Tom Douglas

Senior Research Fellow and Director of Research and Development in the Oxford Uehiro Centre of Practical Ethics

Tom Douglas is Senior Research Fellow and Director of Research and Development in the Oxford Uehiro Centre of Practical Ethics, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. He is also Hugh Price Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, and Editor of the Journal of Practical Ethics.

Tom trained in clinical medicine (MBChB, Otago) and philosophy (BA DPhil, Oxford) and works mainly in philosophical bioethics and neuroethics. His research has focussed especially on the ethics of using medical and neuroscientific technologies for non-therapeutic purposes, such as cognitive enhancement, behaviour prediction and modification, crime prevention, and infectious disease control. From 2013 to 2019 he led the Wellcome Trust-funded project 'Neurointerventions in Crime Prevention: An Ethical Analysis' and he is currently Principal Investigator on the project 'Protecting Minds: The Right to Mental Integrity and the Ethics of Arational Influence', funded by the European Research Council.

Entries written by Tom Douglas

Blog

Flouting Quarantine

By Tom Douglas^[1]

“Boris Johnson Covid-19 Press Conference” by Number 10. Used under: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/.

As I write this, COVID-19, an illness caused by the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, is sweeping the globe. Over 15,000 people have died, and it is likely that at least one hundred times this many have been infected with the virus.^[2]

The outbreak has brought the ethics of quarantine, isolation and enforced social distancing to public attention. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea and China have been praised in the press for their rigorous deployment of quarantine and other liberty-restricting measures. By contrast, the US and UK have been widely criticised for their relatively lax approach.