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Zombies are a strange source of ethical inspiration, but as I mentioned to io9′s Lauren Davis, if academic ethicists get to spend all day talking about trolleys, I see no reason we can’t banter about the ethics of the undead.
Lauren posed the following query: When is it ok to kill a zombie? Should zombies be [...]
Are Exoskeletons “Ableist?”
By Kyle Munkittrick On January 22, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Bioethics, Body, Medicine, Prosthetics, Rights
In a word, no.
Over at Cyborgology (a blog I am amazed I didn’t discover sooner, given its sister site is Sociological Images) Jenny Davis attempts to figure out if the assistive devices built by Ekso Bionics are “ableist” or if they represent genuine progress. She makes a pretty good [...]
The Society Pages’ Cyborgology dives into our weird relationship with the otherness of the disabled body. While the piece opens with the predictable discussion of Mullins and Pistorius, I was floored by Sarah Wanenchak’s use of Olympic speed skater Apollo Ohno:
Like the images of Mullins and Pistorius, Ohno’s body is explicitly being [...]
The Power of Placebo
By Kyle Munkittrick On January 8, 2012 · Leave a Comment · In Body, Drugs, Health Care, Medicine, Mind
Fertility, depression, Parkinson’s, fitness, hunger levels, pain, and asthma are a few of the things the inert wonder drug can help treat.
Why did the placebo work—even after patients were told they weren’t getting real medicine? Expectations play a role, Dr. Kaptchuk says. Even more likely is that patients were conditioned to a positive [...]
Ekso Bionics is a company to watch. Building exoskeletons for everyday use by paraplegics is their goal by 2014. Erika Strickland’s “Good-bye, Wheelchair, Hello Exoskeleton” highlights the progress of some of Ekso’s first patients and the potential in the near future:
[Eythor] Bender, Ekso Bionics’ CEO, is confident that controlling Eksos will come to [...]
Richard Herring calls-out our biases and preposterous perceptions of those in wheelchairs in the hilarious, intelligent way that only the Brits can. It’s one of the best conversations around disability I’ve ever heard.
Wait for the wobbly comedienne around the 12 minute mark. It’s a highlight.
Makes me miss good AM radio. [...]
Embodied cognition is the idea that my way of thinking is not independent of the body in which I live. My metaphors, imagination, and logical processes are influenced by my body’s position in space, relative height, closeness, or contact with other bodies and my perception of the environment. For those whose bodies have been modified [...]
The placebo effect is well known. Tell someone, “Hey, this pill will make your headache go away” and, though the pill is just a sugar pill and has no pain mediating qualities, will indeed make the headache go away in some small percentage of the population. The placebo effect is the power of suggestion [...]
Iraq, Afghanistan, and the decade or so of not-war-but-still-war that’s been going on has not killed large number of soldiers (relative to past conflicts), but has maimed a huge percentage of those returning home from battle. Those returning previously faced few options to repair their injuries. Now, there looks to be some real [...]
Anthony Gregory, a researcher with the Independent Institute, makes the case in The Atlantic for legalizing organ sales:
Several years ago, transplant surgeon Nadley Hakim at St. Mary’s Hospital in London pointed out that “this trade is going on anyway, why not have a controlled trade where if someone wants to donate a kidney for [...]
About
Pop Bioethics, written by Kyle Munkittrick, is an effort to study the ethics of the continuing evolution of the human species via the lens of pop culture and be somewhat entertaining in the process.
Kyle's writing can also be found at Discover's The Crux, Slate's Future Tense, and at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. For questions or comments: comments [at] popbioethics [dot] com
All opinions, ideas, and words either explicit or implicit found within this website are my own and represent no other person, organization, or group.Categories
