Videos

Debate on Conscientious Objection in Healthcare
With Alberto Giubilini and Xavier Symons (21 October 2023)
Recorded at the Society for Christian Bioethicists 2023 Annual Conference (Online)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlNg4Le2e0o

Ethics in AI Seminar - Does AI threaten Human Autonomy
With Dr Carina Prunkl, Jessica Morley and OUC's Dr Jonathan Pugh (26 November 2020). Chaired by Professor Peter Millican.
How can AI systems influence our decision-making in ways that undermine autonomy? 
Do they do so in new or more problematic ways?
To what extent can we outsource tasks to AI systems without losing our autonomy?
Do we need a new conception of autonomy that incorporates considerations of the digital self?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3FCQTbzHTM

Health vs Choice? The Vaccination Debate
3 November 2019, Barbican Centre, London

Governments in some countries, like Italy and France, have introduced new measures to compel vaccination against specified diseases, linking proof of vaccination to children’s access to state-provided schooling. These measures are presented as a necessary expression of the public good, of the right of children to be protected from serious and sometimes life-threatening diseases, and of the need to uphold truth against lies. However, the turn to compulsion has led some commentators, even some who support vaccination, to raise questions about these measures. Over 200 years since Edward Jenner’s use of cowpox to provide immunity from smallpox, what should we make of the situation now? Is there a legitimate right for individuals or parents to refuse vaccination? Or are claims for the public good and for the right of children to good health, expressed if necessary through compulsion, more ethically persuasive? Watch on YouTube.

Global Legal Epidemiology:  developing a science around whether, when and how international law can address global challenges
Oct 2018
Introducing a pioneering approach to ‘global legal epidemiology’, Professor Steven Hoffman, Oxford Martin Visiting Fellow, will discuss legal mechanisms available for coordinating international responses to transnational problems, their prospects, and their challenges. Global legal epidemiology is the scientific study of international law as a factor in the cause, distribution, and promotion of outcomes around the world. It involves evaluating the effectiveness of international legal mechanisms on the basis of their quantifiable effects and drawing implications for the development of future treaties.Prof Hoffman will draw on examples from public health, including tobacco control and antimicrobial resistance, identifying wider lessons for potential international treaties in other domains such as the environment, human rights and trade. Watch on YouTube.

On 1 June 2018, the International Neuroethics Society (INS) and the Wellcome Centre for Ethics and Humanities at the University of Oxford co-hosted a symposium on human brain organoids. Neuroscientists, clinicians, lawyers and philosophers gathered to hear lectures given by Madeline Lancaster, Julian Savulescu, and INS President Hank Greely.  The lectures were followed by invigorating discussion and debate on the science and the ethics associated with this new technology. You can find videos of the lectures below and an accompanying summary of the issues discussed on the INS website. Watch on YouTube.

Wilkinson, D., (2016), Interview on HFEA decision to approve 'three-person baby’ mitochondrial transfer in UK, Al Jazeera English news channel (15 December 2016).

Parfit, D., (2015). 'Effective Altruism'. Oxford Union (17 June)