Nothing as It Seems

The article was originally published in Balls.ie  Most fans of sport think that performance-enhancing drugs should be prohibited, and that any athlete who gets caught taking them should be suspended or even banned from competition. Some of the most notorious villains in sport, down through the years, have been involved in high profile drugs scandals: Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, Marion Jones, and Justin Gatlin. Fans and critics alike have also long suspected that the use of performance enhancing drugs are widespread. A few weeks ago, the Sunday Times and German broadcaster ARD published a joint investigation on doping in athletics, which suggested that around a third of medallists at the Olympic Games and World Championships between 2001 and 2012 have recorded suspicious tests. There are, of course, other reasons to suspect that doping is widespread: of all the podium finishers in the Tour de France between 1996 and 2010, around 80 percent are suspected ...

Earlier this year, the Government announced that they are preparing new laws to regulate surrogacy and the broader area of assisted human reproduction. The draft legislation will contain proposals to regulate surrogacy in Ireland for the first time, and will include an obligation for commissioning parents and surrogate mothers to give their consent and have counselling prior to any arrangement. Yet the legislation is expected to include a ban on commercial surrogacy—an arrangement where the surrogate mother receives a payment for bearing and giving birth to a child, on the condition that she eventually hands over the child, as well as the parental rights and responsibilities, to the commissioning couple. The legislation will only permit non-commercial surrogacy (or altruistic surrogacy), where surrogates receive no financial gain—although a reimbursement of out-of-pocket costs will be permitted. In an interview with RTÉ around the same time as the announcement, the Heal...

In February the Minister for Health, Leo Varadkar, announced that the Cabinet are preparing new laws to regulate assisted human reproduction and surrogacy. At present there exists a legal vacuum, but the proposed Bill for Assisted Human Reproduction and Stem Cell Research will work towards regulating surrogacy and associated practices for the first time in Ireland. It is understood that legislation will only permit altruistic surrogacy , but not commercial surrogacy . Other countries like Denmark and Britain already permit altruistic surrogacy, but ban commercial surrogacy, while France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal and Italy ban the practice completely. Surrogacy is an arrangement where a woman becomes pregnant with the intention of transferring over the baby to someone else sometime after giving birth. In cases of altruistic surrogacy, it is usually a relative or close friend who volunteers to be the surrogate mother. Generally, infertile couples are the group most li...

In a recent article for the Sunday Business Post (14th Dec 2014), the science writer David Robert Grimes advises us not to be taken in by simple answers to cancer. In particular, he argues we should be highly sceptical of those who claim there’s evidence a plant based diet cures patients from the disease.  “Simplistic narratives may be alluring,” he says, “but when we seek simple answers to complex conditions like cancer, we run a serious risk of detrimental self-delusion.”  Grimes’ piece was largely in response to a new book— Stop Feeding Your Cancer —by Dr John Kelly, a Dublin based GP, who claims that the consumption of animal protein exacerbates cancer. Kelly’s evidence, according to a book review that appeared in the Irish Independent, was derived from the testimonies of over half a dozen cases—nothing, to be sure, that resembles a clinical trial. Also in response, Grimes, rightly, said that “a physician may attribute patient recovery to a special diet while u...

It emerged just recently that doctors in an Irish hospital are seeking legal advice over whether they can switch off the life support machine of a woman who is 16 weeks pregnant . The woman, believed to be in her mid to late 20s, suffered a head trauma and a clot to the brain a number of weeks ago. The family of the woman—who is reported as clinically “brain dead,” but still undeniably a living human organism*—want the medical team to allow her to die. Even though there’s no chance of revival, doctors and medical staff at the hospital are reluctant to carry out her family’s wishes because she is about 16 weeks pregnant. In order to save the life of the foetus, sustaining the mother until a Caesarean section can be carried out would be required. Some people have asked why life-support is not turned off in this case.  Conor O’Mahony, a lecturer of law at UCC, wrote in the Irish Examiner that “ [w]hile the Supreme Court has held that people have a constitutional right to...