Law, Ethics and Lockdowns: Impacts on Life, Liberty and the Economy.

Many people worldwide, particularly those with disabilities and the elderly, suffered greatly not only as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic but also as a result of the lockdowns. In this article we set out widely-accepted ethical criteria for assessing when coercive public health measures are justified. We then review the empirical evidence, not least concerning the benefits and costs of the lockdowns, and conclude that lockdowns as instituted in the UK (and, presumptively, in many other jurisdictions) appeared to breach those criteria.

Prolonged disorders of consciousness: a critical evaluation of the new UK guidelines.

In March 2020, the Royal College of Physicians in the UK published national guidelines on the management of patients with prolonged disorders of consciousness, updating their 2013 guidance 'particularly in relation to recent developments in assessment and management and … changes in the law governing … the withdrawal of clinically assisted nutrition and hydration'. The report's primary focus is on patients who could live for many years with treatment and care. This update, by a neurologist, an imaging neuroscientist, and a lawyer-ethicist, questions the document's rejection of any significant role for neuroimaging techniques including functional MRI and/or bedside EEG to detect covert consciousness in such patients.

Back to the future of abortion law: Roe's rejection of America's history and traditions.

In Roe v. Wade much of Justice Blackmun's judgment was devoted to the history of abortion in Anglo-American law. He concluded that a constitutional right to abortion was consistent with that history.

A reply to McLachlan.

In an earlier article in this journal, I advanced five ethical arguments in favour of a voluntary, unpaid system of blood donation. In his reply to my article, Hugh McLachlan criticised one of those arguments, namely, the argument that an unpaid system promotes altruism and social solidarity. In this reply to Dr.