Later this summer, Glasgow will become the focal point for elite sport, as the Commonwealth Games roll into town for ten days. Athletes from all over the Commonwealth will converge to compete to achieve the athletic ideal of being “faster, higher, stronger”.
Ottoline Leyser, Deputy Chair of Council and Professor of Plant Development and Director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, University of Cambridge
I have just reread The Double Helix, James Watson’s story of the discovery of the structure of DNA. What struck me most about it is the strong theme of raw and naked ambition running through it. Of course Watson is excited about the biological implications of the double helical DNA structure, and also by its elegance as a solution to a longstanding conundrum. But my overriding impression is that his main motivation was to win the race, to be the first and to beat the opposition. It would be foolish to deny that this is an important motivation for many people, driving them to do all kinds of things (more…)
In this week’s budget the Chancellor reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to reducing the deficit. Deficit reduction is the Coalition Government’s one paramount policy objective and the definitive register for their political rhetoric. I’m now beginning to wonder whether we have unwittingly found ourselves in a deficit reduction paradigm, where the response to all political questions is ‘reduce the deficit’. (Like the ‘law of the instrument’, also known as ‘Marslow’s hammer’: ‘if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail’.
Southend, Southbank, Surrey
So begins a travelogue of a heroic attempt on my part to visit every place in England that begins with the letter ‘S’.
More success was realised in my visits to three different places of education in each of these locations in the course of one week. My mission: to talk with three groups of young people about our 2011 report Human bodies: donation for medicine and research.
When is a period not a period?
The period, as my six-year-old son knows, terminates a sentence, brings a discrete thought to an end (like this). Nevertheless, thinking has momentum; it trips over the period into the next sentence (like this). He also knows that a hyphen elides two or more thoughts, like the thought that he is a six-year-old boy (the number of counts, the unit of measure and the directional accumulation of time as ageing). How, then, might I explain to him the meaning of ‘care.data’? (more…)
2014 is the year of the REF (Research Excellence Framework). It follows the RAE (Research Assessment Exercise) of 2008, but University researchers have not really had six years off.
The growing demand for cosmetic procedures is showing no signs of slowing down. New figures from the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons are quite amazing: there was a 17 percent increase in the number of cosmetic operations performed between 2012 and 2013 and not one single procedure decreased in popularity. Liposuction increased by 41 percent.
This post is based on a talk given by our Council Member Professor Julian Hughes at “Dementia and stigma: a dinner and discussion” at the House of Lords on Monday 3 February. The event was organised by the International Longevity Centre-UK together with Alzheimer’s Research UK, Alzheimer’s Society, the Medical Research Council and Pfizer. Julian was a member of the Council’s Working Party which produced the report Dementia: ethical issues, published in 2009.
Back at our desks and feeling as refreshed as we could possibly be after the New Year’s festivities, it’s time to look back at what turned out to be another busy and memorable year for the Council. As well as publishing two reports, opening two consultations and recruiting several new Council members, we have explored new ways of promoting public debate and engagement with bioethics issues. This venture has so far seen us take on the Bloomsbury Festival, the Houses of Parliament and even a children’s radio show. Here are some of the highlights of 2013:
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