The United States has faced an uphill battle this summer in its attempts to impose international sanctions on Iran and North Korea. In this episode of Public Ethics Radio, we consider why it might not be such a bad thing that sanctions are difficult to impose. Our guest is Joy Gordon, whose new book on the Iraq sanctions regime describes a superpower run amok. The international sanctions on Iraq were the strictest ever imposed. The tremendous damage that ensued set the stage for the devastated country we see today.
Episode 14. Matthew Rimmer on Intellectual Property and Clean Technologies
Climate change exposes the trade-off inherent in intellectual property protection. Research and development is expensive; companies won’t invest in it if they don’t expect to profit. Traditionally, profits from new technologies are provided by the exclusive rights granted by the patent system. But by granting patent rights, we ensure that new innovations will have a limited reach. So how do we both create new technologies and spread them as widely as possible? We need climate-friendly technology to be used everywhere, including in developing countries with limited resources. In this episode of Public Ethics Radio, we explore the debate about intellectual-property policy for clean technologies.
Filed under Episodes
Episode 13. Sarah Holcombe on Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights
Western pharmaceutical and agricultural businesses have long recognized that there is money to be made from the traditional knowledge of local, indigenous communities. Sociologists and anthropologists also seek to gain—intellectually and academically—from conducting research on and with these communities. What rules should govern the interaction with so-called traditional knowledge? How can intellectual property rights be designed so as to minimize harm to indigenous peoples and maximize the goods of research, and share it equitably?
Filed under Episodes
Episode 12. Anne Phillips on Ownership and the Body
Is the human body a piece of property? We certainly object to the sale of whole human beings, but what about cases where a person merely wants to sell a part of her body? If I am free to donate my organs, why am I not free to to sell them as well? For Professor Anne Phillips, the problem lies in treating the body as property, analogous to any other commodity.
In this episode of Public Ethics Radio, we explore issues of ownership and the body. These questions do not end with organ sales. What limits, for instance, should we put on the sale of bodily services like surrogacy? Should trade in these services be limited, in order to prevent the poor from being exploited by the rich? Should organ markets be legalized and regulated? We discuss these questions with Anne Phillips, Professor of Political Gender and Gender Theory at the London School of Economics.
Understand Afghanistan: News Roundup
A selection of the latest news from Afghanistan.
Filed under General
Episode 11. Christopher Heath Wellman on Immigration
There is no denying that international borders—coercively upheld and protected—are a huge factor in determining the distribution of wealth and opportunities throughout the world. From education and health care, to access to credit and the rule of law, a host of factors that influence quality of life depend simply on which side of a border a person is born on. Yet what could be more arbitrary, morally speaking, than where a person happens to be born? And why is it that inequality and poverty traceable back to this factor is generally considered less objectionable than deprivations that result from factors such as race, ethnicity or gender?
To get a grip on these questions, Public Ethics Radio discussed immigration and citizenship policies with Christopher Heath Wellman. Wellman is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis, and a Professorial Research Fellow at Charles Sturt University in the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics, an Australian Research Council Special Research Centre. His views on immigration are also set out in his recent, “Immigration and Freedom of Association,” Ethics 119, no. 1 (2008): 109–141.
Continue reading
Understanding Afghanistan: Reading Material
Once a week or so, we’ll be rounding up recent reading material on Afghanistan. After the jump, the inaugural list.
Filed under General
