Philosophy, Biology, and Society
Hugh Desmond has asked me to publicize the following conference at KU Leuven: Whether in terms of geographic range or ecological dominance, the human species seems to be extraordinarily successful. Yet, how should such claims of extraordinary success be understood? What were the causes of this success, and moreover, what are the ethical implications? On …
Continue reading "Conference: Human Success: Evolutionary Origins and Ethical Implications"
This is the first update on the original 18 February post on measles outbreak 2018. Changes have been made for: Chad, Costa Rica, France, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Madagascar, Philippines, Ukraine, Vietnam. Country Data (Cases and deaths in 2019, unless otherwise stated.) Australia: 11 cases in January in New South Wales according to a government report; 1 …
Continue reading "Worldwide Measles Outbreaks 2019: Update 25 February"
I would like to draw attention to a recent blog post by Professor Raina MacIntyre of the University of New South Wales (with whom I have occasionally collaborated). MacIntyre points out the complexity of any attempt to eliminate measles completely partly because of how infectious it is: elementary herd immunity calculations show that the required minimum …
In response to the surge of measles outbreaks in the U.S. this year, Lauren Gardner, who is in the process of moving to Johns Hopkins from the University of New South Wales, and I are doing a risk analysis that combines the geography of hotspots of vaccine avoidance (from Olive et al. 2018) with international …
Sahotra Sarkar 