healthy embryos for natural resistance to HIV constitutes an effort of positive eugenics, i.e. not treating disease but enhancing genetic features. This paradigm case of scientific misconduct has its roots in the widespread practice of yousheng (eugenics) in China and in the nation’s pursuit of science superpower status. This talk will offer a (brief) socio-ethical inquiry into how the ideologies of nationalism, sinicised social Darwinism and scientism have shaped the Chinese authoritarian model of human genetic engineering in a global context.

Professor Seumas Miller defines fake news, hate speech and propaganda, discusses the relationship between social media and political propaganda. In this article I provide definitions of fake news, hate speech and propaganda, respectively. These phenomenon are corruptive of the epistemic (i.e. knowledge-aiming) norms, e.g. to tell the truth. I also elaborate the right to freedom of communication and its relation both to censoring propaganda and to the role of epistemic institutions, such as a free and independent press and universities. Finally, I discuss the general problem of countering political propaganda in cyberspace and argue, firstly, that there is an important role for epistemic institutions in this regard and, secondly, that social media platforms need to be redesigned since, as they stand and notwithstanding the benefits which they provide, they are a large part of the problem.

In this special lecture, Professor Mitt Regan discusses the latest research in moral perception and judgment, and the potential implications of this research for ethics education in general and military ethics training in particular. In November 2005, an improvised explosive device destroyed a vehicle in a US Marine Corps convoy, killing one man and seriously injuring another. Less than a minute later, Sergeant Frank Wuterich saw five unarmed Iraqi men standing by a car about fifteen meters away. The men were unarmed, and made no move to advance toward him, nor did they exhibit any hostile behavior. Wuterich later described what happened next: “I took a knee in the road and fired. Engaging was the only choice. The threat had to be neutralized.” The five men whom Wuterich killed were four college students and a driver they had hired to take them to class. The white car in effect was a taxi, although not marked as such. No weapons were found in the car.

On one account, Wuterich’s moral failure was that he allowed himself to be overcome by emotions of fear and anger that were untempered by reason. This account is consistent with an influential understanding of moral behavior as a product of higher-order cognitive processes that distinguish us from other creatures. As humans, we can be held responsible for failing to use reason to bring our emotions under control.

On another account, however, Wuterich’s moral failure was that he responded to the situation with the wrong kind of emotion. This account posits that emotions have a cognitive component, and that individuals can be held responsible for the kinds of emotional responses that they habitually exhibit in specific situations. This lecture will discuss research in neuroscience and psychology that provides support for this account by emphasizing the importance of affective computational processes that are closely associated with moral perception and judgment. It will then discuss the potential implications of this research for ethics education in general and military ethics training in particular.

In this New St Cross Special Ethics Seminar, Professor Tony Coady argues that religion does not have an inherent tendency towards violence, including particularly war and terrorism. There is a widespread belief amounting almost to a cultural assumption in many influential circles that assigns to religion and religious difference an inherent tendency to violence. In this talk, Professor Coady highlights misleading implications and confusion between religious war and terrorism, particularly the ways in which causation and motivation of terrorist acts can be obscured by the concentration upon religious affiliation and rhetoric surrounding some terrorist perpetrators.

Professor Seumas Miller sets out how the use of lethal and coercive forces may erode moral character and cause moral injury. According to leading psychiatrist Jonathan Shay whose patients are US war veterans, “Moral injury is an essential part of any combat trauma that leads to lifelong psychological injury. Veterans can usually recover from horror, fear and grief so long as ”what’s right” has also not been violated”. The focus of this paper is on moral injury in both military combatants and police officers. The role of combatants and that of police officer both necessarily involve the use of harmful methods – paradigmatically, the use of lethal force in the case of combatants, the use of coercive force, deception and the like in the case of police officers - in the service of good ends, notably national self-defence and law enforcement, respectively. However, the use of these methods sets up a dangerous moral dynamic, including so-called dirty hands/dirty harry scenarios, and the possibility of the erosion of moral character - and, in some cases, moral injury.