In this episode we talk with Prof Robert Young from La Trobe University about the changing nature of philosophy in the 1970s, emergence of applied ethics, and early days of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Victoria.
References
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Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
In this episode we talk with Prof Robert Young from La Trobe University about the changing nature of philosophy in the 1970s, emergence of applied ethics, and early days of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of Victoria.
References
Music & Photo
Undisciplinary - a podcast that talks across the boundaries of history, ethics, and the politics of health.
Follow us on Twitter @undisciplinary_ or email questions for "mailbag episodes" undisciplinarypod@gmail.com
ROBERT YOUNG: And at the end, half of the people from the floor said, "I don't understand. You get a standing ovation. You should have been tarred and feathered for what you said"
[Introductory music]
CHRIS MAYES: Welcome to Undisciplinary a podcast where we are talking across the boundaries of history, ethics and the politics of health
Today we're recording on the unceded lands of the Wathaurong and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation. In Geelong and Melbourne.
COURTNEY HEMPTON: Today on undisciplinary we’re featuring a an interview that we had with professor of philosophy Robert Young from La Trobe University. This is from a project that we're working on, on the history of bioethics in Australia and Robert Young
CM: Robert Young was one of the early philosophers involved in bioethicsand the emergence of applied ethics in Australia. Topics we cover include euthanasia and his involvement in the euthanasia Society of Victoria, resource allocation and the changing nature of philosophy.
CH: The conversation with Robert was recorded outdoors on campus at La Trobe University in Bundoora a number of months ago, before we all went into pandemic related isolation and so the background of the recording features some familiar, and in these times, seemingly quaint campus noises. So there's some bird life and of course some on campus construction.
CM: Yeah, I mean apart from obviously the great content provided from Professor Young it’s enjoyable to hear some thoughts and some campus life again.
CH: And so the conversation begins with us, asking Robert Young about his background and what led him to an interest in ethics and applied philosophy dissatisfaction moves.
RY: Partly dissatisfaction with the way a lot of ethics was being practised and published. So there was a focus on language oriented stuff from a hang over from Hare and his influence and others like him, from the '50s and 60s in Oxford; and the belief that if philosophy was going to be useful, it should contribute to being able to resolve serious problems that were facing people every day of the week.
I started out in my own interest in bioethics as a result of doing some work on assisted dying. So way back in 1975, I think it would have been, I read a paper to a society here in Melbourne; and some people turned up who had just established the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, Victoria. So they got me involved. Of course, the upshot is that eventually, 40 odd years later, we finally got some legislation last year.
It took a long time coming. So that's where it really started for me; thinking about assisted dying; but then there were a lot of other issues that I began to reflect on.
CM: Did you do your PhD at Flinders? Yeah, yeah. And what was your PhD research on?
RY: That was on philosophy of religion; and mostly about human freedom and its connection with fatalism, divine foreknowledge, divine omnipotence. But I was always interested in applying my interest in human freedom. So there's already a connection.
CM: Yes, there is an article from yours in 1975 that I was just reading; "some criteria for making decisions concerning the distribution of scarce medical resources"
RY: Well, that's the second area that I moved into; was thinking about, "How do you distribute scarce medical resources?" And there wasn't a lot of discussion about the topic at the time. Nicholas Rescher had written about it; and, in part, I was responding to some of the things he had to say. But it's now, I think, a much more central topic than it was then.
CM: Were you at all engaging with medical professionals in Australia
RY: Not at that stage. That came later. I think people in the medical areas began to think, "Maybe philosophers and people who think about questions of ethics do have something to say to us; and maybe we should be listening".
CM: Yes, because in that paper as well, you talk about meta-ethics and "needing to focus more on the moment of moral decision making” and then you sort of say this is a quote from the paper, "The professional moral philosopher, of course, is only rarely, if ever, going to be in on the decision making as regards to the distribution of scarce medical resource; but he can make a contribution in advance of the specific moral problem being confronted." So there seems to be a humility
RY: Well, you are not at the bedside. You are not, in most cases, in hospital committees. Though I have served on a couple of hospital ethics committees, it's not an area where you really influence the decision making taken about allocation of resources. It's mostly about research projects that you get to look at; and see how annoyed researchers are when you criticise or object to them.
CM: So you were working on you were on a hospital ethics committee in the mid '70s?
RY: Yes, two; two different ones.
CM: That would have been around some of these introductions of informed consent and having a greater
RY: Informed consent was a big issue; and, again, it's something that I later wrote about. But knew a lot more about it when I wrote about it, than when I was on the ethics committees; because you learn from your own research, in ways that enlighten you about things that you thought you knew but you didn't really know.
CM: I am interested as well, I suppose on the one hand, the doctors are feeling that philosophers, or the later term, bioethicists coming into their space; but I would also be interested in your reflections on the changing nature of philosophy and how, perhaps, other philosophers responded to the emergence of applied ethics.
Because looking at, say, the archives of Max Charlesworth and Peter Singer, around a similar time they were also either making public statements or saying, "Philosophy needs to get out into the real world and start doing somethings”
RY: Yes. Well, again, I will tell you anecdote that I think illustrates the answer to your question. The first paper I read to the philosophy seminar here, after I took up my appointment, one of the central criticisms was, "What's this got to do with philosophy?" And it was on an applied ethics topic; because it was even as almost, like, preaching rather than having much to do with philosophy; because people who were making this criticism thought ethics was about meta ethics and not about trying to provide ethical advice on serious ethical problems.
So there was resistance but I think that's all changed significantly.
People like Peter Singer were dyed in the wool utilitarians; but his teachers had been Hare who was a kind of utilitarian; but, as you know, two level utilitarian; and HJ McCloskey, who was also here at Latrobe, and he wasn't a utilitarian. McCloskey was an intuitionist; much more akin to the deontological approach that someone like Franklin would have favoured.
So Peter was, in a sense, resisting some of what he had been taught; but he was definitely, and still is, committed to the utilitarian approach. You know, I think it's a simplistic way to address the issue as well. That's a long story.
CM: (Laughs). Well, perhaps part of that of long story so you were co teaching, of course, with Peter. Were you here before him or did you come around the same time.
RY: One year before him.
CM: And were you teaching that course was it called "Social Philosophy"?
RY: Yes. You have been doing your research (laughs).
CM: I have been trying to (laughs). What was the nature of that course?
RY: It was a very wide ranging subject, covering pretty well all of the issues that we thought were ethically topical at the time; including feminism, environmental ethics and a whole raft of other things that were well beyond the brief for bioethics. And then that later spawned other subjects; like, feminism, environmental ethics.
CM: And the students attending that ?
RY: There were very large numbers. I think the first year that we offered it, we had 150 second/third year students doing it. So the zeitgeist was one where the students wanted to think about those kind of issues; because they believed they were important. So it was an attractive option for them. Who knows, I don't know, whether it's still the case; because I have got very little understanding of what contemporary students' interests are.
CM: Is that also something did you feel that that course and sort of tapping into that zeitgeist was something encouraged by Latrobe? Because I am trying to look at a little bit of the nature of the university would that course be taught at, say, University of Melbourne, for instance?
RY: Probably not. Latrobe was both the biggest department
CM: Yeah, I know that. I can't get my head around 27 people or something?
Yeah, more than that. At one stage we had 32, I think
CM: yeah, crazy.
RY: So it was an enormous department. So, fundamentally, if you put up a proposal, and no one vigorously objected or pointed out that there were holes in the proposal, then you could offer it. If there were students, who voted with their feet, then you got the numbers; and pretty well, clearly, social philosophy was very attractive to lots of students.
Remember, at the time, Humanities and Social Sciences at Latrobe didn't have as many disciplines available to students as is the case now. So Philosophy had enormous numbers; History had enormous numbers; English had enormous numbers.
CM: And what can you recall about teaching with Peter Singer?
RY: Well, Peter and I both have the same approach to philosophy; we are both interested in evidence and argument; are the central elements to how you go about doing philosophy. But he and I taught in different ways. Possibly because he found he had more confidence in doing it that way, he was more likely to give extemporary lectures without a lot of notes. Whereas I handed out notes to students, because I wanted them to understand the train of thought that led me to the conclusions that I was urging them to think about.
So we didn't teach in the same way but we certainly never contradicted each other. You know, his book "Practical Ethics", that was originally proposed to Cambridge as a joint thing for us to do (laughs) but Cambridge (laughs) said, no, they didn't want that.
CM: Yes, I read the letters (laughs).
RY: …so Peter can do it.
CM: Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask about that.
RY: And it ended up being a successful book.
CM: Yes, and that was related to those courses
RY: Mmm.
CM: and around the time that he took up his position here, he had just published "Animal Liberation", or it came out shortly after
RY: Yeah, either just after he arrived or around the time
CM: Yes. Did that make much of an impact, either among colleagues/faculty in terms of
RY: Well, it made an impact on me, for example; because I read it and then had lunch with Peter; and while I ate my corned beef and tomato sandwiches, we talked about vegetarianism and other issues.
My wife was much more readily persuaded because she didn't like going to the butcher's shop. And we eventually agreed that even though our reasons for being vegetarians were not the same as Peter's and I disagreed with him in discussions about his anti speciesism stuff in connection with his utilitarian position we ended up thinking, "We could reduce the harm we did by being vegetarian".
CM: It seems that some of bioethics did start, as you were mentioning, in the 1970s with a broader perspective; and then became increasingly focussed on, say, the doctor/patient relationship or the individual patient's rights
RY: Yeah, well, I think the establishment of the Centre and some other Centres elsewhere, like the Hastings Center in New York State and one/two in other places, was based on the idea that there was a sufficient number of issues within the medical and biological sciences, to just have that focus; that you didn't need to, perhaps, try to spread yourself too broadly; and maybe in the process, also have less impact. So the focus was on the medical and the biological sciences because there were a lot of huge, new developments taking place. And probably biggest transformations in our society, in some respects, apart from the technological ones, have been in the biological and medical sciences in the last 40 to 50 years.
CM: Yes, I was interested in reading that paper on "resource allocation" from '75, are sort of on the cusp of some of these developments in, say, IVF which I think was one of the big reasons, say, for the Monash Centre and others like it, responding to those technological developments. And in there, you were taking an argument more towards the heroic
Man: Sorry, guys, do you know where the toilet is?
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CM: But other things that I was looking at, of your contribution beyond philosophy: you wrote a number of essays not essays letters, sorry, to The Medical Journal of Australia in '85, regarding voluntary euthanasia and then in '94, about autonomous patients and medical professionalism. What, again, as a philosopher obviously with this applied bent, but to write to a journal like the Medical Journal of Australia did you read that regularly or you…
RY: No, no, no. I was trying to influence doctors to take seriously patient autonomy. You know, I had been writing about autonomy, as you know, I'm sure the book on "autonomy"; and thinking about informed consent; because these are critical to doctor/patient relations. And they were undergoing change, too, from having been the old fashioned "doctor knows best" stuff. Patients were becoming much more willing to ask questions; much more willing to have a say in their own treatment; and it seemed to me that the medical professions in Australia were still a little bit conservative in that regard. And I think the AMA, as such, remains a conservative body; as you can tell from them being in a group like the Doctors Reform Society, which is much more aligned with the kind of thinking that I would have.
CM: Did you have many doctors approach you or wanting to come here to do further study, like, with say the Monash Centre, part of their strategy was specifically targeting and facilitating
RY: Yeah, they used to run these seminars or workshops up at
CM: Mount Buffalo?
RY: Healesville, firstly. And then I think Mount Buffalo later. And I contributed to those. But we had one or two postgrads who came from medical backgrounds; but I think Monash, quite rightly, had a better name for doing that. In addition to Peter and Helga, there was Justin Oakley there. Dean Cocking was around for a while. So all of those people would have been better bets, to have people go there and work with them.
CH: Yes, so you mentioned someone from Voluntary Euthanasia Society
RY: Yes, Tim Sackley, who was at the time the founding father of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, Victoria. Although Tim and I hold diametrically opposed views on lots of things, that was one area where we worked. And Tim and Beryl, his wife, were really the major agents behind that society. Beryl, I believe, is dead but Tim is still alive. And they were very hard workers; but also a little narrow minded in their approach. They would brook; no alternative ways of doing things. And I think in the end that's why they probably moved aside; where they got a bit disheartened by the fact that not everyone shared their approach to things.
And I was president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society for a number of years. And then Helga was the president for a period as well. I think I was instrumental in getting Rodney Syme involved because he had written to The Age; and so I suggested that the Committee should approach him to see whether he would be interested in being involved; and he was. So he consequently had a significant role and in a way was a much better public face to have than a philosopher. Because "philosophers were a bunch of eggheads; but he's a medical specialist, so we can sit up and take notice if he's going to say, 'I am prepared to be prosecuted for helping people to die'".
So there were some things done behind the scenes. You know, they still have to remain behind the scenes, just to protect other people's reputation. But having Rodney come on board with the VEV, as it was then called they changed their name because they were always scared of the word "euthanasia", was a big ??? to the organisation.
Again, you know, I think Rodney put some people who don't share his secularist attitudes off side; but he's nonetheless been a very significant and important element in the developments that occurred. So what else did you want to know about assisted dying legislation or talks, and so on?
CH: Around those historical/present law reforms, obviously, through your involvement in this society or personally in terms of making submissions to
RY: Yes, I did make submissions.
CH: …to the inquiries and things like that. So that would be particularly in Victoria, Inquiry to Dying with Dignity; Options for Dying with Dignity in the late '80s. Uhm
RY: Well, it does go back to Helga and I approaching the then Minister for Health, White, to try and get a change in the law. Now, we got a compromise. We didn't get what we wanted. That's when the Refusal of Medical Treatment bill was first introduced. That really is no different to I think muddies the waters, to call it "passive euthanasia"; but that's really what it amounts to, what people understand as "passive euthanasia". It's a longstanding right that people have but one that was not well understood, that they should have enacted in legislation.
So we saw White down at his offices; and persuaded him to take up the baton to do something about it. Unfortunately, people like Nick Tonti Filippini and others also got involved; because the Labor Party was running scared of the reaction of the Catholic church; even though, as I say, the refusal of medical treatment is just a longstanding right; it's not in any way a radical development. But it was some measure of progress; and there had been a couple of instantiations of that bill which you could see as breaking down the barriers to the introduction, ultimately, of the assisted dying legislation. So it was worth doing, even though I think it was small beer; it was nonetheless worth doing.
CM: In mentioning Nick Tonti Filippini, I would be interested in any reflections about the relationship between religion and bioethics in Australia? At certain points there have been more polemic relationships
RY: Yes.
CM: and other times seemingly working
RY: Well, the Catholic church and I'm not a Catholic the Catholic church is an interesting measuring stick here; because you have people like Max Charlesworth who are among the progressives in thinking about these issues but who maintain their involvement/commitment to the Catholic church; and people like Nick Tonti Filippini, who are very much more on the Conservative wing and had the ear of people like bishops and archbishops in the way that maybe Max did, but I doubt that he had that kind of influence with them. Just by the fact that Max had a much more senior role academically than Nick, the church would have been much more likely to listen to Nick than to Max. They covered the broad spectrum of views within the Catholic church.
So there's always been those connections. And the very conservative role that Catholic church has played in public life in Australia, influenced what happened in bioethics as well.
CM: there is sort of a secularisation thesis that's often put forward around bioethics, "the retreat of the church as a moral authority and then in come secular humanist" or whatever the phrase is; would you agree with that
RY: Oh, yes, I certainly think that's true. Now discussions of bioethics, insofar as I look at the literature, there's almost no sense in which people come from either a specifically or a specifically anti religious standpoint. They just address the issue; which is what I always tried to do.
But I think someone like Nick would still think that's the wrong headed way to go about it; because authority for him would rest in the Catholic church. But it's much less obvious in the literature. I am just trying to think of a good representative of a Catholic point of view in the US who wouldn't possibly even be known to be a Catholic. There are people like that. I will probably think about them on the way home, in the car. But no names spring to mind at the moment.
Because I think it's true to say, initially, a lot of the discussions stemmed from connections with religious backgrounds; but that quickly got overtaken by people who, like say James Rachels was an atheist but clearly thought these issues were important. So people like him wanted to be part of the discussion; and they didn't hold back just because they didn't accept the approach of some of the people in the beginning, which was much more religiously oriented.
CM: Do you think that there's anything particularly distinct about Australia's approach to bioethics?
RY: No, I don't think so. Well, other than Australians are involved in it, no, I don't think so. You know, I would think Australian philosophers, in particular, have always worked in the international sphere in a way that is not quite as true in a lot of other disciplines in Australian universities. So sociologists, for example, I don't think have been as internationally involved as philosophers have been. You know, historians, of course, if you are an Australian historian, it is quite clear you are not going to be as internationally involved. But if you were interested, say, in British history, then you have to participate in the international debates; because Australia is just a small player in those kind of discussions. But Australian philosophy is much more central to the way, particularly in the UK and the US and Canada and so on, practise not so much in Europe, because of the differences in....
CM: And how do you see that play out, say, in the context of applied philosophy, or applied ethics in particular?
RY: Well, I would have seen it as: we were on level footing with people in those other places in discussions. Didn't think we should take a back seat just because people in the US had a different view. They were no better, as far as I was concerned, philosophers than we were.
CM: Did you ever have, like, a visiting position in the US or
RY: Uhm, well, yeah, I was I was a senior Fullbright scholar in residence to introduce bioethics to Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama in 1989. So I was resident in Atlanta just outside Atlanta in the winter quarter of 1989. But, unfortunately, my older sister died in the latter part of the time I was there; so I had to come back.
CM: And that was teaching bioethics?
RY: Yes, and they had never
CM: Did you note a difference in the student responses?
RY: Well, they had never approached these issues before. And some of them were quite shocked because they came from conservative backgrounds
CM: Yes, I can imagine.
RY: …and to be asked to think about issues in a way they had never thought about before because previously they had just been told, "This is the way it is," and had to listen to what authority said. And I was encouraging them to, "Look at the evidence; consider the arguments; and if the arguments for these positions are not good arguments, then reject them; and then reflect on what should be a better argument for yourself; and don't just accept what you have been told". So this was a bit of a shock to the system for some of them. But the people who had invited me there and put up the case to the full...organisation for me to be there, they were accommodating.
RY: Again, I'm sorry about anecdotes, but you might find this interesting: the alumni association invited me to give an address to a gathering. And I didn't talk about bioethics but what I did was talk about American attitudes and why Americans are so out of touch with much of the rest of the world. And I did it by finding some newspaper items in places like the New York Times and other prestigious newspapers; all of which were completely ignorant about the issues I was talking about, as far as the rest of the world was concerned. And the reaction was: I got a standing ovation. And at the end, half of the people from the floor said, "I don't understand. You get a standing ovation. You should have been tarred and feathered for what you said" (laughs). So it was an utterly different world for me but also an utterly different world for a lot of them, to have someone who came in and talked in the way they weren't used to having people talk.
In a way, that all came about because there was a new and emerging field; and perhaps for the reason of being one of the earlier people in the field, you get taken notice of for a little while, at least, before other people are able then to assume a much more significant role.
CM: So just to finish up then: what reflections do you have on, perhaps, where bioethics has come now?
RY: The field is now much more respected than it probably was initially; where it was seen in the kind of the reaction I got when I first read the paper, "No, no, this is not philosophy at all. It is not ethics. It is just opinion sharing", if you like, which wasn't what it was at all. Trying to argue a case; and if people couldn't recognise that, then they failed to understand that it was philosophy we were doing.
CM: Yeah.
RY: So I think we have come a long way. If I made a small contribution, that's all it was, a small contribution.
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CM: Ok, well that was a wide ranging conversation that we had with Robert Young. Um, I think one of the points that he made at different times and in different ways that is interesting is the changing nature of philosophy and his experience of it in the mid to late 70s, to what extent, things have changed now.
So you know, when he gave that example of reading that paper to his peers. And at the end, they said that it wasn't really philosophy. I mean, I feel that I've had that experience in the 2000s. And if I were to read them in 2010s, probably the 2010s as well.
CH: Yeah, I mean I would agree, certainly as a current grad student in a philosophy department who does bioethics there is still that you know, what is proper, counts as proper philosophy, who's a philosopher, etc. So I don't necessarily think that perception has shifted, necessarily. Um…
CM: Yeah, it seems that you, or one may need to, you know, do some version of proper philosophy. So I do epistemology and applied ethics or meta ethics and applied ethics. But if one strays too far into the applied area question marks start to appear.
CH: Yeah and even if there's ah some people might even draw a distinction between applied philosophy and bioethics, because I think there's also, some bioethics, some people wouldn't necessarily consider applied philosophy as such.
Yeah, I think, I think he mentioned the idea somewhere that the notion that ethics is is just kind of or bioethics is really just kind of preaching and kind of opinion sharing and doesn't… I guess implies isn't that it says rigorous or something that's kind of my philosophy.
CM: When he said preaching it reminded me of an interview that I did with Peter Singer just recently that we may bring…
CH: Some solid name dropping my friend. [laughs]
CM: We may bring some of it on this podcast at some stage, but I was trying to find the words to describe what he was doing. And I, and I said, preaching and he said, I prefer public intellectual. Which I think is fair enough, but it was yeah on that, on that similar point…
CH: I might start calling myself a public intellectual
CM: Yeah, I might start calling myself a preacher.
CH: Sounds legit.
CM: Yeah, I mean, I thought that was an interesting. You know, obviously, some things have shifted in the reception of bioethics, its own journals, all of that sort of scholarly apparatus, but I still think within philosophy there is still questions marks over as whether it's real philosophy.
CH: I agree. And I think that's also reflected in terms of, you know, if you look at institutions, including our own most of the people who might consider themselves bioethicists they aren't located in a philosophy department. They're located in a school in the School of Medicine. So I think even that shift within the academy also maybe reflects both the kind of work that bioethics are doing and who their audience is and I think Robert Young spoke to that in terms of the idea that philosophers and bioethicists have something to contribute to medicine. So in that sense, it kind of makes sense that there's been that shift towards being located within medical faculties um but whether or not that's helped or harmed the perception of philosophers as to what you know the purpose or legitimacy of people who do bioethics.
CM: Well, I think that comes to a second and related point that he made towards the end in saying that bioethics has come a long way, I think, well, depending on whose measure. It has maybe come a long way and in doing so, has moved further out of philosophy, such that the move, it has become established as a field but that field is so interdisciplinary and so attached to medicine that it's moved into the medical domain. So, and also there are less philosophical bio… or philosophers who are bioethicist so even let's say conferences that we go to, there are less people that would seem, who have come through philosophy and into bioethics and people who are more at coming at it from a qualitative health, sociology, health policy, health law or those sorts of disciplines.
CH: Yeah, and I think you just said something about the interdisciplinary nature of bioethics and in terms of shifting towards medicine, but I also wonder if the shifting towards being located within medicine also leads to perhaps a narrowing of what is then relevant in those spaces. I think you’re then necessarily working on perhaps clinical medical issues by virtue of the space that you're in. And I think Robert or in the interview with Robert he was, you know, discussing some of the broader kind of social philosophy bioethical topics that he was teaching, um, you know, kind of border issues around, you know, environmental ethics and things that were considered topical at the time, and arguably still obviously very topical, but whether those things are less, or become less relevant if you're practicing bioethics in or not less relevant just less at the fore if you're practicing bioethics in a medical School or something.
CM: Yeah, and I think another example of what he was talking about his, his role or saw as his role in the 70s and80s and the papers that he was writing about medical decision making and seeing the philosopher's role as not anywhere near the bedside, but more to help a doctor think through the processes well before they’re in that situation. So he seemed to be very much aware of the role of the philosopher is at a distance from the bed side or from the clinical context or from the research context, but is just there more to help clarify some of the concepts and some of the ethics around that prior to whereas now, ah a phrase from that famous book whose author’s name escapes me but Strangers at the Bedside. You know, he just did not see, whereas a lot of bioethics has become embedded in these sort of more medical institutions now, so are the stranger at the bedside or the stranger at the in the clinical the stranger, you know, in the research team.
CH: Definitely, I think, I mean that model is practice less so in Australia. But certainly, you know, the American model is having clinical ethicists, you know, embedded within hospitals as full time staff and they're part of the interdisciplinary team like allied health and other areas and consult with patients and families and a very much so at the bedside in the way that other clinicians are to be interesting to think, that was something that didn't come up in the discussion with Robert, but yeah what his perspective on that might be also.
CM: Well, we’ll have to ask him next time.
Well, why don't we wrap it up there. Don't want to eat into too much of your time, dear listener.
This podcast was partly made possible by the generous support of the Australian Research Council, that is supporting this project on the history of bioethics. They are wholly not to blame for anything that might have offended you.
CH: If you're interested in more undisciplinary goodness you can find us on Twitter at undisciplinary underscore or Undisciplinary.org