Ethical Record The Proceedings of the South Place Ethical Society Vol. 106 No. 6 21.50 July/August, 2001

GUEST EDITOIHAL - A PASSAGE TO HUMANISM Recently I was discussing E.M.Forster with Tom Rubens who is presently indexing Ethical Record. A Canadian Professor is writing a biography of the pacifist Gerald Heard - who was a popular speaker to the Society and on the wireless in the 1930s before emigrating to California with Aldous Huxley - and has enquired what information we possess about him. We have three of his books, a paragraph in The Story of South Place by S.K Ratcliffe and will soon be able to itemise his talks. Torn also recalled Forster's essay on Heard (1939) in a collection of his essays, Tivo Chem for Democracy [1951 hb; Penguin 1965 pb]. The essay, in his most thoughtful and elegant prose, refers to Heard's latest book, Pain, Sex and Time (not one of ours), Heard's Change of Heart (his capitals) and spiritual retreat. The next day, reported in the Guardian, 'Naipaul derides novels of Forster, " nasty homosexual" '. In the latest Literary Review (Sir) V.S.Naipaul attacks Forster as a sexual predator more interested in seducing garden boys than understanding India (no evidence adduced) and even asserts that probably his most famous book, A Passage to India is 'utter rubbish'. No doubt it would be cynical to mark that Naipaul, a native of Trinidad, has a new book out next month. However, we note that another of the essays in Two Cheers.... discusses the eminent French writer, André Gide. Forster decides that Gide is a humanist and suggests that a humanist has four leading characteristics - curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste and belief in the human race. To denizens of Conway Hall Humanist Centre, there is an ongoing debate as to the meaning of the humanist way of life. We hope to hold a Short Course on Humanism as an evening class in the autumn, in conjunction with the British Humanist Association, for beginners and connoisseurs alike, when criteria such as these can be dissected. The portrait of Forster in the Library by his painter cousin was presented to SPES 15 years ago. One or two of our less progressive members objected - not, I think, on literary grounds. For those who would like to practise admiring literary and intellectual expertise with a free mind, read What I BelieVe and Other Essays, by E.M. Forster, edited by the late Nicolas Walter (G.W. Foote pamphlet, £3) available from the Rationalist Press Association next door. Jennifer Jeynes

THE THREE STEPS TO HUMANIST ETHICS Bill Cooke 3 BEATRICE EDGELL: PIONEER WOMAN PSYCHOLOGISTElizabeth Valentine 8 CENSORSHIP IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Ted Goodman 16 ART VERSUS ETHICS Suzette Henke 20 UTILITARIANISM & CONTEMPORARY PROBLEMS Rona Gerber 23 PETER SINGER'S ETHICS Leslie Jones 25 RESUSCITATION: THE PHYSIOLOGY Harold Flillman 27 CHURCH SCHOOLS AND NEW LABOUR Barbara Smoker 29 VIEWPOINTS: Peter Neville, Peter Lonsdale, Martin Green 30 SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY Conway Hall Humanist Centre 25 Red Lion Square, London WCIR 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8034 Fax: 020 72428036 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected]

Officers Chairman of the GC: Terry Mullins Vice Chairman: John Rayner Hon. Rep of the GC: Don Liversedge Registrar: Donald Rooum

Editor, Ethical Record: Norman Bacrac

SPES Staff Administrative Secretary to the Society: Marina Ingham Tel: 020 7242 8034 Librarian/Programme Coordinator: Jennifer Jeynes, M.Sc. Tel: 020 7242 8037 Lettings Manager: Peter Vlachos. For Hall bookings: Tel: 020 7242 8032 Caretakers Office Tel: 020 7242 8033

New Member Simon Scow, Salangor, Malaysia. SPES SPECIAL GENERAL MEETING, 10 JUNE 2001 The following rule changes, which are now in effect, received the requisite two- thirds majority at the above meeting:- *The General Committee shall consist of 12 elected members (not 18 as formerly); *On completion of their term of office, GC members shall be eligible for immediate re-election (confirming the intention of SGMs held in 1991 and 1995); *Election to the GC shall be by ballot, the 4 candidates having the highest net votes (votes for minus votes against) being elected for 3 years, and other vacancies (for 2 year and 1 year terms) being filled by candidates with the next highest net votes; *The GC may co-opt, without voting rights, up to 3 further members of the Society, for periods extending up to the next AGM, providing the member was not a GC condidate receiving more votes against than for them at the previous AGM; *The quorum for thc GC shall be 5 elected members (not 8 as formerly); *A member owing money to the Society may not be a member of its GC.

ANNUAL REUNION OF THE KINDRED SOCIETIES 1430h Sunday 23 September 2001 in the Library, Conway Hall Keynote Speaker * Entertainment * Refreshments * All Welcome

NOTICE OF Sl'ES ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING, 30 SEPTEMBER 2001 at 1440h, with registration from 1400h, in the Library, Conway Hall.

*All subscriptions must be paid up in order to vote at the AGM. Members of less than a year's standing may not vote or stand for the General Committee. *The text of Motions for the AGM, proposed and seconded, must reach the Admin. Secretary by 31 August 2001. They will be posted in Conway Hall by 7 Sept. 2001. *Texts of Amendments must reach the Admin. Secretary by 21 September 2001 when they will be posted in Conway Hall. *There will be 7 vacancies on the General Committee to fill this year (4 for three years and 3 for two years). Completed nomination forms (posted with this issue of the ER) must be returned by 31 August 2001. *Nomination forms for Holding Trustees may be obtained from the Admin. Secretary. D. Liversedge and H. Stopes-Roe have been nominated by the GC. Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 THE THREE STEPS TO HUMANIST ETHICS

Bill Cooke Senior Lecturer; School of Visual Arts, Manukau Institute of Technology, New -Zealand email: [email protected]

Lecture to the Ethical Socim 14 Januaty 2001

I'll not be breaking any drastic new ground when I say that humanism has had a torrid time defining itself to everyone's satisfaction. Just this past century we have had pragmatic, scientific, socialist, evolutionary, cosmic, secular, neo, and, most recently, planetary humanism. And that is not to forget religious humanism. Among the people who have been called humanists are Confucius and Betty Friedan, Erasmus and Charles Bradlaugh, Karl Marx and John Dewey, Simone de Beauvoir and Somerset Maughan, Auguste Comte and Machiavelli, Jodie Foster and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. And neither is there any shortfall in the epithets flung at humanism from its wide range of accusers. Depending on who one listens to humanism is communistic or individualistic, arrogant or timid, shocking or bland, godless or a rival religion, nihilistic or stifling, patriarchal or anarchistic, a dominating discourse or marginal bleating. And none of these lists is in ally way exhausted.

So how, as we begin a new century, can we hope to build a coherent new understanding of humanism amid this cacophony of interpretations? I do not propose here to forge a new brand of humanism. I have thc more modest aim of trying to clarify the existing picture- of humanism, with particular reference to humanist ethics. So what is it about what we value in humanism that distinguishes us from, say, religious humanists, to say nothing of non and anti-humanists? It strikes me that it is what underpins humanism that marks it off from its many competitors and enemies. It is the foundations we build our humanism on that are as, possibly more, important than the humanism itself.

Planetary Humanism Now, before carrying on, I am happy to endorse the latest manifestation of humanism - that which calls itself planetary humanism. By calling our humanism planetary, we have set the boundaries as far as can practicably be set; at the edge of our planet. Therefore, all that is within our planet is included within its arena. This is the best way to avoid the accusation of speciesism that has been a telling charge against humanism over the last couple of decades. Planetary humanism has the potential to recall humans to a suitably modest view of ourselves in the scheme of things while reminding us of our unique ability to help solve the problems that beset us. As the Humanist Manifesto 2000 has stated, the 'realities of the global society are such that only a new Planetary Humanism can provide meaningful directions for the future."

But on what foundation does this planetary humanism rest? The Humanist Manifesto 2000 is equally clear. 'The unique message of humanism on the current world scene is its commitment to scientific naturalism." The manifesto goes on to say that scientific naturalism 'enables human beings to construct a coherent worldview disentangled from metaphysics or theology and based on the sciences.' The Manifesto sees this coherent worldview as composed of three main features. First, scientific naturalism is committed to a set of methodological prescriptions; second, the opportunities that the sciences afford for expanding our knowledge of nature and human behaviour are enormous; and third, naturalists maintain that there Ethical Record, JulylAngust 2001 3 is insufficient scientific evidence for spiritual interpretations of reality and the postulation of occult causes! What I would like to do here is to elaborate on these three steps because I believe they constitute the three steps to a genuine humanist ethics. I also intend to give those three steps names that we will all recognise. I don't intend to touch on the content of humanist ethics; I am entirely happy to refer people to section five of the manifesto, entitled 'ethics and reason' for that material. And neither do I wish to embark on a sectarian exclusion of variations of humanism from the wider movement. It is fundamental to humanist eupraxophy that it can tolerate and indeed prosper in the company of, different approaches to life.

So, planetary humanism needs to think on a planetary scale in order to provide an effective response and guidance to the people in the century to come. But what sort of agency can planetary humanism employ in order to provide answers on a planetary scale? If there is such an agency, then surely planetary humanists are beholden to learn as much about it and embrace it as fully as they can. Proponents of the great religious traditions, of course, see their faith as, at least potentially, the agency that can bring about a world union of minds. But the very fact of a variety of faith traditions around the world works against this wish. The faith traditions are, of necessity an, and possibly even anti-planetary, in that they bestow upon their own people a sense of special destiny and spiritual privilege. The western religions compound this with a cosmic arrogance as to our worthiness to clutter up the universe with our immortal souls while the eastern traditions cheerfully contradict scientific verities with their insistence on reincarnation. It is at this early juncture that religious humanists must go their own way, because it is their goal to retain, albeit in a mitigated form, some sense of spiritual uniqueness to homo sapiens. Religious humanists are seemingly unable to abandon anthropocentric notions of the great chain of being. Such thinking can't by any stretch of the imagination bc called planetary thinking.

But if religions are clearly not the key to world unity, neither are most of the shibboleths of globalisation, such as the global economy and our growing interdependence. Now all these trends are probably inevitable, but we have seen how they alarm many people, who are preferring to fix their personal identity onto some local particularism, not infrequently of a pseudo-scientific or exclusivist nature. And we have seen enough evidence recently of local particularisms being defined principally by what they are opposed to rather than what they are for.

Others have put their faith in notions like the Gaia theory, but this has the disadvantage of being romantic wishful thinking rather than good science, as Richard -Dawkins has demonstrated in Unweaving the Rainbow.' And postmodernists have made the unique contribution of throwing their hands in the air and saying that anything but a narcissistic wallowing in a fragmented and meaningless morass is little more than a delusion.

The'Power of Science So what is this agency that, alone, has the power to offer solutions on a planetary scale? It is of course, science. There is no other human endeavour which can yield the same results in Greenland as in Geelong. There is no other human endeavour which can be improved on or disproved as democratically as the scientific endeavour. Science is entirely unconcerned about a person's race, religion, creed, sex or sexual orientation, wealth, weight or wedlock status. As we have seen recently with the completion of the Human Genome Project, science is incomparably the most formidable agent for our future, whether for good or ill. Science, then, is the first significant underpinning of planetary humanism. 4 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 To say this at the present time is almost invariably to Invite a charge of uncritical scientism. To extol the virtues of science is widely held to be anachronistic, even deluded. But to recognise science as an essential component of the planetary humanist world view is not to posit some uncritical faith in science as an agency of salvation. Mary Midgley, who is far from being an uncritical camp- follower of science, concluded in her book Science as Salvation that: 'We do not need to esteem science less. What we need is to esteem science in the right way. Especially we need to stop isolating it artificially from the rest of our mental life." While being as critical of scientism as anyone, Midgley worries about the lack of a teleological map for people, a means by which they can find their way around the universe, shorn of pretensions to being at its centre, but imbued with sufficient notions of purpose of self-worth. E 0 Wilson, in his book Consilience, has addressed the same issue. He spoke not of a teleological map but of a sacred narrative. I personally would not want to use the term 'sacred narrative'. 'Sacred' would give all the wrong messages about what is being undertaken.

I can, however, live with the notion of a teleological map - is this not what rationalists and humanists have been saying for the last hundred years? From Ernst Haeckel and Joseph McCabe to Carl Sagan and Richard Dawkins, rationalists have worked unceasingly to present to people the astonishing wonder of the natural world we live in. So wonderful, that to posit some tribal volcano god as sufficient explanation for it amounts to insulting trivialisation. Unlike the cosmic vanities of the various theisms, humanism, properly informed by science, gives us a suitably modest view of our place in the cosmos. As the seventeenth-century revolution determined, planet earth is not the centre of the universe, and as the Darwinian revolution determined, homo sapiens is not the apogee of the great chain of being, in a nice tidy progression from god and man, down to plants and rocks. And on the heels of those revolutions, come the genetic revolution we are living through now, which is irrevocably stripping from us a comforting assurance of having some Cartesian theatre, as Daniel Dennett calls it, orchestrating our 'minds'.

By writing about science and the wonders and beauties of the natural world, rationalists, especially the popularisers, have helped provide non-specialist readers with a sound, unpretentious view of the world and of their place in it - in other words a teleological map. For a long time this was decried as scientism, later on it was accorded the more fashionable insult of metanarrative, but is now returning to a degree of respectability. The Humanist Manifesto points out that the 'methods of science are not infallible, they do not present us with unchanging, absolute truths; yet, on balance, they are the most reliable methods we have for expanding knowledge and solving human problems.'

The Value Of Rationality But the next step becomes; how can humanists distinguish one teleological map from another? Flow can we avoid the temptation to transmogrify a teleological map into another great chain of being? In other words, what process can humanists employ to ground their humanism in sound naturalism? This is where rationalism comes in. Rationalism, or, more simply put, rationality, is absolutely indispensable to humanism. It is rationality which empowers humanists to distinguish genuine science from pseudo-science. It is rationality which humanists need to use when required to make an ethical or intellectual judgment. And because humanist ethics eschew simple rote learning of sets of commandments, humanists are required frequently to make rational judgments. That is why humanists arc as conscious of their responsibilities as of their rights. Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 5 So, just as humanism and rationalism are absolutely inseparable, so are science and rationalism. Not the least reason for this is that we need science to gauge for us the degree to which we rely on our reason. It is one of the stock jibes made about rationalists that they make reason into a god or otherwise give rationality considerably more authority than it would normally be able to justify. But while these jibes continue to be made, humanist scholars are cheerfully writing about reason as" no more exempt from our genetic and chemical templates than is our sexuality, our predisposition to humour, weight, baldness or brashness. Reason, writes Donald Caine is 'simply and solely a tool, without any legitimate claim to moral content. It is a biological product fashioned for us by the process of evolution to help us survive in an inhospitable and unpredictable environment." It is the close link between science and rationality that helps distinguish humanistic rationalists from Objectivists, those disciples of Ayn Rand who retain an unscientific and inflated view of reason's omnipotence. And, at the other end of the spectrum, it is the close linking between science and rationality which distinguishes rationalist humanists from theistic rationalists like Plato, Thomas Aquinas or the Muslim Mu'lazilite scholars. The Mu'lazilites valued the process of reason, but determined (in a dogmatic way) that reason, properly employed, will lead the honest person to faith in Allah. The same can be said for Thomas Aquinas, although he was equally clear that all roads lead to the Catholic God.

'The Necessity of Atheism' This leads on the next vital step humanists need to make in order to build a complete and coherent teleological map for themselves. Having embraced thc wonder of science to provide the practical grounding for humanist ethics, and rationality as the method by which those groundings are determined, what now distinguishes say the Mu'tazilite rationalists from humanist rationalists? The answer, of course, is their fundamental divergences on metaphysics, and specifically about the existence of a god. Atheism is the bedrock commitment for the humanist. Here is where the rationalist humanist finally and irrevocably parts company from the whole corpus of theistic humanism, ranging from Erasmus of the Reformation to Vivekananda and various brands of mystical humanism, to the deified humanism of Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith enthusiasts, Unitarians and even some agnostics.

Atheism, whether of the negative or positive variety - I am following Michael Martin here - quite apart from its philosophical soundness, is the most effective prescription against anthropocentrism and the clearest guarantee of a purely disinterested ethics. In other words, with no hope of future rewards or punishments, the atheist is in the clearest position to determine the relative merits of any action or proposition solely on the basis of its value to the planet and all those whose lives depend on it. Bertrand Russell noted a similar point with regard to Socrates, whose 'courage in the face of death would have been more remarkable if he had not believed that he was going to enjoy eternal bliss in the company of the gods." Paul Kurtz made a similar point when he accused theistic appeals to punishments or rewards in a future life as actually immoral for the simple reason that, in doing this, they sidestep 'the content of the moral imperative itself."

Many people will recognise that this point is closely related to Jean-Paul Sartre's existentialism. But while we stay in the company of Sartre on this point, we will of course lose him once we progress on toward rationalism, science and humanism. This is even more true of Martin Heidegger and Friedrich Nietzsche. Both these men were atheists but neither, very decidedly, were humanists. It is also true for people who were humanists without being atheists. I have in mind H G 6 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 Wells, during his theistic phase, and Julian Huxley and Oliver Reiser during the later stages of their careers. It was because these humanists were not grounded solidly in atheism that they were able to take flight with their various extravagant deified or cosmic humanisms.

Atheism presents very starkly the understanding that we have but one life to live and that we have an obligation to ourselves to live it as fully as possible. What constitutes a full life is open to all sorts of interpretations, of course, which is why humanists value toleration and an open society. The two best instruments whereby we may build a world as open to as many approaches as possible are science and rationalism. Science allows us to ameliorate the extent of pain and suffering while rationalism gives us the means to choose most wisely how our scientific and other resources can be employed. On this foundation, and on this foundation alone, can humanist ethics prosper. The Humanist Manifesto 2000 recognises this in its third point about scientific naturalism. Without - unfortunately - mentioning atheism, the manifesto says that neither the 'standard modern cosmology nor the evolutionary process provides sufficient evidence for intelligent design, which is a leap of faith beyond the empirical evidence."'

In conclusion, then, we have seen that science is an absolutely essential corrective to the various brands of anthropocentric presumptions that pass themselves off as theisms. To think in a planetary way is to have an appropriately modest view of oneself as an individual and of one's species. We have also seen that rationalism is equally indispensable as the means we employ to determine valid science from pseudo-science, and other forms of cosmic pretentiousness from an attitude of humility and stewardship of the planet. And then we saw that atheism is not only .the soundest philosophical explanation for the universe, but is also well equipped to discourage fresh outbursts of anthropic grasping. And finally, we have seen that humanism, which rests solidly on these three supports, is what gives us the final features to our teleological map. In full knowledge of our irrelevance in the scheme of things, and against staggering odds, we nonetheless have the exquisite privilege of being alive right now. As Richard Dawkins put it, we are all going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones." In the face of this extraordinary privilege of being alive, our humanist eupraxophy can be genuinely compassionate, greedy for life, and Promethean without being tainted by thought of future reward or punishment.

Paul Kurtz, Humanist Manifesto: A Call for a New Planetary Humanism 2 (Prometheus, Buffalo, 2000), p 12. ibid, p 24. 3 ibid, pp 24-6. Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow (Allen Lane The Penguin Press, London, 1998), pp 222-4 Mary Midgley, Science as Salvation (Routledge, London, 1994), p 44. Htunanist Manifesto 2000, op.cit., p 24. Donald B Calne, Within Reason: Rationality and Human Behaviour (Pantheon Books, New York, 1999), p 12. Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy (George Allen & Unwin, London, 1946), p Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism (Prometheus, Buffalo, 1988), pp 149-150. Humanist Manifesto 2000, op.cit., p 26. Dawkins, op.cit., p I.

Ethical Record, JudylAugust 2001 7 BEATRICE EDGELL: PIONEER WOMAN PSYCHOLOGIST

4th Skene Memorial Lecture, delivered to the Ethical Socim I July 2001*

Dr Elizabeth R. Valentine, Reader in Psychology, Royal Holloway, University of London

It is a great pleasure to be the 4th Skene Memorial Lecturer and to speak about Beatrice Edge11's contribution to British psychology, in this centenary year of the, British Psychological Society, of which she was an original member. I first became interested in her when I realised it was the centenary of her appointment at Bedford College London and wondered whether there was anything about her in the College Archives, Bedford having amalgamated with Royal Holloway College, Egham. Amongst other things, I found a personal file several inches thick and an impressive collection of press cuttings - some of which I'll be making use of in today's talk.

I3eatrice EdgeII was the first British woman to be awarded a doctorate in psychology, and the first woman to become professor of psychology in the UK. She was the first woman president of the British Psychological Society, the Aristotelian Society - only one other person has had the distinction of being president of both these learned societies - the Mind Association and the Psychology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Her contributions to British psychology include: establishing one of the first psychological laboratories in Britain - and the first in a women's college; making substantial contributions to research, both theoretical and empirical; developing the status of psychology - both locally in London University and nationally - partly through her work with the British Psychological Society and, as a teacher in a women's college, training a number of women who later played a prominent role in the development of scientific and professional psychology in Britain.

Family Background And Education Beatrice Edgell was born in 1871 in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, the youngest of six children. Her father, (like his father before him) was a local bank manager, who played an active role in the town, supporting good causes and donating the equivalent of £1,000 in today's money towards the restoration of its glorious abbey. Beatrice's mother came from a family of yeoman farmers and has been described as a 'go-getter' who instilled determination into her children, though she died when Beatrice was only eleven years old. The family was comfortably off, employing a nurse, a maid and a cook at the time of Beatrice's birth. All the children were educated alike regardless of their gender. Herein lie the seeds of Beatrice's success: she was born just at the right time - as higher education was beginning to open up to women - to a supportive family.

Beatrice entered Notting Hill High School for Girls in 1886 at the age of 14. Notting Hill was one of the first two Girls' Public Day School Trust schools, founded in 1873, which set out to provide education parallel to that of boys' grammar schools. Employing 'an ample staff of competent teachers at salaries above the market price', they played an enormously important role in providing women with access to professional careers - especially teaching - and helping to break the

'A talk on Beatrice Edgell was also given at the National Portrait Gallery marking 100 years of the British Psychological Society. Both talks draw on material in my article (2001a) and my paper (200 lb). 8 Ethical Record, July/August 2001 deadlock created by lack of qualified women. Here Beatrice was awarded prizes in literature and geography, leaving to go to the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth in 1891, the first year in which women were admitted to ordinary degree courses there. It was the first of the three colleges that were later to form the University of Wales, proud of its tradition of equal opportunity, for both genders and all social classes. Aberystwyth was a safe place which catered for women and prepared students for (initially) University of London degrees. Here Beatrice studied literature, classics and philosophy, specialising in the last and graduating with a BA in mental and moral sciences in 1894. During her first year, she had been greatly impressed by a lecture on animal behaviour given by Conwy Lloyd Morgan. It seems likely that this had a formative influence on her later interests. She achieved distinction in the Teachers' Diploma of the University of London in 1896 and was subsequently awarded an MA (1899) and a DLitt (1924) by the University of Wales. After three years teaching in secondary schools in the north of England, in 1898. Edgell was appointed Lecturer in Philosophy and - at the tender age of 27 - Head of the Department of Mental and Moral Science (subsequently the Department of Philosophy and Psychology) at Bedford College London, a post which she held for the remaining 35 years of her career. Bedford College, founded in 1849, was the first college in Britain to offer higher education to women; and London was the first University in Britain to open its degrees to women, which it did in 1878 (a good 40 years before either Oxford or Cambridge). A Travelling Research Scholarship from her alma mater enabled Edgell to spend the session 1900-01 studying abroad, under Oswald Knipe at the University of Wfirzburg, where she became the first woman to graduate from that university, and the first British woman to gain a doctorate in psychology. Here she received a good grounding in experimental methodology - from Karl Marbe, Ktilpe's assistant and co-founder of the Institute, and probably from NarziB Ach, a fellow student. The title of Professor of Psychology was conferred on Edgell in 1927. She was one of the earliest woman professors of psychology, and certainly the first in Britain. Her appointment attracted considerable media attention, announcements appearing in Nature, 77mes, Morning Post, Evening Standard, Glasgow Herald, Yorkshire Post, The Lady and Westminster Gazette. She died in Cheltenham in 1948. Edgell Establishes Iler Psychology Laboratory When Edgell returned from Wnrzburg, she set about establishing one of the first psychological laboratories in Britain. The appointment of lecturers to conduct practical classes in experimental psychology was one of the first steps towards a distinct discipline, which generally occurred some time before the establishment of separate independent departments, designated chairs and specialist degree programmes. Small laboratories were set up in Cambridge in 1887 by J McK. Callen and again in 1897 by W.H.R. Rivers, of Regeneration fame. Edgell had limited resources at her disposal but was able to provide the expertise herself. In her own words:

In Iwo, when I returned from Bavaria, when I was anxious to start experimental psychology at Bedford College, little was known about it. But the College authorities gave me every facility, and a grant for equipment [the princely sum of 5]. True, I had not much accommodation; all one's equipment had to be stowed away into a cupboard after demonstrations. But it was a start. (Westminster Gazette, ii February, 1927).

Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 9 She referred to this era as 'the days of makeshift and poverty', remarking that they were by no means the least happy. As one of her students and colleagues recalled:

Under primitive conditions a laboratory came into being in a top back room in the Baker Street building. Here with a minimum of apparatus and much improvisation we learned the method of devising experiments and evaluating their results... In later years when College removed to Regents Park this laboratory became one of the best equipped and most fruitful in the University. (Bedford College Old Students' Association, 1948-9, p6). Indeed, it is reported that when Queen Mary visited the College in 1913 to open the new buildings in Regent's Park, 'The Department of Psychology, where research on the memory of rats was in progress, was especially interesting to Her Majesty.' (Tuke 1939, p 216).

The Departmental Papers contain many references to a Galvanometer Room and a Dark Room; and mention equipment ordered from France (adding that there were some problems with the customs). Edgell had been a member of a university delegation to the University of Paris in 1906. A report of some of the experimental work carried out was published (Edgell, ed., 1915). This included no( only investigations in the Wijrzburg tradition, employing largely introspective analysis, but also studies of mice learning mazes and rats solving puzzle boxes. The following review appeared in The Spectator (12 February, 1915):

The psychological Laboratory at Bedford College has issued a set of interesting papers, chronicling some recent work done there on the general subject of 'Memory, Association and Thought Processes'. The first of these... describes experiments with mice and rats learning from experience to find their way through mazes, while the three remaining papers deal more directly with the processes of the human mind. The experimental work has evidently been conscientiously performed, and the reports give a clear resume of the results obtained.

The mazes were scrubbed at frequent intervals with carbolic soap to minimise scent cues. However, another reviewer commented that:

It is rather unfortunate that, in what is mainly a statistical study, only two mice and three rats were used, especially as rat was later found to be blind, mouse S was out of condition part of the time, and several times (as is to be expected) the animals were very excited. (The Journal of Experimental Pedagogy, 3,1915-16, p 209-210). These were, after all, pioneering ventures and only class experiments.

A set of pictures, originally published in The Graphic in 1919, which reappear in several other newspapers (the ones shown are taken from the Daily Sketch 1920, and the Sunday Companion 1921), under such titles as 'Modern Young Lady's Education' and 'The Wonders of the Mind: How women are taught the remarkable powers of the brain at Bedford College', displays a variety of tasks designed to train perceptual-motor skills, such as listening for overtones (the caption reads: 'The very modern young lady is being highly trained in the powers of observation. While her mother merely learnt to darn socks, she has all her faculties trained'), quickness of 10 Ethical Record, JulylAugusi 2001 perception, accuracy and steadiness of movement, mirror drawing, estimation of extent and direction of movement, and attractiveness of pictures.

So, all in all, pioneering work, on a wide range of topics - sensory perception. motor skills, thinking, animal learning - using the best equipment available and instilling in students the principles of experimental design.

Edgell's Research And Published Work EdgeWs research spanned a number of different areas. She was equally at home with philosophical and theoretical, as with experimental work. As examples of the former, she read eight papers to the Aristotelian Society, on topics such as sensory perception, imagery (the subject of her presidential address), memory, recognition and conception (concepts, that is, not family planning - or lack of it!); she wrote entries for encyclopaedias, and reviewed books. She herself wrote three books: Theories of Memocv (1924), reviewed in the flibbert Journal and the Spectator. Mental Life (1926), a textbook for social science students; and Ethical Problems (1929), a textbook on psychology for nurses.

She also made substantial contributions to empirical research. One was a painstaking investigation of the calibration of the Wheatstone-Hipp chronoscope. Edgell would have acquired her knowledge of this instrument during her time in Wiirzburg. Mental chronometry was important for both scientific and ideological reasons. Scientifically, the accurate measurement of time intervals of less than one second was important because these were used to make inferences about mental procesSes. Ideologically, measurement was the hallmark of hard science. Precision was pursued almost a cult, aimed at establishing psychology on a par with physics and physiology. Hence, the problem of calibration posed a threat and provided a central challenge.

Various methods of measurement of short time intervals were available at the end of the nineteenth century, such as the galvanometer, pendulums, the chronograph and the chronoscope. Edgell and her collaborator examined four instruments - one of which is currently on loan to the Science Museum - investigating the effect of various factors influencing its accuracy of measurement. They determined that the chronoscope was accurate to within one millisecond (the prescribed goal) and made recommendations for its use. Their paper, published in 1906, was still being cited thirty years later. The accuracy of mental chronometry was not improved on for another 50 years with the advent of electronically-based timing systems.

Much of Edgell's empirical work was concerned with memory. One study was conducted on over twelve hundred schoolchildren aged 8-12 years, courtesy of the London County Council. The experiment compared different types of associative memory: (I) pure contiguity, the arbitrary pairing of two items, e.g. a pictured object and a number; (2) 'artificial association', where the children were instructed to generate a mnemonic ('very ingenious were the connections invented' she says, 'e.g. a picture of an ultra rosy apple and the number 85 called forth the artificial connection, 'apple, ate five'. An egg of greenish-yellow hue and the number 71 prompted the connection, '7 to 1 it is bad"); and (3) conceptual similarity, where there was some conceptual relationship between the items to be associated, in this case geometrical shapes, e.g. a pictured circle and square. Edgell noted various effects - all of which can be confirmed by the application of modern statistical techniques. Apart from the obvious ones like improvement with age and the general Ethical Record, JultdAugust 2001 I I inferiority of pure contiguity, she noticed an increase in the relative superiority of mnemonic techniques with age and improvement in girls at an earlier age than that of boys. Similar developmental lags have also been observed by current investigators (Cox & Waters, 1986) but Edge11's work in this respect has barely been superseded to this day. Although gender differences in educational achievement are the subject of current lively debate, and the development of memory strategies has been extensively investigated - albeit generally using considerably smaller sample sizes than those which she used - leading researchers in the field of memory (Schneider & Pressley, 1997) recently remarked that, 'we still know almost nothing about whether there are sex differences in memory development'.

'The Most Learned Woman Of The Day' Edgell had a long-standing and unique association with the British Psychological Society. Rex Knight (1961), in his article published on the occasion of the diamond jubilee, comments on their parallel development:

It was said of Professor Edgell in her obituary that she was a Victorian who had managed by intellectual conviction to adjust to a very different world from that of her youth. Except that it just missed being born in the Victorian era, the same may be said of the Society.' (p. 22).

Edgell was one of the twelve original members - of whom only two were women - in addition to the ten founding members, of whom only one was a woman - Sophie Bryant (headmistress of North London Collegiate School). They included philosophers, physiologists and psychiatrists amongst their number. The British Psychological Society is distinguished amongst learned societies by having admitted women from its inception. (The Physiological Society didn't admit women until 1915.) David Wilson has noted the relatively high proportion of women in psychology, in comparison with other disciplines, in Britain and the United States in the early part of the last century, and suggested that this may be due to psychology being a new area, not yet dominated by men, in which women could gain a foothold.

The British Psychological Society was founded in 1901 (as the Psychological Society), at the instigation of James Sully (Grote Professor of Mind & Logic at University College London), and held its first meeting in February 1902. Edgell presented a paper on time judgment to the fifth meeting of the Society, in 1903, and two further papers in 1905, on association, and the Wheatstone-Hipp chronoscope (the latter with Symes). In 1911 she presented another paper with Symes entitled, 'A Preliminary note on visual flicker'.

Edgell also encouraged her students to present papers at meetings. In 1919 the Times Educational Supplement (24th April, 1919) noted:

Everybody who had anything new to say on the subject of psychology was welcome; every raw researcher from the universities when invited to speak was heard with courtesy and helped by friendly criticism; for one of the main aims of the society has been to nurse the infant science and to foster its growth by experiment and research.

Edgell was the first woman to become President of the British Psychological Society (1930-32). The following tribute was paid to her in the obituary notice in the British Journal of Psychology:

12 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 To those who had the privilege of working with her during her presidency of the British Psychological Society she revealed herself as an extremely competent Chairman. She was very clear-headed and had the gift of steering the discussions into profitable channels, and also by her delightful sense of humour averting potentially acrimonious disputes. She always remained dignified and quiet, but there was no doubt about her power.

She wrote an article on the first forty years of the Society in 1941 (published in 1947). It was a task she was particularly well qualified to undertake, in view of her direct and longstanding experience. She delivered the paper in person to the annual conference in Durham in 1946.

Possibly as, or even more important - at least from a media point of view - was her presidency of the Psychology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1932). Again, she was the first woman to hold this position. A number of newspapers commented on the distinction this conferred on hen The Northern Daily Telegraph (5 August) issued this report of the meeting in York, under the title, 'Woman President':

Professor Beatrice Edgell, of Bedford College, London, the only woman to have the honour of being president of a section this year, was received to a packed hall when she rose to deliver her presidential address to the Psychology Section. In a quiet, clear voice she made the most abstruse theories sound simple and comprehensive, even to the lay mind.

On a later occasion (1935) The Queen commented: Among the women speakers in the Psychology Section was Professor Beatrice Edgell, one of the most learned, if not the most learned, women of the day. Her paper dealt with sonie experiments on memory which had involved tests with 280 students of both sexes.

Edgell Made Psychology A Human Study Important though her research was, it is possible that Edgell's greatest contribution was as a teacher. As her obituarists in the 13rhish Journal of Psychology wrote:

Her influence cannot be adequately measured by her writings and perhaps her students are the best witness of her work. They comment on her kindness, her willingness to answer their questions, her lucidity. Perhaps her greatest asset as a teacher was the strictly impartial manner in which she presented controversial topics, leaving their relative merits to emerge in the disscusion which followed her expositions. Her students were thus stimulated to think for themselves and their conclusions were always treated with respect. Professor Edgell founded no school of psychology, but the success of her work is demonstrated by the success of her students in many widely differing fields.

Prior to Edgell taking up her appointment in 1898, two third class degrees in Mental and Moral Science had been awarded to Bedford College students. By contrast, nine of the next sixteen degrees awarded to students from the Department up to the end of World War I (and seventy per cent of those awarded up to 1912, including the first one in Psychology) were first class. Long before the days of grade inflation, these are impressive figures indeed. Edgell taught not only students of Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 13 philosophy and psychology but also journalism and social studies, as well as teachers and nurses - many of whom came from overseas. Here's a tribute from one of them:

Professor Edge11 was a woman of charm with a wise, persuasive manner; a shrewd and practical psychologist, too, who gave one the impression that she could judge character and weigh up the personality behind the facade. She made psychology a human rather than academic study. (Bedford College Old Students' [ - , Association, 1948-49, p. 7). Beatrice Edgell

Working in a women's college, she trained a number who later played a prominent role in the development of psychology in Britain. Notable amongst these are: Victoria Hazlitt (1887-1932), who taught psychology in London University and researched animal learning, mental testing and developmental psychology - Olive Wheeler, the first of Edgell's students to gain a doctorate in psychology (in 1916); Lucy Aides, OBE (1884-1968), who carried out research on learning disabilities and was appointed Head of the Psychology Department in the newly opened London Child Guidance Clinic in 1929; and Winifred Raphael (1898-1978), employed at the National Institute of Industrial Psychology for almost forty years, who pioneered unstructured interviews and attitude surveys in the 1930s.

A Distinctly Feminine Psychology? It might be asked whether Edge11's psychology was distinctly feminine. There seems to be no evidence that either she or any of the other early British women psychologists (with the possible exception of Susan Isaacs) showed a preference for so-called 'soft' topics, such as child development, personality or social psychology. Quite the reverse, if her study of the chronoscope is anything to go by. It is notable that many of the early British women psychologists studied animal learning and behaviour (shades of Beatrix Potter?). David Wilson has remarked that they 'played a significant part in representing in Britain the modern experimental development of the subject which had been largely lost to the [United States].

One striking feature of Edgell's psychology taken on its own, and that of the other early British women psychologists taken as a whole, is the very broad range of topics investigated. This wide cOverage together with the lack of a unifying theory might be regarded as a feminine trait in contrast to the more masculine, focussed pursuit of a personal theory, such as seen in William McDougall's instinct psychology or Charles Spearman's theory of intelligence. (EdgeII founded no school of psychology). However, as Leslie Hearnshaw (1969) was later to remark, an antipathy to theory was one of the features which came to characterise British twentieth century psychology, the most influential work being the experimental investigation of applied problems. In this sense - by taking the first steps along a road which other major British psychologists were to follow, EdgeII may well be seen to have been truly a pioneer.

14 Ethical Record, July/August 2001 I should like to conclude with extracts from Edgell's obituary in Nature, which ably summarises her achievements: [O]rie of the significant figures in the development of British psychology.., she helped to establish the traditions on which the study of psychology is still based in British universities... Throughout her life she combined her interest in philosophy and in experimental psycholou, though with a special leaning to the latter... The laboratory she established bears witness to her concern for exact and objective experimental method aided by the best material equipment then available... Her example and influence thus aided the development of psychology in Britain as an independent experimental science which still retained the stabilising effect of philosophical discipline... Precise of mind and emphatic of utterance she was an excellent teacher and she is held in affectionate respect by a large number of former students, many of whom are now engaged in psychological work applied to industry, education and various branches of social work... During the War she wrote a history of the Society, part of which she read at the annual meeting of the Society in 1946.... Her younger colleagues will remember her as they saw her then, frail, alert and indomitable. References Cox, D. and Waters. H.S. (1986). Sex differences in the use of organisation strategies: a developmental a nalysisiournal of Experimental Child Psychology, 41, 18.37.

Edgell, B. c. 1911. The position of women in the University of London, the provincial universities, and the University of Wales. Lecture delivered to the Council of the National Union of Women Workers. Royal Holloway, University of London Archives pp1/4.

Edgell, B. (Ed.) (1915) Psychological studies from the Psychological Laboratory, Bedford College for Women, University of London. London: University of London Press.

Edgell, B. (1947) The first forty years of the British Psychological Society, British Journal of Psychology, 37, 113-132.

Furumoto, L. (1996) Reflections on gender and the character of American psychology. Presidential address given to Division 26 of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, Canada, 11 August, 1996.

Hearnshaw, L.S. (1969) Psychology in Great 13ritain: An introductory historical essay. In B.M. Foss (Ed.) Psychology in Great Britain, Supplement to the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, vol. 22.

Knight, R. (1961) Thc Society since 1941. In H. Steinberg (Ed.) The British Psychological Society 1901-1961 (p. 22-39). Supplement to the Bulletin of the British Psychological Society.

MacCracken, H.N. (1950) The Hickory Limb. New York: Scribner's.

Scarborough, E. & Furumoto, L. (1987) Untold Lives. New York: Columbia University Press.

Schneider, W. and Pressley, M. (1997). Memory development between two and twenty. 2nd edition, Mahwah, N.1: Erlbaum.

Tuke, Mi. (1939). A history of Bedford College for Women 1849-1947. London: Oxford University Press.

Valentine, ER. (200Ia) Beatrice Edgell: An appreciation. British .lournal of Psychology, 92, 23-36.

Valentine, E. (2001b) First woman: An assessment of the achievements of Beatrice Edgell. Paper read at the British Psychological Society Centenary Conference. Glasgow, March-April. (:1

Ethical Record, JulyMugust 2001 15 CENSORSHIP IN THE UNITED KINGDOM

CIIr. Ted Goodman Chair of Campaign Against Censorship Lecture to the Ethical Society, 29 April 2001

Britain is by far the most secretive and censorious country in the Western World. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, the English Puritan tradition means that sex is regarded as 'dirty' - to be, as far as possible suppressed. This is exemplified by what Professor Christie Davies of Reading University calls British 'Double Porn' ie pornography masquerading as an attack on pornography eg 'Shock, Horror, We Expose This Filth' tabloid stories. This contrasts with continental 'good honest porn' which does not need to be so disguised.

Secondly, the British 'establishment' (including politicians of all parties) believes in authoritarian nannyism. A good example was the motion, signed by one hundred Members of Parliament in 1990, calling for the proscription of the paperback edition of de Sade's Justine on the grounds that this work should not be 'generally available' ie cheap enough for the 'plebs' to read!

In addition politicians in this country are spineless and follow, not lead, what they believe to be public opinion. Hardly any Members of Parliament will thus put their heads above the parapet and tackle the issue of sexually explicit material. In other countries, by contrast, Ministers are prepared to take a moral lead. Thus when legalising hard-core pornography in France in 1979, thc Minister of Culture, Jacques Lang, declared 'the State has no right to prevent citizens seeing what they choose'.

Pre-publication State censorship exists in the British electronic media. All films and video recordings supplied commercially in this country must be classified and can be censored by the British Board of Film Classification (formerly called the British Board of Film Censors). This system was introduced for films by the Cinematograph Act of 1909 and extended by the Video Recordings Act 1984. Other countries, however, have either abolished State censorship or never introduced it. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution specifically prohibits it.

Entertainment To Be A Sedative The result is that all sexually explicit and many overtly political films were banned in Britain. The establishment wanted popular entertainment to be a sedative, not stimulating. In 1929 no fewer than 300 films shown in l3ritish cinemas had been cut by the censor.

The Soviet film 'Battleship Potemkin', for instance, was refused a certificate for twenty years. An anti-Nazi documentary suffered the same fate in 1937, as did a filmed exposé of the concentration camps in 1946, until an outcry about the latter decision by some Labour Members of Parliament caused a reluctant rethink by the British Board of Film Censors. To cap it all, in 1992 the video recording 'Visions of Ecstasy' about Saint Teresa of Avila was banned as blasphemous, because the finger of the figure on the Crucifix was seen to move! No other country in the whole world proscribed this work.

By the 1990s the situation was ridiculous. Most video recordings being sold in the UK were pirated sexually-explicit works from abroad, being supplied 'under the counter' without certification from the British Board of Film Classification and in 16 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 contravention of the Obscene Publications Acts. Virtually all other Western countries had legalised this sort of material, but British politicians would not even consider so doing, for fear of offending perceived Grundyist public opinion. The situation came to a head in 1999 when the Video Appeals Committee overturned refusals by the British Board of Film Classification to grant 'R IS' Certificates (ie restricting sale to licensed sex-shops) to several sexually explicit video recordings. The Committee took the sensible view that the whole purpose of licensed sex shops, which only adults could enter, was to provide a legitimate outlet for this type of material. The BBFC challenged the Appeals Committee's decision in the High Court by way of judicial review, but lost. It thereupon realised that its strict 'No Sex Please We're British' attitude was no longer tenable. Anne Widdicombe MP, the Shadow Home Secretary, on the other hand, publicly called for all the members of the Video Appeals Committee to be dismissed!

British Were Broad-minded To deal with the situation, the 13ritish Board of Film Classification decided to test the waters and it commissioned a survey of 13ritish attitudes. To its surprise, the great British public was revealed to be much more broad-minded than was previously imagined. It wanted sexual material to be made available to adults. Jack Straw, the 'born-again Christian' Home Secretary, to whom the BBFC is responsible for video censorship, had other ideas. Robin Duval, Director of the BBFC, decided to call Straw's bluff. In 2000, Duval publicly declared that the Home Office needed the BI3FC, as otherwise the Secretary of State would have to carry out the controversial censorship function himself. In September, the BBFC then revised its guidelines, allowing certain defined types of sexually explicit material in the `R IS' (sex-shop videos) Category. The Home Secretary did nothing. HM Customs and the police followed the BBFC lead and ceased to prosecute importers and publishers of such material, if it was sold in licensed sex-shops and conformed to the BBFC guidelines. The officials had acted where politicians feared to tread! The BBFC had, however, committed the moral crime of doing the right thing for the wrong reason! It had liberalised censorship because it wanted to keep BBFC jobs by being in tune with public opinion - not because it believed in freedom of expression. In other words, like all `jacks-in-office' the BBFC pandered to what Dr Jinnah used to call 'the brute majority'.

The effect of the BBFC reform is, however, limited by certain factors. One, for example, is that the BBFC regards visible urination as unacceptable (as opposed to visible copulation!) It therefore continuos to refuse to allow depiction of urolagnia. In 2001 this led to the refusal of a certificate for the video recording 'Ben Dover's Squirt Queens', because it featured female ejaculation, which the BBFC interpreted as a form of urination, rather than masturbation!

In addition, the Labour Government has still not implemented its pledge to decriminalise male homosexual acts by consenting adults where more than two persons are present. The video classifiers take the view that the presence of the cameraman should not be counted, as otherwise no sexually explicit gay material could ever be given a certificate! lf, however there are more than two participants in such a video recording, it is refused a certificate on the grounds that the acts depicted are illegal.

Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 17 The refusal by over half the local authorities in England (mostly Labour controlled ones) to license any sex-shops operates as a form of covert censorship. The Labour Chair of Chesterfield Council Licensing Committee, for instance, publicly proclaimed that there would only be a licensed sex-shop in that town over his dead body! This means that the outlets in Britain for lawful sexually explicit material are few and far between.

In addition the Department of Culture illogically continues to proscribe foreign satellite television stations showing the type of material now legal on 'It 18' video recordings in Britain. No other country in Europe does this, but the UK has criminalised the sale of decoders and advertising on ten such stations, including a Russian one! When asked (by the Campaign Against Censorship) to explain, the Department stated that British parents cannot be trusted to keep the decoders out of reach of their minors! Chris Smith, the openly 'gay' Secretary of State for Culture, has thus banned a satellite station catering for homosexuals.

Television is governed by the Cable and Broadcasting Act 1984 and the Broadcasting Acts 1990 and 1998. Control is exercised by the BBC Governors and the Independent Television Commission. They impose the strictest television broadcast control in Europe. Under their shadow, even newscasts are self-censored. French television, for instance, showed public executions by firing squad in Lagos which inspired protests in Paris against the Nigerian government. There were none in Britain, however, because television here would not broadcast the graphic and shocking scenes. Similarly, the RSPCA obtained footage of cruelty in Greek abattoirs, but British television stations refused to screen it. Instead the RSPCA then managed to get it shown on newscasts in Greece, where it caused such an outcry that the government there took action! Telephones are governed by the Telecommunications Act 1984 and control is exercised by ICSTIS (Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services), which stops British companies allowing 'bad language' on chat-lines. Most therefore route their calls through foreign jurisdictions to avoid this absurd restriction.

An Odious Statute Part IV of the Police & Criminal Evidence Act 1994 criminalises computer pornography. The Regulation of Interceptory Procedures Act 2000 allows police to demand at will, without a warrant, anyone's computer encryption code, on pain of two years imprisonment for refusal to comply. No other Western country has such an Orwellian law. The architect of this odious statute was Patricia Hewitt MP, former General Secretary of the National Council for Civil Liberties but now a career politician and authoritarian Government Minister. She should be ashamed of herself!

The Communications White Paper of 2000 envisages placing all the electronic media (including films and video recordings) under the control of one body. That at least might achieve consistency, ending the present much more restrictive standards imposed on television than on video recordings.

Non-electronically published material is not pre-censored in the UK but is subject to a host of legal requirements and prohibitions which force self-censorship. In addition, 'D-Notices' can be issued under the Official Secrets Act 'asking' editors to refrain from publishing material on grounds of national security. The misnamed Freedom of Information Act (introduced by Jack Straw) allows Government Ministers to withhold information about their Departments on the grounds of 18 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 perceived national wellbeing ie at will! The result is that the UK remains the most secretive country in Europe.

Other statute laws which restrict freedom of expression are:

Customs Consolidation Act 1876 (Section 42 prohibits indecent imports) Disorderly Houses Act 1751 (used against private erotic shows) Malicious Communications Act (prohibits insulting letters) Obscene Publications Acts 1959 and 1964 Post office Act 1953 (prohibits sending of indecent articles) Protection of Children Act 1978 as amended (criminalises possession of indecent photographs or computer images of children under sixteen) Theatres Act 1968 (prohibits obscene performances).

In addition there are antiquated common law offences eg: Common Law offence of Blasphemy Conspiracy to Corrupt Public Decency Conspiracy to Corrupt Public Morals Conspiracy to Outrage Public Decency Exhibiting Indecent Activities, Pictures or Things Keeping a Disorderly House (cg by staging an indecent performance in private) Obscenity (no defence of public good) Outraging Public Deccncy Scottish Common Law Offence of Shameless Indecency.

Gutless Governments The Law Commission in 1976 recommended the abolition of these outdated crimes, but successive gutless governments have failed so to do. The common law thus continues to be used against art galleries, erotic exhibitions in night clubs, gay poets, naked protesters, private sex-shows, prostitutes advertising themselves, sex parties, streakers and such like, making Britain an intolerant, authoritarian society.

Instead of repealing any of these laws, the Home Office instead proposes to increase penalties for public male nudity and criminalise advertising by prostitutes (see Setting the Boundaries: Reforming the Law on Sexual Offences published by the Home Office, July 2000).

The whole thing is a sorry tale of the English idea that overt sexuality is a subject that is too hot to handle and the consequent cowardly neglect of legal reform by lily-livered British politicians. Elected as legislators, they never open law books, but instead spend their time playing to the gallery by posturing to the local and national media and self-righteously preaching morality which they rarely practise themselves. Being unprincipled careerists, they care not a jot for freedom of expression in itself and instead gladly support any form of censorship if they think there are votes in it.

They therefore succumb to pressure from the likes of Evangelical Anglican letter writers, who believe that people must be protected from themselves by the legal imposition of puritanical standards. (When asked why British television was subject to much greater sexual constraints, Christine Ockrent, a celebrated Paris broadcaster, stated that it was because of the English Protestant tradition). Consequently Government policy is largely determined by focus groups composed of Daily Mail readers, the supposed representatives of narrow-minded 'Middle England'l Principles do not come into it. Ethical Record, July/August 2001 19 ART VERSUS ETHICS A Review Essay on Neil LaBute's new play, The Shape of Things premiered at the Almeida Theatre, London (The Shape of Things, Neil Lal3ute, Faber and Faber, 2000. ISBN 0 571 21246 0)

Suzette Henke Morton Professor of Literary Studies, University of Louisville

'All art is quite useless', insisted Oscar Wilde, in an epigram quoted in Neil LaBute's new play, The Shape of Things. What is not included in Lal3ute's dialogue is the rest of Wilde's paradoxical aesthetic proclamation: that art is a beautiful lie constructed by the singer for the dreamer - a mutual illusion fashioned to fend off the absurdity of the human condition. But what happens when the dreamer becomes the ()Net d'art? This question provides the punch line for Lal3ute's provocative and disturbing play - and what a whallop that punch packs, for audience, actors, and ethicists alike.

Is art antithetical to ethics? Is the artist above morality? What is justified in the name of artistic practice, and how do human relationships play out on the double(d) stage of ethics and aesthetics? If art, as Aristotle observed, holds the mirror up to nature, then LaBute cannily contrives a dramatic canvas that envisages a double mirror for its naive and somewhat stupefied audience. On the one hand, the author conjures an image of the unconscious manipulations that play themselves out on the quotidian stage of human relationships. Often inadvertently, we subtly take friends and loved ones in hand and offer veiled critical suggestions for self-improvement, usually in the name of solicitous concern. How often do we critique our partner's choice of diet or alcoholic consumption, grooming or appearance, habitual behaviour or chronic peccadilloes? Such practices become part of any intimate relationship. But, ironically, one of the very few motivational forces that can effect behavioural changes in human consciousness is love or high regard. Out of love, compassion, pride, or a desire for respect, individuals will often find a way to alter self-destructive patterns and improve their behaviour. In other words, they engage in practices of self-fashioning that make them into better (and more aesthetically pleasing) human beings.

Such is the premiss of Neil LaBute's The Shape of Things, a play predicated on a play on words that deliberately provokes but misleads the audience, which believes for three quarters of the dramatic exposition that they are watching a drama about two young couples competing for amorous favours. Adam is a 20-something English literature student who meets Eve(lyn), a university art major, at a local museum. From the moment that this seductive young temptress spray-paints her telephone number onto Adam's treasured jacket, the young man is 'hooked' - entranced, intrigued, and ultimately snared by the beautiful siren whose exotic interest in cultural production adds to the allure of her feminine charms.

At the beginning of the play, Adam is simply a nerd - a bespectacled British literature major who loves to spout Shakespeare and snippets from EngLit 101 - but usually quotations that most audience members will recognise. At one point, he claims to feel like the metamorphosed Gregor Samsa, of Kafka, caught up in an absurd drama that he cannot interpret. But the absurdity of the play is visible neither to Adam nor to the audience - not yet, at least. The second couple in the play, Phillip and Jenny, claim to be Adam's best friends. In the frenzy of prenuptial jitters, both start to question their commitment to one another and cast stray glances in the direction of Adam and Eve(lyn). At this point, the audience is lulled into the expectation of a

20 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 typical drama of jealousy and betrayal. When Adam is apprised of this potentially hackneyed scenario, he makes a wry comment about a handkerchief with strawberries - a recursive allusion to Shakespeare's Othello that all but the ingenuous Jenny can understand. One remembers Othello's exultant celebration of his bride Desdemona with the exclamation that death at the moment of conjugal ecstasy would doubtless be a beneficent mistress - that to die at the height of marital bliss (and, presumably, of illusory happiness) would be a fitting climax, in many senses of the word (including the French pun on petit tnon).

Certainly, Adam shares Othello's uxoriousness when he falls into every trap that the wily Evelyn cannily prepares for her suitor. Even a nerd in love is ripe for refashioning. Adam puts himself on a rigorous regime of diet and exercise, shedding excess pounds and firming his musculature in the course of a four-month makeover. He trades his spectacles for contact lenses and even gets a nose job to pleasure his demanding mistress. More fervent and committed than the most chivalric of medieval courtiers, he has his lady-love's initials, EAT, tattooed on his penis. And he' agrees to give up his only meaningful friendship, that with Phillip and Jenny, in order to pass the 'test' of Evelyn's exclusionary demands for affection. Greater love than bodily deformation hath no man for his mate. As Adam grows in grace and physical stature, he gains confidence and becomes a more appealing specimen of masculine prowess. In other words, he exudes ever more aesthetic and sexual appeal, as he becomes a more valuable and pleasing commodity on the marriage market. In a climactic move, he proposes to Evelyn, who answers his proposition via public display.

Throughout this extended one-act play, Evelyn has casually referred to her senior art project as a 'thingie' that remains obscure and undefined. She invites all three friends to her inaugural display of the thingie - which turns out to be none other than the physically diminished and now fatally deflated 'specimen', Adam himself. Here is LaBute's shocking and cynical punch line: the actor is objectified as the aesthetic material manipulated and reconfigured by the artistic design of his cunning partner - who has, in the process, both literally and figuratively prostituted her body and her self for the sake of her artistic ends. One doesn't need Aristotle's Ethics to judge the cynical telos of this particularly daring project. But one might recall Aristotle's resounding indictment of friendship based on utility to pass moral judgement on Evelyn's manipulative strategies.

The self-congratulatory Evelyn insists that she has virtually 'changed thc world' by offering her community a 'human sculpture' uniquely transformed in the course of 18 weeks. She has made use of 'two very pliable materials of choice: the human flesh and the human will' to perpetrate a successful human sculpture denuded of glasses and bitten fingernails, excessive weight and oversized nose (119). She claims immunity on the grounds of the 'artist's ruthless pursuit of truth and historical disregard for rule and law' (120). Emulating Pygmalion, who turned a stone statue into a human lover, she has taken an adoring enamorata and 'totally refashioned [him] as a person... "a real piece of work" (121). Her vindication is the Aristotelian telos, 'insistent on results above all else' (120). The moral dilemma on which this experimental drama so precariously pivots is the ancient quandary concerning the end of action justifying the means. Does art transcend morality - as James Joyce and the modernists claimed when they envisaged the artist above or beyond his handiwork, detached, elusive, unconcerned, and paring (but not biting) his fingernails?

Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 21 Of course, the butt of LaBute's biting satire is also the commodity fetishism and glittering prizes of late capitalist society and 'our obsession with the surface of things, the shape of them' (121). Like Virginia Woolf's Miss LaTrobe at the end of her play in the novel Between Me Ads, the dramatist slyly holds a mirror up to contemporary life and mockingly shows his/her audience its own cynicism in the play's recursive structure. Evelyn protests that she is following 'in a long tradition of artists who believe that there is no such concept as religion, or government, community or even family. There is only art. Art that must be created. Whatever the cost' (122). In a statement eerily reminiscent of other 20" century 'immoralists', Evelyn defiantly proclaims that she feels no remorse for her actions or manufactured emotions. The end, `this one glorious moment', justifies 18 weeks of lies and deceit - not to mention the shattered and disillusioned psyche of her incredulous aesthetic subject, `untitled', and stripped of his human dignity and (selOrespect.

In a final dramatic dialogue, Evelyn triumphantly announces to Adam: 'You are my installation thingie' (128) - as if he, and everyone in the audience, had failed to notice. He admits that he was 'nothing until [she] started clicking around' with him, body and spirit - 'no-thing' (124). But that's precisely the point. He was a full human subject, not a thing or a pliable object. By being objectified, he could be pruned, primed, and perfected. He was simultaneously stripped of his individual subject position, even as his body was sculpted into an aesthetically pleasing shape, and his mind gave way to willing deceptions. Adam's passion was sincere, but in the long dramatic tradition of l'amour fon. And how crazy or (self)deluded can a lover be, not to realise that the woman he adores is relentlessly manipulating his every move?

Once disabused, Adam is justifiably enraged and insanely abusive. He protests: `when Picasso took a shit, he didn't call it a "sculpture" (132). [Clearly, our ingenious midwestern hero has not yet visited the Tate Modern gallery, to be apprised of a surrealist ploy to do exactly that - and to sell the commodity ler its weight in gold]. In a stroke of witty invective, Adam accuses Evelyn of pure folly and self-delusion for spilling her 'shiny neuroses all over people's laps' (132) and calling it art: 'then you're about two inches away from using babies to make lamp shades and calling it "furniture" (133). Does this young man have sufficient historical memory to suggest analogies with Nazi practices of making soap from the remains of their incinerated prison camp victims?

Evelyn coyly admits that everything has been a baldfaced lie - her manufactured personal narrative, her reported age, her own fabricated nose-job - everything except a passionate proclamation made during a unique moment when the couple exchanged postorgasmic whispers between the bedsheets: 'I meant that. did'(I 37), Evelyn swears. And thus she delivers the best and last manipulative lie - the one shred of illusion that will keep the bewitched Adam forever tethered to her seductive emotional leash. The play concludes on a note of hope or cynicism, depending on one's jaded or panglossian point of view. For those who have seen LaBute's notorious film In the Company of Men, the outcome is obvious. As we leave Adam crouched on the stage in zombie-like fascination with the videos of himself as art object, we feel exonerated or despondent, but certainly not exhilarated and optimistic. Some of us may even feel a bit manipulated by a dramatic offering that pivots on an ostensibly shocking revelation of ruthless human betrayal. In a society that values surface over depth, body over intellect, and shape over substance, one is left with a very thin thread of faith in the values of personal relationship and the ethics of compassion, justice, solicitude and truth. The dramatic artist has 22 Ethical Recoth, JulylAugust 2001 manipulated his audience in much the same way that Evelyn deceived, then disabused, a subject who connived in his Own abasement. LaBute, like Brecht, has deliberately alienated his audience and forced us to grapple with provocative issues that weigh art and aesthetic enjoyment in the balance against morality and fidelity. For those who believe, with Keats, that truth is beauty and beauty truth, the play is only beginning, with no credible vision of the 'shape of things to come' in sight. El

UTILITARIANISM AND CONTEMPORARY MORAL PROBLEMS

Rona Gerber Lecture to the Ethical Socim 8 April, 2001

Essentially Utilitarianism proposes that morality consists of maximising happiness and wellbeing and minimising distress and pain. Not surprisingly this view has a long history. Ancient Greek philosophers, for example, believed that the pursuit of happiness was a rational goal; but the theory was most systematically articulated first by Jeremy Bentham and then by John Stuart Mill, the son of Bentham's great friend, James Mill. Bentham was really interested in the rational moral foundation of laws; he was not interested in personal moral dilemmas. If the general tendency of a rule, when applied, is to promote happiness then that rule must be adopted. This is the way it is jusnfied.

J.S. Mill was more concerned with how the individual, confronted with a moral problem, would use Utilitarian principles to solve this problem. He formulated the notion of 'higher' and 'lower' pleasures, asserting that the former were more desirable even if the pleasurable element in them was smaller than in the lower pleasures. Many people have objected to the idea of ranking pleasures in this way; the value judgement embedded here cannot be justified in Utilitarian terms. As pleasures, the pleasures provided by good food and satisfying sex may well be equal to those given by intellectual activity and altruistic actions. Mill, however, formed this idea of superior and inferior pleasures to repudiate the notion that Utilitarianism is the 'morality of swine'.

A Glance At Kant Leaving this argument aside, we will turn to the deontological concept of morality. According to this view, people's morality should be dictated by what they perceive to be their duty, and this can be rationally derived. Kant said: 'Act on that maxim that you can at the same time will to be a universal law'. In other words, one must act in conformity with an unqualified prescription which ignores the complexities of the real world and which must be applied irrespective of actual consequences. Thus the way Kant interpreted 'universalisable maxims' would have required an individual to give away to a murderer on the rampage the whereabouts of his victim (since to Kant the only alternative to 'Never lie' was 'Lie whenever it pleases you', and this could not be a consistently followed prescription!) Kant's ignoring of particular circumstances and special cases makes his morality unrealistic and at times appalling.

To return to Utilitarianism, many people have modified and adapted it while retaining its core principles, notably Peter Singer who embraced something hc called 'Preference Utilitarianism' to take account of the eccentricities of human Ethical Recw.d, July/August 2001 23 preferences. He wanted to escape from the accusation that Utilitarianism caters only for commonly experienced pleasures.

Peter Singer's best known work, Animal Liberation, has been influential as regards the treatment of animals (or at least in respect of discussions of their treatment!) but he has written many other books, some of which are included in the Reading list. The framework of his discussions is avowedly Utilitarian; and in the rest of this talk I shall follow him by employing Utilitarian presuppositions.

Genetic Manipulation In a world increasingly governed by technology, the emergence of various forms of genetic manipulation fills many people with profound alarm. The idea that genes which cause deformities or painful progressive illnesses should if possible be eliminated can surely have no rational opposition. Utilitarian arguments are obviously all in favour of such a programme. However, when it comes to looking at the details of the procedures required to do this, some people might find them objectionable. In a family which has a history of something like Huntingdon's Chorea, haemophilia or muscular dystrophy, the discovery that an embryo is carrying the defective gene would result in the decision to abort it.

The objections to early abortions are mainly religious and are framed in terms such as: 'Every embryo is a human being and thus has a Divine right to life'; but spontaneous abortions are much more common than induced ones, so it seems that the Lord cannot value His own immature creations that much if He disposes of them so prodigally! Often, however, the discovery that the unborn child is carrying the defective gene cannot be made until late in pregnancy, and late abortions are more problematic than early ones. However, the arguments against preserving such a foetus are strong. At this period it is only marginally aware and its death would certainly not be a tragedy to it. The development of the inherited illness later in life would, on the other hand, undoubtedly cause both it and the parents great distress. Utilitarian arguments would thus strongly favour abortion in such a case.

Embryos, of course, because they are totally non-sentient, cannot, in Utilitarian terms, be morally significant - thus, to learn more about the development and differentiation of cells in the earliest stages of life it is surely reasonable to experiment on primitive embryos, spare as a result of in vitro fertilisation procedures. Certainly this is better than to experiment on already developed and sentient Rhesus monkeys! The ability to feel, and particularly to suffer, is central, as already stated, to Utilitarian calculations.

Many people desperate for a child now turn to in vitro fertilisation as a last hope of becoming parents. The use of the husband's sperm to fertilise the wife's ovum is surely unproblematic - just a re-routing of the processes of conception and no more unnatural than colostomies or tracheostomies which also involve re-routing of natural processes; but when a donor's sperm is used, certain problems arise. Remember that here we are looking at the problem from the point of view of human wellbeing and happiness - and though the parents of a child produced in this way usually get much fulfilment from its creation, such a child might later suffer greatly from the idea that he or she can never find out the identity of his or her biological father. It is plausible to argue that all sperm donors should be required to leave their names on a register which could be made accessible to any natural children really dedicated to tracing their biological origins.

24 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 Other issues touched on were the promotion of public transport where the excessive use of cars threatens environmental and architectural treasures as well as human health, non-voluntary euthanasia of severely deformed and abnormal neo- nates, as well as euthanasia of the very senile old who are reduced to the level of slobbering infants, and the moral status of animals.

Notes and Reading List This lecture was never intended to be primarily an enquiry into the various forms of Utilitarian moral theory - it was an exercise in applied moral philosophy. A more detailed account of the theory in its many manifestations is given in Utilitarianism, edited by Mary Warnock, which includes essays by Bentham and Mill and a lengthy and quite illuminating introduction by Mary Warnock herself. Utilitarianistn, For and Against by J.C. Smart and Bernard Williams (published by the Cambridge University Press), and An Introduction to Ethics by J.D. Mabbott which contains discussions of Utilitarianism in the first three chapters (published by Hutchinson University Library) are also worth reading.

Causing Death & Saving Lives, J. Glover Moral Problems, James Rachels, Longman Applied Ethics, edited by Peter Singer O.U.P. The Reproduction Revolution, Peter Singer and Deane Wells. O.U.P. The Expanding Circle: Ethics and Sociobiology, Peter Singer, O.U.R Also three journals: Philosophy and Public Affairs (Princeton University Press); Applied Philosophy (Journal of the Society of Applied Philosophy); and Ethics, (The University of Chicago Press) are dedicated to the philosophical discussion of contemporary issues.

See also, Utilitas, published in association with the Bentham Project, UCL, and Utilitarianism - a humanist view, Ethical Record Oct 1999 p.13 [Ed.] El PETER SINGER'S ETHICS Writings On An Ethical LIP by Peter Singer, Fourth Estate (2000), 361pp

Book Review by Leslie Jones

The Times recently called for a 'World day for the beneficiaries of animal research' (Antis And Other Animals', 24 April, 2001). It can hardly be accused of partiality towards animals, then. Yet on 24 May the same newspaper claimed that cattle and sheep were bring buried alive. It told of terrified cattle chased around a field by marksmen and of screaming piglets dispatched by soldiers armed with spades.

According to certain commentators huge numbers of healthy creatures have been needlessly killed by Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food during thc foot and mouth epidemic. We have seen burial pits and funeral pyres reminiscent of the Final Solution. It seems difficult to deny Peter Singer's contention that animals are 'ruthlessly and cruelly exploited by humans'. Yet like other previous forms of exploitation, many people fail to perceive its existence. When material interests are involved, humanity seems capable of infinite self-deception.

In this comprehensive selection from his writings, Singer, Professor of Bioethics at Princeton, graphically describes two of the main forms of the exploitation of animals, namely, scientific research using animals as objects and Ethical Record, JulybAugust 2001 25 factory farming. Concerning the former, Singer accepts that humans have certain unique attributes that make human life potentially of greater value, to wit, our capacity for rationality/autonomy and our sense of an ongoing existence. Unlike most supporters of animal liberation, hc is therefore prepared to accept animal experiments if they confer a significant benefit to humans, such as a cure for a serious disease. But as he observes, many animal experiments signally fail to do so. Take, for example, the zealous attempts at Harvard in the 1950s to induce learned helplessness in dogs. Thankfully, these cruel experiments reminiscent of the activities of scientists in the previous decade (Russian prisoners immersed in tanks of freezing water etc) proved inconclusive. As the author remarks, the reduction of animals to disposable things brings to mind chattel slavery.

E.O. Wilson has emphasised the inborn affinity of humans for other life forms and lamented the depletion of bio-diversity. Clearly, Professor Singer did not single- handedly put animal issues on the agenda, as he seems to imply in the introduction (page xiv). Compassion for all living and potentially suffering beings is central to Buddhism; the JaMs try to protect all living things. Singer is arguably only the latest of a succession of thinkers (Schopenhauer being a notable example) who have applied essentially Eastern ideas to Western concerns.

The demand for animal rights can also be based on the greatest happiness principle enunciated by Jeremy Bentham in An Introduction 7b The Principles Of Morals And Legislation. The premiss of this principle is that pain is bad and pleasure good. Animals unquestionably experience pain and fear. Singer reminds us that Bentham believed that the principle of equal consideration is applicable to other sentient beings. The capacity to suffer rather than to reason gives a living thing an equal right to consideration, in Bentham's opinion. •

Darwinism is another seminal influence On the author. As he observes, the habitual excuse for discounting the interests of other species is the exaggerated notion we humans have of our cosmic significance. This misconception is partly a legacy of Christianity, which attributed souls to humans and delivered up the rest of the animal kingdom to human governance. Clearly, it is not necessary to believe in God 'to be under the influence of Christian moral teaching' (introduction, p.xviii).

Peter Singer 'thrives on the antagonism he generates' (quotation from 'The Most Dangerous Man In The World', Guardian Weekend, 6 November, 1999) Indeed, he is to bioethics what Norman Finkelstein is to Holocaust Studies (see 'The Holocaust - An Industry?'Ethical Record, September 2000). Singer has antagonised two groups in particular, the Christians (especially the Catholics) and the disability lobby. His defence of abortion and suicide and his advocacy of infanticide in certain restricted instances incense the first group. Singer notes that it is now legal to terminate the life of a human foetus. Yet he maintains that other categories of humans, namely, new-born children, certain severely disabled individuals and people in a persistent vegetative state lack those attributes that confer value on human life. Taken together, these attributes (rationality, self-consciousness and autonomy) constitute what the writer calls personhood. A new-born baby has therefore no more right to life than the foetus, according to this argument. Paradoxically, having asked us to transcend 'speciesism' (the barrier between humans and other animal species) he erects a new line of demarcation between persons and non-persons.

In the 1990s, the author was regularly prevented from speaking in Germany where his forthright views on disability and infanticide reminded some observers of 26 Ethical Record, JulvlAugusr 2001 the concept of 'life unworthy of life'. The champions of racial hygiene, notably the jurist Karl Binding and Alfred Noche, Professor of Psychiatry at Freiburg, elaborated this notion during the Weimar Republic. Lebensunwenes lehen was the rationale for the Nazi euthanasia programme T4 (see The Nazi Doctors, Robert Jay Lifton). In reality, this programme was medical killing rather than euthanasia, which should only be for the benefit of the individual. Professor Lifton shows that it was mainly the opposition of the German clergy (imbued with the 'irrational dogma' of the sanctity of human life) that put a stop to T4.

In the section Euthanasia: Emerging From Hitler's Shadow, Singer tries to disassociate himself from all such state sponsored programmes of medical killing. But it is difficult to see how killing an infant without a brain or one suffering from spina bifida can be subsumed to 'voluntary euthanasia' (p.xx). Like the aforementioned Alfred Hoche, Singer emphasises the economic burden of keeping the 'mentally dead' alive. Granted, he has recently stopped using the provocative term 'defective human being' to describe the handicapped. But he still endorses the term 'worthless life' as a description of irreversibly comatose patients such as Anthony Bland. Infanticide, he reminds us, was deemed reasonable and honourable in ancient Rome. But so were slavery and crucifixion.

Of particular interest to this reviewer were Singer's attempts to reconcile Darwinism and socialism. Like some other members of the leftist intelligentsia, hc wants to substitute a politically sanitised version of Darwinism for defunct Marxism. The biologist Robert Trivers is another exponent of this strange hybrid 'Darwinism for the left'. But there is a price to be paid for combining socialism and Darwinism. The author concedes that the idea of the infinite malleability of human nature, once central to socialist ideology, will have to go. Socialists will have to accept that our selfish and competitive tendencies are innate and that some form of social hierarchy is inevitable.* This is indeed 'a sharply deflated vision of .the left' (page 282).

Writings On An Ethical Life is something of a curate's egg, Peter Singer's uncompromising atheism notwithstanding. Your reviewer completely accepts his assertion that our treatment of animals is scandalous. But the alarming views on handicap and infanticide restated in this book brought to mind a comment made by the sociologist Benjamin Kidd. Recalling Karl Pearson's conception of an ideally perfect society, replete with summary justice for anti-social types, Kidd expressed his relief that his birth had occurred 'in the earlier ages of comparative barbarism'.

*Do readers accept this conclusion? [Ed] RESUSCITATION: PHYSIOLOGICAL AND ETHICAL ISSUES

Harold Hillman Director, Unity Laboratory of Applied Neurobiology, Guildford

Sununary of a Lecture to the Ethical Society, 8 April 2001

. Dying A Gradual Phenomenon Organs such as corneas, kidneys and hearts can be taken from dying patients and can be transplanted to a recipient long after the donor has died. The organ will be transplanted to a recipient in whom it will carry out its normal function. Although the person from whom it was taken is dead, the organ is not. In animal experiments an udder separated from the body can produce milk, an isolated kidney can secrete

Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 urine and even a separated brain can demonstrate normal EEGs - 'electroencephalographs (brain waves).

After a few hours these isolated organs fail to continue with their normal functions but even after they do, slices of udder, kidney or brain still exhibit some of the characteristics of the whole organ, for up to about two hours. When these cease, the bit of tissue can be homogenised and it shows the activity of enzymes (biological catalysts) for several hours. This activity eventually diminishes and stops. These considerations show that dying is a gradual phenomenon, the gradual loss of organisation.

Criteria of Death for the GP A general practitioner uses different criteria. He or she has to sign a death certificate, which gives permission for the body to be removed, prior to burial or cremation. The criteria for death are as follows: the patient is a) not moving, b) not breathing, c) lacks a pulse on the wrist, neck or groin; d) has no chest or heart sounds (but rushing sounds in large blood vessels can deceive the inexperienced); e) the skin usually becomes blotchy; t) may be cold; g) sometimes appear to be smiling - the 'risus sardonicus' - because the facial muscles contract; g) the blood vessels in the retina show 'beading' (Kevorkian's Sign).

Hypothermia However, neither a single sign, nor all of them together, can distinguish between the heart stopping due to severe cold (hypothermia) and its stopping due to death. The only way of telling for certain in a patient who has been exposed to cold is to try to resuscitate them. If thcy come round they were (obviously!) not dead. If not, they probably were unless one used inappropriate ways of reviving them and contributed to their demise. This means that if one comes across a person about whom no history is known - especially if they have been exposed to cold - one should always try to revive them.

Resuscitation There is a long history of trying to revive people. During the Middle Ages, they were sometimes subjected to blowing smoke into their rectums, stimulated with hot irons, made to straddle a running horse, or laid over a barrel. During the early 20th century methods were developed for putting a person face down and compressing the chest to encourage evacuation of vomitus. Or, they could be put on their backs and their arms rowed to induce the chest to expand. Mouth-to-mouth respiration was introduced by Jude and Safar in 1954; it was soon realised there was a report in Kings in the Old Testament of how the prophet Elisha 'leaned over a child and breathed the spirit of life into him'.

Cardiac massage presses the heart from outside the chest and starts circulation. Resuscitation involves clearing mucous from the throat, often the use of oxygen, the use of drugs (sometimes injected directly into the heart) and stimulating the heart with a powerful electrical current. The patients are nowadays treated initially by paramedics in a specially equipped ambulance. They are then admitted to Casualty (more correctly, Accident and Emergency or A & E departments) and from there to Intensive Care Units (ICUs). Unfortunately, unless one treats the patients within five minutes of collapse, most of them end up in the morgue. Attempts to resuscitate people in cardiac arrest are rarely successful - except in soap operas!

28 Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 Discovery of Abdominal Pumping My colleagues and I were involved in the development of the new procedure, abdontinalpumping. We first discovered this in experiments reviving anaesthetised rats from cardiac arrest over 30 minutes. Compression of the abdomen, for about 2 minutes in rats, 10 minutes in lambs and 10-15 minutes in human beings, produces various effects whether the heart has already stopped or not. It pushes blood back to the heart, it causes blood to flow to the brain; it contracts the lungs; it induces blood flow in the circulation of the heart itself - the coronary circulation. In rats, the incidence of recovery increased after 30 minutes cardiac arrest due to cold from 10% to 50%.

What is needed now is a controlled clinical trial with patients on whom ambulance personnel, nurses and doctors have tried this new procedure. Unfortunately I found it impossible to organise such a trial, due mainly. I believe, to the innate conservatism of British doctors. In the United States a clinical trial could not be held because if any patient died after a doctor attempted resuscitation, there would he a risk of being accused of being party to a killing.

The Future I believe that with modern methods of resuscitation, many more people will be revived when in danger of dying from cold, road traffic accidents and so on. One can stimulate the heart, give artificial respiration, replace damaged or ill organs, aid the circulation and fill the patient with drugs for example. This may well mean that, in the future, people will be kept alive for months, perhaps even living normal, healthy lives. However, it will be tremendously expensive.

About 20 different skilled personnel are involved in casualty departments and intensive care units. Until about 10 years ago, British doctors pretended that there was no rationing and that all patients were treated alike. Of course, this has never been the case. In the capitalist system in which we live, private patients can pay to jump the queue for expensive and specialised treatments. Private medicine is expanding. There is no evidence that the present administration intends even to try to prevent or reverse the erosion of the National Health Service. •

So we can forecast for this country and for most developed countries that the technology and effectiveness of resuscitation will increase and that its expense will continue to increase. A few rich and privileged people will have access to the latest treatment but it will be irrelevant to the vast majority of the population.

CHURCH SCHOOLS AND NEW LABOUR

Barbara Smoker

The Dearing Report, presented to the Queen and published on 14 June, 2001, proposes to increase by 100 the existing number of publicly-funded Church of England schools - obviously at the expense of integrated local-authority education - and, moreover, to allow those schools to continue selecting pupils, primarily on the basis of their parents' religious belief and practice (real or feigned). It also states that the ethos of these schools should be 'distinctively Christian'. This is surely a mark of religious dictatorship, totally out of place in a democracy.

Ethical Record, July/August 2001 29 Admittedly, church schools are popular with concerned parents - even including atheist, agnostic, and other non-Christian parents - but this is due to the good academic record of which such schools can boast. It has little to do with the religious ethos of the schools and everything to do with the social quality of their intake, facilitated by self-perpetuating selection.

Since the Report has the enthusiastic support of the Prime Minister and his education ministers, its recommendations could well become law in this Parliament.

Not only would it inevitably be socially divisive (have we learnt nothing from Northern Ireland?), it is also a denial of the basic right of every child to come into contact with a range of attitudes at variance with those of the home background, and should be resisted by everyone who cares about independence of thought and social integration.

The ideal way forward would be to phase out all publicly-funded denominational schools and put the money saved into improving the general sector of education.

Note: This will appear on the Society's website [Ed.]

VIEWPOINTS

Anarchism And May Day Whilst in no way disagreeing with Donald Rooum in his Guest Editorial - 'Anarchism in London May Day 2001', Ethical Record, May 2001, it is worth pointing out although May Day re-started as an anarchist festival of remembrance it was soon taken over by others, especially socialists of various hues including the British Labour Party, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and American Labour Day. Few such celebrations made any acknowledgement to May Day's anarchist origin and often resented the anarchist presence but the celebration of May Day goes back much further.

In Ancient Rome it was the day of worship of Maia, the Spring goddess - to encourage the growth of crops and it is after her that the month is named. It was central to Celtic mythology under various names. It was also known as Rood Day, Rudemas, the festival of Tana and Walpurgisnacht after the German goddess Walpurga the May queen, celebrating the end of Winter and the symbolic creation of Spring. To modern adherents of Wicca, the modern version of pre-Christian pagan religion, it is a sacred festival.

As Norman Cohn points out in Pursuit of the Millennium, in the early Middle Ages there were constant break-away movements both within and parallel to the Roman Catholic Church and in the later Middle ages in his Europe's Inner Demons, he points out this Church-invented witchcraft of the (what one might loosely call the Dennis Wheatley variety - Satanism) was a way of further imposing and maintaining its ideolological supremacy and downsizing the residual paganism. And it did so by the control of knowledge, a knowledge, unless filtered down through church authorisation seen as intrinsically evil. Adam and Eve had been ejected from the Garden of Eden because of their taste for knowledge. The newer Protestantism accepted almost all of these ideas wholesale.

30 Ethical Record, fulylAugust 2001 Today with the decline of official religion, there is an interest in pagan Wicca and modern witchcraft; in activities such as pop festivals, and in a drug culture which is part of a search for non-legitimate knowledge; a decline in interest in democratic politics with its 'fortress Europe' approach but a growth of interest in the 'travelling circus of anarchism' as Mr Blair - a Catholic sympathiser - so neatly puts it.

Once more ordinary people assert themselves. We may not win in terms of the state and capitalism but we lead off in different and more relevant directions. May Day shows a sense of popular renewal and we carry the banner high. An end to the state and capitalism: Anarchy is all.

Peter Neville - lsleworth, Middlesex

No God And Know-Alls Ilse Meyer (June 2001) is perfectly entitled to assert that there is 'no god'. Humanists will rightly say that there is no evidence for the existence of such a being - or so it seems. But we have to look at information available, in all fairness to ourselves as thinking animals. My essay on Mohenjo-Daro provides such information. The Open University has just published it in Omega. It is not easy to accept the idea of no god since the assertion implies that the person making it knows all that there is to know about everything - even the top scientists declare that what they know is only a small part of what there is to know. Free and wide discussion can only be good for Humanism. I write as an open-minded Humanist.

Peter Lonsdale - London N16

Smith v Marx Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Apologists stepped to the fore Capital's firm foundations; And Economics became Law. Next came Marx who saw the rot Let's stand aside and take a look Inherent in the building plot. A world which reason has forsook. He knew that wealth created dearth Socialism says it can By robbing those who tilled the earth. Improve the common lot of man His Communist Manifesto Capitalism says, Oh no, Made Capitalism, presto! I amass, you forgo. Martin Green - Cornwall

THE LAST PROGRESSIVE LEAGUE CONFERENCE 2-6 September 2001 at Kings Hotel, Brighton Speakers include Ralph Blumenthal For details contact Dorothy Forsythe, Tel: 020 7435 3640 Fee £210.00. Some places still available.

The views expressed in this Journal are not necessarily those of the Society.

Ethical Record, JulylAugust 2001 3 I PROGRAMME OF EVENTS AT TIIE ETHICAL SOCIETY The Library, Conway Flail, 25 Red Lion Square, Holborn, WC IR 4RL. Tel: 020 7242 8037/8034 Registered Charity No. 251396 Website: www.ethicalsoc.org.uk email: [email protected] All Welcome

JULY 2001 Sunday 1 4th SKENE MEMORIAL LECTURE 1100h In the British Psychological Society's Centenary Year. BEATRICE EDGELL: PIONEER WOMAN PSYCHOLOGIST Dr Elizabeth Valentine, Reader in Psychology, Royal Holloway, UL.

1500h TOPICAL TOPICS Chair: Edmund McArthur.

Sunday 8 1100h WHY OLD KNEMON WAS GRUMPY: A New Interpretation of

Menander's (342 - 292 BC) The Dyskolos. Alan Spence

Sunday 15 1100h WHAT HAPPENED TO BOOKS? T.F. Evans

1500h FLEET STREE• AND ITS ENVIRONS Easy Walk Philip Barber

Sunday 22 1100h DO WE NEED SOCIALIST LAWYERS? Neil McInnes, Criminal Barrister, Haldane Society of Socialist Lawyers.

SEPTEMBER 2001

'I•

Sunday 30 1430h SPES AGM (Members only)

SOUTH PLACE ETHICAL SOCIETY CONWAY HALL HUMANIST CENTRE 25 Red Lion Square, London WCIR 4RL Reg. Charity No. 251396

Founded in 1793, the Society is a progressive movement whose aims are: the study and dissemination of ethical principles based on humanism, the cultivation of a rational and humane way of life, and the advancement of research and education in relevant fields. We invite to membership those who reject supernatural creeds and are in sympathy with our aims. At Conway Hall the programme includes Sunday lectures, discussions, evening courses and the renowned South Place Sunday Concerts of chamber music. The Society maintains a Humanist Reference Library. The Society's journal, Ethical Record, is issued ten times a year. The annual subscription is £18 (112 if a full-time student, unwaged or over 65).

Published by the South Place Ethical Society, Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, WC I 4RL Printed by J.G. Bryson (Printer) Ltd. 156-162 High Road, London N2 9A5 ISSN 0014 - 1690