“A flickering flame: is the Olympics ideal dead?” My contribution to BBC World Service Newshour Extra

Posted on August 9, 2016 | Leave a comment

This BBC Newshourextra episode was broadcast on July 29th/20th/31st.

You can download the podcast (mp3) here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04263n3flickering flame

“The important thing in life is not to win but to take part, the essential thing is not to have conquered but to have fought well”. So said the founder of the modern Olympic movement, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, at the end of the 19th Century. How does his noble ideal fit with the modern phenomena of professionalism, doping, individual financial gain, nationalistic pride, huge corporate sponsorship? Is the Olympic ideal still alive? In this week’s edition of the programme, as the Rio Games approach, join Owen Bennett Jones and his guests as they discuss the present and future of the Olympics”.

Contributors

Andrew Steele – British Olympic 400m athlete at Beijing 2008 games

David Goldblatt – Author of The Games: A Global History of the Olympics

Dr Silvia Camporesi – Lecturer in Bioethics and Society at King’s College London.

Professor Andy Miah – Chair in Science, Communication & Future Media at the University of Salford

Pat Myhill – Director of Operations for the UK Anti-Doping agency, UKAD

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Posted in Philosophy of Sport

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AEON Idea: “The solution to doping is to extend the blame beyond athletes”

Posted on July 22, 2016 | Leave a comment

In this AEON Idea, published on July 21st, and written in collaboration with the London Health & Society Hub, James Knuckles and I argue that the only way to make professional sports sustainable in the longer term and solve the problem of widespread doping is to transform the financial matrix that supports and endorses it.

How can we do that?

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Richard Virenque of the Festina team in the 1995 Tour de France. Photo by Anders/Flickr.

 

 

We can start with the idea that athletes should not be the only ones held to account (in the sense of liability) for doping. In practice, this means changing WADA’s system of strict liability for the athlete. To do so, we first need a stakeholder analysis to understand who the relevant stakeholders are for each team, athlete or sport. WADA could require teams or individual athletes and their entourages to submit something akin to a classic organisational chart, showing who reports to whom, who pays whom, and who makes decisions for whom.

The next step would be to assign liability to the appropriate stakeholder(s). Here, we think that the individuals identified through the stakeholder analysis as possessing the most power or control over the ‘organisation’ should be held personally liable for the doping of the athlete(s) under their control. In some cases, the organisations themselves will have corporate responsibility.

You can read the full piece here:

https://aeon.co/ideas/the-solution-to-doping-is-to-extend-the-blame-beyond-athletes

If you are interested in writing for the London Health & Society Hub you can send us a pitch for your Idea to:

londonhealthsocietyhubATgmail.com

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Posted in Bioethics

Dr Liz Dzeng from UCSF giving a seminar at King’s next Tuesday July 12th: ““Communication Pathologies in Do-Not-Resuscitate Discussions at the End of Life:”

Posted on July 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

When: 3:30pm Tuesday the 12th of July
Where: Room 3.1.1, East Wing King’s Building

In the next session of the Work in Progress (WiPs) seminar series Elizabeth (Liz) Dzeng, MD, PhD, MPH (http://profiles.ucsf.edu/elizabeth.dzeng) will present her paper:

“Communication Pathologies in Do-Not-Resuscitate Discussions at the End of Life: The Unintended Consequences of an Ideology of Patient Choice”

Abstract: The focus on patient autonomy in American medicine today highlights the importance of freedom and choice for patients make their own decisions. However, to truly honour patient autonomy, patients must adequately understand their situation and choices. Fifty-eight semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with internal medicine physicians at three hospitals in the US and one in the UK. I observed that two hospitals had policies that prioritized patient autonomy whereas the other two hospitals had policies that prioritized making decisions in the patient’s best interest. Particularly at hospitals where autonomy was prioritized, trainee physicians equated autonomy with giving a menu of choices. They were uncomfortable giving a recommendation based on clinical knowledge as they worried that that would infringe patient autonomy.

Bio:

Liz is Assistant Professor at UCSF in the Division of Hospital Medicine and Social and Behavioral Sciences, Sociology program. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the King’s College London Cicely Saunders Institute. She completed her PhD in Medical Sociology at the University of Cambridge at King’s College as a Gates Cambridge Scholar and a General Internal Medicine Post-Doctoral Clinical Research Fellow and Palliative Care Research Fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Liz has published several opinion pieces for the Guardian, Wired UK, Huffington Post. You can find out more about her research and public engagement activities here:

http://elizabethdzeng.com/

Reminder: these seminars are part of the SSHM BIOS+ Research Group events and offer the opportunity to the members of the Department to discuss drafts of their work-in-progress and receive helpful feedback from colleagues before submission or before a presentation. The aim is to bring together the researchers in the Department and provide a locus for sharing expertise and knowledge in an informal setting. Junior researchers, and members of the BIOS + group, are especially encouraged to present and attend.

If you wish to attend please email Giulia Cavaliere (giulia.cavaliere@kcl.ac.uk), the convenor of the WiP seminar series, to ask for the draft of the paper.

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Posted in Bioethics

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