A plant-based nudge

I recently learned that all Student Union catering outlets on campus, including the Stags and Redbrick kitchen (aka chip van), have gone plant-based by default.

(Edit: I was obviously a bit behind, because this decision was actually covered by the BBC earlier in the year.)

To be clear, this does not mean that they are 100% vegan. They still serve meat and dairy, but you have to request it as a substitution. Otherwise, even pepperoni pizza will be a plant-based version. (At least, this is the theory - I'm curious how long this will last.)

The links above may not last if the menu changes, so here's an example:

This is a nice example of a nudge. People can still have either the plant-based option or the real chicken, but making the former the default is likely to increase consumption. At least, that's the theory.

The move follows a couple of petitions - here and here - calling for a more general move towards plant-based catering. ('Follows' at least in the sense of 'comes after' - this move delivers less than was asked for, but is perhaps the most that's realistic, at least for now.) So, it's also an example of student voice/democracy in action.

Ban on advertising junk food

We have a few more weeks of semester 1 (mostly assessment), before we start our second semester of teaching, but - when we get there - I'll be running my ethics of public policy module again. As usual, I'll start with a section on public health and paternalism, which includes tackling obesity. So, the advertising ban that comes into force tomorrow (5th Jan 2026) is particularly well-timed. This follows last year's earlier ban on multi-buy offers.

Parental licensing - in Denmark

Following on from yesterday's post, another topic that I'll cover next semester is parental licensing. This was proposed/defended by Hugh LaFollette some time ago. However, it turns out that it's not merely a philosophical thought experiment. I just learned that Denmark does actually have a parental competency test.

Unfortunately, I don't know any more about it than what's in that article. It seems it isn't applied to all (prospective) parents, but only those that are considered a risk. Nonetheless, it appears that children can be taken away from parents who fail the test, even if they haven't yet suffered any harm.

Scotland proposes to criminalise prostitution

The module that I'll be teaching next semester includes, amongst other things, a week on prostitution. So, it's good to know that there are moves to criminalise it in Scotland. This makes it more topical.

A ban on outdoor smoking

According to BBC reports, the new Labour government (not to be confused with a New Labour government) is considering a ban on smoking in certain outdoor spaces. This might initially sound quite draconian, given that smoking outdoors is not generally so dangerous to others, but actually the places proposed - thinks like pub beer gardens - are places where one might well be in close proximity to other people's second-hand smoke. Whether or not this is a proportionate measure, it is potentially justified by harm to others, rather than paternalism.

Abortion is illegal in the UK

Much of the news coverage around abortion concerns the battle over Roe v Wade in the US. It is relatively low profile in the UK. However, a woman has just been sentenced to 28 months in jail for taking pills, when between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant.

I don't know anything about this case, other than the news report linked above, but Labour MP Stella Creasy is quoted as saying "contrary to what some claim, abortion is not legal in England - and you can be prosecuted for having one".

It concludes with another quotation, from Mandu Reid (leader of the Women's Equality Party), saying "The laws that convicted her [the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act] are archaic and date back to the Victorian era, before women had the vote". 

This seems a slightly odd statement. It's true that the law pre-dates women's suffrage, but of course no one currently alive had the vote back then. Further, women have now had the vote for the last hundred years, so it's not as if there hasn't been opportunity for change.

Generally speaking though, older laws command more respect than newer ones, because they've stood the test of time. Later generations could repeal them if they wanted to, but haven't seen the need to do so. This suggests that they're happy with the laws as they are. (I think Hobbes says something along these lines, but can't be bothered to look it up right now.) 

Publication: How mandatory can we make vaccination? (Public Health Ethics)

Another paper has just been published. This makes two papers published in one month, after this previously announced one, although this newer one is only online so far. I'm not sure when it will be in print. It looks like the journal haven't actually published their November 2022 issue yet, so I suppose it's possible that it will get an official print date of this year - though probably more likely next year.

Here's the abstract:

"The novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has refocused attention on the issue of mandatory vaccination. Some have suggested that vaccines ought to be mandatory, while others propose more moderate alternatives, such as incentives. This piece surveys a range of possible interventions, ranging from mandates through to education. All may have their place, depending on circumstances. However, it is worth clarifying the options available to policymakers, since there is sometimes confusion over whether a particular policy constitutes a mandate or not. Further, I illustrate a different kind of alternative to mandatory vaccination. Rather than seeking less coercive alternatives to a mandate, we might instead employ an alternative mandate, which requires people to do something less than get vaccinated. For instance, we might merely require people to attend an appointment at a vaccine clinic. Whether this mandatory attendance policy is justified will depend on specific circumstances, but it represents another way to promote vaccination, without mandating it. In some cases, this may represent an appropriate balance between promoting public health goals and respecting individual liberty."

And, as usual, a word cloud illustrating the content:

(I believe this was made by FreeWordCloudGenerator.)

Raising the age of smoking?

I was just talking about one case of raising age limits, and along comes another - at least, a proposal for one. As reported here, the government's Khan review into eradicating smoking has proposed further raising of the age at which one can buy cigarettes.

The proposal is in fact that the age should rise by one year every year, copying an existing policy in New Zealand (which I posted about last year). I've discussed such a possibility with my students before, but only as a theoretical proposal, so it's interesting to see it taken seriously as an actual policy. Such a policy would mean that those currently old enough to buy cigarettes will continue to be able to do so, while those who are too young will forever remain so.

This proposal may seem somewhat unfair, but it could be justifiable if we think it worse to take freedom away from someone who has it than it is merely to continue withholding it from someone who has never had it. This seems plausible in the smoker case, since many smokers are addicted, and so would face particular burdens if their access to cigarettes were to be withdrawn.

However, it's worth noting that this reasoning doesn't so much focus on those who are currently old enough to smoke, but rather on those who do currently smoke. I see little reason, besides perhaps practicality, why someone who is currently 30 and a non-smoker should retain the freedom to start smoking in future that a current 15 year-old will never have.

There may also be a parallel issue with under-age smokers. Someone might have acquired an addiction, though slightly under the current age. Under current policy, they would soon be old enough to purchase cigarettes legally but, if this proposal is implemented, then they may never be able to satisfy their addiction legally, because they will always be just under the necessary age threshold.

New Zealand to withhold cigarettes

New Zealand is poised to ban anyone born after 2008 from purchasing cigarettes or tobacco. This is an interesting move. It means that those currently able to purchase these products will still be able to do so, but those not yet able to do so will never be able to do so.

 

This could be seen as some form of age discrimination, but it could reflect the view that it's easier to justify withholding freedom from people that do not have it than to justify withdrawing a freedom that people already have - an asymmetry defended by Andi Schmidt.

Raising the age of marriage (and voting)

I've been teaching on marriage this week, the focus being on same-sex marriage and arguments for abolishing marriage, but I had missed the news that there are moves afoot to raise the minimum age in England and Wales from 16 to 18.

 

It seems this is mainly to prevent children being forced into marriage, which doesn't seem particularly controversial. Nonetheless, even if this doesn't really impact my current teaching, it would be relevant next semester when I look at arguments regarding the voting age. It's often said that if 16 is old enough to get married (etc) then it should be old enough to vote. This argument is undermined though if 16 year-olds are deemed not old enough for other rights.

 

That said, David Runciman's suggestion of lowering the voting age to six has been in the news again lately. I don't know his views on marriage, but I assume he doesn't think that six year-olds should marry, so the two rights certainly don't have to go hand in hand.

Footballers and vaccination

I commented recently about Callum Robinson refusing the vaccine. It seems that he isn't the only footballer to be vaccine hesitant. German international Joshua Kimmich says he isn't vaccinated yet and has concerns about it, though he claims not to be an anti-vaxxer. 

 

If we think that people have a right to refuse vaccination, then that presumably applies to professional sports stars and other celebrities. However, there is a potential issue that high-profile refusers like these will influence others to delay or refuse vaccination, as irrational as it seems for people to follow the lead of footballers rather than health professionals.

 

Perhaps it would be better to keep quiet about these cases or, at least, to increase coverage about those who are vaccinated.

Is vaccination a personal choice?

Like last year, I have a very front-loaded teaching schedule, so posts may be a bit more sporadic between now and Christmas. Still, I'll try to post the odd piece of interest when I get chance. Here is another that I may use in my classes this semester.

West Brom and Republic of Ireland footballer Callum Robinson hasn't been vaccinated. He is reported as saying "I think it's your personal choice and my choice at this moment in time, I haven't been vaccinated".

The Football Association of Ireland concur, saying that they "respect and accept the right of all individuals to make a personal choice on Covid-19 vaccination".

I'm not clear why this 'personal choice' is seemingly accepted here without question. While bodily integrity is at stake, the decision is not what might be called (in Millian terms) 'purely self-regarding' because someone who is not vaccinated may pose a greater risk to other people. This could justify intervention.

Jessica Flanigan makes this point in a 2014 article, where she argues that “Non-vaccination has been mistakenly characterized as a personal, self-regarding medical choice…. people are entitled to make self-regarding medically inadvisable decisions…. But religious and other reasons of conscience cannot justify practices that impose risks on the community”.

 

To be sure, Flanigan doesn't (so far as I'm aware) support forced vaccinations. So, there is indeed a sense in which she thinks people do have a right to refuse vaccination. But this is not a right to refuse vaccination without suffering consequences. She thinks they could (and should) be penalised through fines or certain restrictions on employment.

 

I think I'll be using some, if not all, of these quotations in my lecture slides, possibly in multiple modules.

Down's syndrome and abortion

I'll be covering both abortion and reproductive freedom/selection on my ethics of public policy module this coming semester, so this recent story about Heidi Crowter's High Court challenge is a useful case study.

I'm not a lawyer, but the idea that the law ought to permit abortion in Down's cases, but not others, does seem discriminatory. Of course, one way that could be avoided would be to allow abortion in all cases, rather than in none.

 

The judges not that "not every family would react the same way and the ability to provide for a disabled child would 'vary significantly'" but the same could be said about, for instance, having a girl or indeed having a child at all.

Vaccine incentives

Long-term readers may recall my interest in incentive payments (click the label for more examples). I was interested to see the recent proposals from Australia to pay people (AU $300) to get Covid vaccines.

It's not an original proposal. Similar ideas have been mooted in the US and defended by academics such as Julian Savulescu. Still, while some think that this would be value for money, the Australian government seem sceptical of cash incentives, so we may never know how effective it would prove.

Regulating women's behaviour

 The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently published a first draft 'global action plan' on alcohol. (The preceding link is to something like an online press release; the actual draft plan can currently be found here.)

One thing that has caused particular controversy - such as this report - is the following sentence from p. 17 (emphasis added):

"Appropriate attention should be given to prevention of the initiation of drinking among children and adolescents, prevention of drinking among pregnant women and women of childbearing age, and protection of people from pressures to drink, especially in societies with high levels of alcohol consumption where heavy drinkers are encouraged to drink even more."

Now, it isn't clear (at least on a brief look) exactly what this is supposed to mean. It certainly doesn't seem to propose anything like banning women of childbearing age from consuming alcohol. But, all the same, this is a sweeping statement, suggesting that most women shouldn't consume alcohol, even if they haven't had sex and therefore are not pregnant.

The Metro coverage quotes Matt Lambert (a remark apparently from the Telegraph, but behind a paywall) describing this as "being sexist and paternalistic, and potentially restricting the freedoms of most women".

I wouldn't agree that it's paternalistic, since paternalism usually refers (roughly) to preventing an agent from harming herself. In this case, the guideline isn't to protect the women themselves, but their children. That isn't really paternalism, even if it is unjustified.

Nudging people to use bins

I noticed these new litter bins near me the other week, though I didn't have my camera at the time (and it was dark anyway). I wanted a photo because they're a good example of a non-paternalistic nudge. Presumably, this message has been found to reduce littering by shaming those who would otherwise drop their rubbish on the ground.

I don't actually know how effective these are. I would have hoped that, if people were close enough to a bin, they would use it anyway. That is, I assume most littering happens because there is not a bin handy, so a message on the bin is not a lot of help.

 

Perhaps that's naive of me. There certainly is plenty of litter in this area, suggesting that people won't go far in order to use a bin. Maybe this message will reinforce an anti-littering norm. It still seems odd that the new 'nudge bin' is sited next to an older bin though. Spreading bins around might have done more to reduce littering.

Edit to add: I just noticed that this seems to be post 1,500 on this blog. A fitting subject for this milestone, since most of them have probably been talking rubbish...

Publication: A Sufficiency Threshold is Not a Harm Principle (Bioethics)

 My latest publication has just been assigned to the January 2021 issue of Bioethics. My paper is open access, so available to everyone.

Here's a word cloud summary:

(Generated by https://www.wordclouds.com/).

And here's the more traditional abstract:

Douglas Diekema influentially argues that interference with parental decisions is not in fact guided by the child’s best interests, but rather by a more permissive standard, which he calls the harm principle. This article first seeks to clarify this alternative position and defend it against certain existing criticisms, before offering a new criticism and alternative. This ‘harm principle’ has been criticized for (i) lack of adequate moral grounding, and (ii) being as indeterminate as the best interest standard that it seeks to replace. I argue that these are not serious problems. I take Diekema’s negative point to be right—our actual standard for intervention is not literally the best interests of the child—but I disagree with his proposed replacement. First, Diekema’s proposed harm threshold should be more carefully distinguished from Mill’s harm principle. Second, there is no reason to assume that the standard for permissible intervention coincides with the threshold for harm (or serious harm). Thus, I propose that the best alternative to the best interests standard is not a harm principle, but rather a sufficiency threshold between adequate (or ‘good enough’) and inadequate (or ‘substandard’) parenting.

Organ Donation Change

I haven't caught a bus now in over eight months, due to the ongoing pandemic, but the other day I saw one of these posters at a bus stop and wanted a picture for my lecture on organ donation (as part of my ethics of public policy).

 

This isn't actually the one I saw originally. I didn't have my camera on me then, so I went out specially to get a photo today and it had gone. Thankfully, I decided to walk along to the next stop on the route and found what I was looking for there.

I previously blogged quite a bit about organ donation here, as part of a project that I was running in Stirling. I don't know whether my work had any impact on the recent changes - probably not demonstrable impact anyway - but I'm glad to see this change at last.

Boris Johnson on lockdown and freedom

An interesting section of Hansard (22nd September 2020 - vol. 680, column 814) that was brought to my attention today:

Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)

I thank the Prime Minister for his statement. He is right to say that it is the co-operation and good sense of the British public that has seen the spread of this difficult outbreak curtailed. My constituents will continue to do exactly what is required of them, but the truth is that Cornwall has a very low rate of covid-19, and that has been the case throughout. What message of hope can the Prime Minister give to teenagers going to schools and colleges who are being asked to wear face masks when not in class, to churchgoers who have been blocked from freedom of worship, and to businesses that have yet to open and are continually frustrated from doing so?

The Prime Minister

Churchgoers will continue to have freedom of worship under the proposals. We want life, as far as we possibly we can, to keep going as normally as possible. We want the economy to keep moving. The best hope I can offer my hon. Friend’s constituents, for whom he fights so valiantly, is that we get this virus back under control, take the country forward and keep the economy moving. That is the best prospect for our country.

Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)

Does the Prime Minister think that the reason Germany and Italy have far lower covid rates than us, with life continuing more or less normally, might be that they have locally and publicly run test and trace services that actually work?

The Prime Minister

No, I don’t, and I think the continual attacks on local test and trace and what NHS Test and Trace has done are undermining and unnecessary. Actually, there is an important difference between our country and many other countries around the world: our country is a freedom-loving country. If we look at the history of this country over the past 300 years, virtually every advance, from free speech to democracy, has come from this country. It is very difficult to ask the British population uniformly to obey guidelines in the way that is necessary. What we are saying today is that collectively—I am answering the right hon. Gentleman’s ​question directly—the way to do that is for us all to follow the guidelines, which we will strictly enforce, and get the R down. That is the way forward.

This semester, I've been teaching freedom (as part of our introduction to political theory module) and will be teaching about pandemic responses (as part of my ethics of public policy module). This exchange is relevant to both.

Fit to care for a child?

 I'm currently teaching my Ethics of Public Policy module, which has just moved on to discussing sex and family life. One issue that we look at is parental licensing - as proposed by Hugh LaFollette. 

I've seen, but not yet read, this recent paper by Liam Shields, which unfortunately was too late to be included on my reading list. I might make it an additional recommendation for the students, since we've recently discussed harm reduction in other contexts (e.g. drugs and prostitution).

My reason for posting is seeing this tragic story today, concerning a mother whose neglect led to the death of her 13-year-old daughter in 2018. She's received a prison sentence of wilful ill treatment and neglect, but was cleared of culpable homicide.

Her own solicitor described her as "a lady who clearly has difficulties both mentally and physically, impacting on her ability in how to view things and the consequences of actions or omissions and I think that lies at the root of her culpability in this case", as a result it seems of a traumatic brain injury in her own childhood.

I don't know the full details of the case, including whether or not she was a single parent (I see no mention of this in the BBC article), but I do wonder whether someone who cannot be held responsible for the death of a child in her care should be in the position of primary caregiver in the first place. Perhaps there's something to the licensing proposal after all. In any case, this is a handy recent example to discuss.