News Round-Up
26 July 2024
Government Has Just Declared War on Free Speech
26 July 2024
by Toby Young
The Government sidelined and then shut down its ethics committee after it tried to intervene on the vaccination of children, it has emerged in a scandal that raises serious questions about the Government's Covid response.
Helen MacNamara, who is giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry today, was the Government ethics chief who was at the heart of a very unethical lockdown-busting party at the height of the pandemic.
The UK's pandemic plan was clear that lockdowns were not to be used and ethics was to be central. Both of these were ditched in March 2020, says Dr David Seedhouse. Yet the Covid Inquiry has shown no interest in why.
AI chatbots have started to come out with some highly disturbing responses, from calling users "enemies" to trying to get them to leave their wives. What are the ethical implications of this, and are we all doomed?
Dr David Seedhouse, who created the Ethical Grid 35 years ago as a tool to guide ethical decision-making, says lockdown would have been avoided if politicians learned how to think ethically.
Ethical scepticism refuses to let the perpetrator of a gross injustice off the hook and evade accountability just because the alternatives may be worse. Ethical sceptics should have no confidence in Boris Johnson.
New York University Professor of Finance Aswath Damodaran has pointed out that, contrary to CSR/ESG theory, 'ethical' businesses have done worse following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The Government's big mistake with COVID-19 was throwing ethics out the window without a second thought, so no one reflected on whether it was justified so egregiously to trample on people's fundamental rights.
Individualising treatment, monitoring, safety, informed consent, and prescribing within the limitations of your knowledge – how well have these principles of sound clinical practice been applied in the pandemic?
Chris Whitty said the Great Barrington Declaration is "probably" unethical, presumably because it would have led to more deaths. But the UK's pandemic plan forecast 315,000 deaths, and Whitty never tried to change it.
© Skeptics Ltd.