Monthly Archives: April 2022

Zeuss daughter Persephone, the bringer of spring growth, is clearly up from the underworld. Its April in Athens and the city, often dismissed as concrete-plain, is spattered with natures colours bursting out of the earth. The pink blossom of Judas trees spreads like rashes against a cloudless blue sky. Geraniums on window sills and balconies are as bright as their terracotta pots. Either side of the steep path leading to the Parthenon, poppies flutter in faint breezes, delicate and blood-red. Add a clutch of new design hotels as well as some clever people shaking up the cocktail scene, and for my money its this springs city-break star, a much needed jolt to the senses after the drudgery of recent times.

All across town, swarms of brilliant-yellow taxis flit past idle weekenders savouring the bitter hit of iced freddo coffees at pavement cafs. Everyones in shades, leaning back, facing the days rays like sunflowers. After dark, en route to a downtown bar, I turn an alley corner and inhale the sweetest aroma: emitted by bitter-orange trees, it could be bottled and sold by Herms or Bulgari.

Athens needs green, and with a narrow trunk and a massive canopy these trees dont invade the street, says Constantine, a friend of a friend Ive borrowed for the weekend, who loves this season. Theyre perfect for the old city ways, which were only built wide enough for horses and carts.

The rooftop lounge at the Gatsby Athens

Now theyre built for bar-hopping, a key Athenian pursuit and one of the reasons Im in town hedonism with a dash of history. In the late-night warm air we drink at a table outside Blue Bird, near Cathedral Square. It lines up with a couple of other great nocturnal neighbours, Kiki de Grce and Ipitou the Bar. You could spend a whole evening drifting between the three in this atmospheric corner of town, bordering Syntagma and Plaka.

Over a maxi-weekend Ill fall headlong for Kalimeres, in the graffitied district of Psiri. Its all high stools and busy chatter outside the premises: a revamped art deco building thats alluringly South Beach Miami with its fairy lights and streamline-moderne curves. Then theres Birdman, the clamoured-for Japanese pub and grill where you sit under burners eating gyozas, necking Greek red. Last call? Definitely Baba Au Rum, with Peggy Lee and Latino soul on the turntable, tiki-flowery paper on the walls and rum negronis among the avant-garde cocktails on the menu. Final last call? The Dude Bar weirdly anarchic with its industrial playlist and worker bee Alex at the counter, still rattling up margaritas at 4am.

For now, alfresco carousing comes in handy citywide, you still have to don a facemask to step inside anywhere or use transport. Its only three weeks since people were obliged to wear them on the streets, Constantine recalls. The mood feels upbeat, from restaurants to bars to bedding down. Among hotel arrivals, Moxy Athens City and Lighthouse Athens (see panel, overleaf) are helping to revive Omonia Square, the heart of the city, gone to seed in places. Athens Flair is opening its doors early this summer in a neoclassical property in upmarket Kolonaki. Want minimalist-affordable? Sound out Vasi, in the gritty district of Psiri.

A suite at the Gatsby Athens

I stay at the Gatsby Athens, a new spot on a discreet street in Syntagma. The lobby-bar is a riot of faux flowers, toy rabbits almost as big as me, and lots of dangling egg ornaments the Greeks dont do the build-up to Easter by half. If the name Gatsby suggests the 1920s, the building is actually from the 1930s. It was a police holding facility.

21 fun things to do in Athens 28 of the prettiest Greek islands

Youd never know this as a guest. Its a boutique beauty. There are swathes of terrazzo flooring, flecked like nougat. Bathrooms even in entry-level rooms are impressive spaces, with smart, simple brass taps and harlequin tiling in shades of salmon pink or sea-off-Santorini.

Throughout from the ground-floor bar and dining area, via the open-air rooftop lounge with its fine Parthenon views, to the sprawling Gatsby Party Suite the look is sumptuously art deco. Or possibly art Greco. Think golden-age Joan Crawfords dressing room: pouffe-like footstools, giant winged headboards, globe lamps descending bedside, and retro rattan furniture on the terrace of your Bubbly Suite (ask for 501). Settle in and watch the goings-on of neighbours, Rear Window-style.

Thoughtfully, there are elegant full-length wall mirrors in which to check your look before venturing out. If by night, this should start with a very now, very Greek mojito mastiche, created by Christos in the hotel bar. Its a winner with a twist, based on 30 per cent mastic liqueur from the island of Chios. If its morning, there are generous pancake or smashed avocado on toast breakfasts to prepare you for city exploration. The location is prime in the right shoes (Nike?), youll find key sights and neighbourhoods close by and easily conquerable, so you can mix ancient and modern without breaking a sweat.

Varvakios Market in Athens

ALAMY

An exception is the climb to the Parthenon the 5th-century BC temple to the goddess Athena; ribcage-white and afloat, dream-like, high on the Acropolis. The sweatiness of our morning ascent is unanticipated after a leisurely wander there, along the shopping strip Ermou. Athens is made for flneurs, and en route we duck into the fridge-cool darkness of the 11th-century Panagia Kapnikarea church in Monastiraki. With its peeling Byzantine wall art, and light shafting in from punched windows high in the cupola, its a perfect Athens moment.

After recovering from the climb, there are more at the Acropolis, where Greek school parties have turned out en masse, sketching excitedly, reminding you, in your seventh decade, how thrilling the ancient world Athens, Rome, Cairo was for your own young mind, and frankly still is. The hulking Doric and Ionic columns, as giant as redwoods, render the domestic neoclassical knock-offs of later western centuries paltry by comparison.

Cocktails at avant-garde Baba Au Rum

History ticked off for the day, its lunch hour in Athens itll be a long, leisurely one. Ideally at somewhere such as To Potami, which does meze sharing plates in the eccentric, must-visit peoples republic of Koukaki, just beyond the southern slopes of the Acropolis. What a great district, home to a workers collective restaurant or two; and what a fine place to laze. With Foo Fighters and the Killers on the playlist, its alt-Athens at its finest. People read books rather than iPhones, taking notes, and its OK, possibly expected, to have purple hair.

But its a hot afternoon, making chilled dishes the obvious choice. Which leads us to Hasapika, a new startup in the old central Varvakios Market, run by three friends, Marios, Spiros and Giannis, who love travel and eating. The food is Japanese-Peruvian (including a tongue-tingling ceviche), prepared by Filipino and Bangladeshi chefs, using the freshest red mullet, salmon, sea bass and tuna. Its an unshowy place, and the three guys look like grunge guitarists with their long locks.

It was in the contract you wanna work here, you gotta have long hair, says Giannis, tongue in cheek. And theres something about this Athens moment funny, alternative, slightly anarchic thats appealingly new-Greek. Bring on spring 2023.

Nick Redman was a guest of the Gatsby Athens, which has B&B doubles from 150 (gatsbyathens.com). For expert-led city tours with a local, try Alternative Athens (alternativeathens.com); food and drink guiding can be arranged with the city insiders Culinary Backstreets (culinarybackstreets.com). Fly to Athens with British Airways or Wizz Air

A room at Moxy Athens City

By Isabelle Kliger

Moxy Hotels is Marriotts playful and affordable brand, and its latest outpost is in the heart of Athens over the road from Omonia metro station. The urban design and bold artworks certainly contrast with the ancient city: the 201 rooms, above, are compact but equipped with walk-in showers, LED lighting and ergonomic chairs. Bar Moxy, which doubles as the check-in desk, offers self-service food and drink 24/7.Details Room-only doubles from 83 (marriott.com)

A room at Xenodocheio Milos

Athenss most glamorous opening of the year is not just easy on the eye, it has the culinary kudos to match. This is the first foray into hotels for the Greek chef Costas Spiliadis, best known for his swanky Estiatorio Milos restaurants that attract deep-pocketed seafood lovers from around the globe. Apart from the excellent restaurant, the hotel has 43 guest rooms with high ceilings, wooden floors and marble bathrooms, as well as fine views over Mount Lycabettus.Details Room-only doubles from 265 (xenodocheiomilos.com)

A room at Lighthouse Athens

If partying from dusk till dawn is your vibe, look no further than white-hot new Lighthouse Athens. Ultra-contemporary and centrally located in Omonia Square, this sleekly designed hotel features two restaurants, a nightclub and a buzzy rooftop bar all supporting the ethos of work hard, play harder. Not a party animal? From June youll be able to pamper yourself in the wellness centre and spa, before watching the sun set over the Greek capital from the plunge pool on the roof.Details B&B doubles from 120 (brownhotels.com)

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Athens city break: hedonism with a dash of history - The Times

Animator Sabine Saba pairs textural graphics with the dizzying metres of Ouda And The Strikers At Najd, a highlight from Ibtihalat, the debut album from musician, architect and researcher Mhamad Safa.

On Ibtihalat, Safa explores the percussive musical traditions from across north Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, wrestling with geopolitical complexity and musical migrations while at the same time gesturing towards possible future iterations of these sounds. From North Africa, Safa lifts elements from gnawa, West African, Islamic music with ritual significance that spread across the breadth of the continent via musicians forces to relocate to the Moroccan coast, amazigh, polyrhythmic music indigenous to the Berbers of north Africa, and ra, Algerian folk music notable for its anti-colonial lyrical content and its adaptation by women vocalists and performers (cheikas) as emblematic of sexual liberation and hedonism. From the Arabian Peninsula, Safa references Sea Music, more commonly known as Music of the Pearl Divers, work songs devised by the ship builders, seamen and pearl divers of the Arabian side of the Persian Gulf, laywa, ceremonial music from Bahrain, UAE, Oman and Basra, Iraq brought over during slave trades from Kenya, South Somalia and Tanzania, and samiri, music related to Zar rituals of exorcism and spirit expulsion. Drawing from a sprawling, yet intrinsically linked, patchwork of cultural exchange and musical tradition, Safa threads richly textured percussive compositions, headfuck assemblages of sound design, micro-sampling, algorithmic sound technology, psychoacoustics, field recordings, and their graphic interpretations.The album crafts a multi-patterned sonorous speculation, reflective of percussive musical traditions whose histories and presents shapeshifted with spatial and logistical yet celestial imaginaries, he explains.

For the dizzying visual accompaniment to the evocatively titled Ouda And The Strikers At Najd, which plays on the complex metres of gnawa, animator Sabine Saba layers graphical texture, manipulating imagery of rock formations, classical architecture and bisected fibre optic cables. This exerciseunsettles the proposal-driven use of computer graphics by examining existing georealities initiallymodeled into being, explains Saba. It peeks through their shifts and rifts to look for possible future encounters between humans and land. Like Safas production, Saba unpicks historical forms in order to speculate on future potentialities, blurring and blending environmental and technological progress over rapidly expanding and contracting timelines in the rapid evolution of his animations. As Ouda And The Strikers At Najd pinballs between low-slung lollop and high tension spring, drilling guttural vocal chops into many-metred percussion, robotic arms and precious metals are folded into an jittering landscape of ancient caves and rotating coliseums, shining chrome and sand-coloured stone.

Ouda And The Strikers At Najd is taken from Ibtihalat, which arrives on April 29 via Lee Gambles UIQ. For more information about Sabine Saba and her work you can follow her on Instagram. You can find Mhamad Safa on Instagram.

Watch next: Most Dismal Swamp slides into a mixed reality k-hole with MUSH

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Safa explores percussive musical traditions and potential georealities with Ouda And The Strikers At Najd - FACT

The dresses! The drama! The swooning declarations of love! Theres a reason we cant get enough of regency television, and it has to do with how we romanticize bygone times. When Matthew Macfadyen looked earnestly into Keira Knightleys eyes and said, I love you, most ardently, a generation of women collectively dissolved into puddles. A month ago, when Bridgertons famed viscount Anthony told Kate she is the object of my every desire, social media fan art promptly exploded. Now, the first look of yet another Regency romance, Mr. Malcoms List, starring Freida Pinto, has begun to make the rounds.

It has to do with a notion of romance that isnt compatible with the present. But for all that, what is it about this period of time that sets so many hearts aflutter? Its a period of romance, balls, hushed corners, social etiquette, and dazzling fashion. Theres an element of escapism here, yes, in that it appeals to the romantic side of all of us, Emma Butcher, a lecturer in 19th-century literature at Kings College London, told Cosmopolitan.

But, theres a caveat: Period dramas are dreamscapes, not documentaries Were attracted to the glitz and glamour of the period, but there are elements that are slightly unrealistic or reimagined, Butcher added. Indeed, the Regency era technically only spans a decade: between 1811 and 1820. It marked the rule nay, the regency of George IV, who took over after his father was declared too mentally unsound to rule. This period is said to have vastly improved things for the aristocracy making Regency stories all about the historical equivalent of the 1% today.

Its a bit like watching an un-ironic version of Succession, if the Roy family were robber barons from the 17th century instead. Except, this show exists already, and its called The Gilded Age.

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We knew this already, but what does it mean for us to romanticize candyfloss about people who, had we lived alongside them, wouldnt have deigned to toss a fraction of a side glance at us? Its a strange combination of a warped conservative longing for the good old days, and an escapist tendency during times of duress. Take the fact that Downton Abbey became the most popular drama on television shortly after the 2008 financial crisis; or the fact that Bridgerton broke all streaming records when it was released during the thick of the pandemic.

We look to immerse ourselves in a world of hedonism and luxury when we ourselves are feeling at our lowest, it would seem. But the popularity of Regency dramas because of this is prompting a spate of historical reimaginings that are in line with calls for representation and diversity. There are more people of color populating the prim English landscapes we have come to love despite ourselves, and shows like Bridgerton have come to deliver just that. But this comes at the risk of glossing over some of the worst historical injustices to have ever happened, even sanitizing the historical record itself.

Still, theres more to Regency dramas than just the dazzle and luster. Scholars note that, following in Austens footsteps, these dramas centralizefemalesubjectivity, desires, and apprehensions to an unusual extent. Indeed, characteristic of these plots are women with sparkling wit, who are equal to the task of banter and wisecracks, and who carry themselves with sophisticated self-awareness. There is also the female gaze which helps matters greatly: where charismatic heroes are looked at from the perspective of a womans desire.

We may have Austen and other literary influences to thank for this, too. But the popularity of the genre still begs the question: is a decade of aristocratic frolicking really the best we can do to undo the male gaze? At best, the fact that we find ourselves in what is being called the golden moment for period dramas can be put down to a pure want for escapism. At worst, it signals a subtle, conservative undercurrent running through the veins of liberal entertainment culture which would then call for more attention to the stories we tell about and to ourselves.

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Regency Dramas Have Conservative Undertones. Why Do We Love Them Anyway? - The Swaddle

If you remember the 60s, you werent really there. This famous quip says much about our rose-tinted nostalgia for the decade. The fun-loving hedonism of Woodstock and Beatlemania may be etched into cultural memory, but Andy Warhols Marilyn Monroe portraits reveal a darker side to the swinging 60s that turns our nostalgia on its head.

Warhols iconic Marilyn Monroe portrait Shot Sage Blue Marilyn, due to go on sale at Christies in May, is expected to fetch record-breaking bids of $200 million (153 million), making it the most expensive 20th century artwork ever auctioned. Nearly 60 years after they were first created, Warhols portraits of the ill-fated Hollywood star continue to fascinate us.

According to Alex Rotter, Christies chairman for 20th and 21st century art, Warhols Marilyn is the absolute pinnacle of American Pop and the promise of the American dream, encapsulating optimism, fragility, celebrity and iconography all at once.

Hollywood stars were great sources of inspiration for the Pop art movement. Monroe was a recurring motif, not only in the work of Warhol but in the work of his contemporaries, including James Rosenquists Marilyn Monroe, I and Pauline Botys Colour Her Gone and The Only Blonde in the World.

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson but renamed Marilyn Monroe by 20th Century Fox, the actress went on to become one of the most illustrious stars of Hollywood history, famed for her roles in classic films like Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot. She epitomized the glitzy world of consumerism and celebrity that Pop artists thought was emblematic of 1950s and 1960s American culture.

While Rotters statement may be true to some extent, there is also a sinister edge to the Marilyns because many were produced in the months following her unexpected death in 1962. On the surface, the works may look like a tribute to a much-loved icon, but themes of death, decay, and even violence lurk within these canvases. Clues can often be found in the production techniques. One of the collections most famous pieces, Marilyn Diptych, uses flaws from the silkscreen process to create the effect of a decaying portrait. Warhols The Shot Marilyns consists of four canvases shot through the forehead with a single bullet. In this, the creation of Warhols art is as important as the artwork itself.

At a glance, the surface level glamour of Warhols Marilyn immortalizes the actress as a blonde bombshell of Hollywoods bygone era. It is easy to forget the tragedy behind the image, yet part of our enduring fascination with Marilyn Monroe is her tragedy.

Her mental health struggles, her tempestuous personal life, and the mystery surrounding her death have been well documented in countless biographies, films, and television shows, including Netflixs documentary The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes and upcoming biopic Blonde. She epitomizes the familiar narrative of the tragic icon that is doomed to keep repeating itselfsomething that Warhol understood all too well after surviving a shooting by Valerie Solanas in 1968.

The death at the heart of Warhols Marilyns is not just rooted in grief but is also a reflection of the wider cultural landscape. The 1960s was a remarkably dark period in 20th century American history. A brief look at the context in which Warhol was producing these images reveals a decade plagued by a series of traumatic events.

Life Magazine published violent photographs of the Vietnam War. Television broadcasts exposed shocking police brutality during civil rights marches. America was shaken by the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. Footage of JFKs death captured by bystander Abraham Zapruder was repeatedly broadcast on television. Celebrated Hollywood stars were dying young and in tragic circumstances, from Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland to Jayne Mansfield and Sharon Tate.

President John F Kennedy in the limousine in Dallas, Texas, minutes before his assassination. [Photo: Walt Cisco/Dallas Morning News/Wiki Commons]This image of the 1960s is echoed by the postmodern theorist Fredric Jameson, who describes the decade as a virtual nightmare and a historical and countercultural bad trip. Stars like Monroe were not as flawless as they may appear in Warhols portraits, but were notorious cases of burnout and self-destruction.

Warhol understood this more than anyone. His Death and Disaster series explores the spectacle of death in America and affirms the 1960s as a time of anxiety, terror and crisis. The series consists of a vast collection of silkscreened photographs of real-life disasters including car crashes, suicides, and executions taken from newspapers and police archives. Famous deaths are also a central theme of the series, including portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jackie Kennedy all of whom are associated with significant deaths or near-death experiences.

Death and Disaster came about in 1962 when Warhols collaborator Henry Geldzahler suggested that the artist should stop producing affirmation of life and instead explore the dark side of American culture.

He handed Warhol a copy of the New York Daily News, which led to the first disaster painting 129 Die in Jet!.

The recent hype around the auctioning of the Marilyn portrait reveals as much about our time as it does about our nostalgia for the 1960s. We choose to remember the decade in all its glorious technicolor, but uncovering its darker moments provides room for reconsideration. Perhaps Warhols Marilyn is not just a symbol of the swinging 60s, but an artifact from a time that was as turbulent and uncertain as our own.

Harriet Fletcher is an Associate Lecturer in English and History at Lancaster University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Andy Warhol's Marilyn Monroe portraits expose the darker side of the ' - Fast Company

Written by Anthony Skelton, Lisa Forsberg, and Isra Black

Consider the following two cases:

Cynthias blood transfusion. Cynthia is 16 years of age. She is hit by a car on her way to school. She is rushed to hospital. She sustains serious, life-threatening injuries and loses a lot of blood. Her physicians conclude that she needs a blood transfusion in order to survive. Physicians ask for her consent to this course of treatment. Cynthia is intelligent and thoughtful. She considers, understands and appreciates her medical options. She is deemed to possess the capacity to decide on her medical treatment. She consents to the blood transfusion.

Nathans blood transfusion. Nathan is 16 years of age. He has Crohns disease. He is admitted to hospital with lower gastrointestinal bleeding. According to the physicians in charge of his care, the bleeding poses a significant threat to his health and to his life. His physicians conclude that a blood transfusion is his best medical option. Nathan is intelligent and thoughtful. He considers, understands and appreciates his medical options. He is deemed to possess the capacity to decide on his medical treatment. He refuses the blood transfusion.

Under English Law, Cynthias consent has the power to permit the blood transfusion offered by her physicians. Her consent is considered to be normatively (and legally) determinative. However, Nathans refusal is not normatively (or legally) determinative. Nathans refusal can be overridden by consent to the blood transfusion of either a parent or court. These parties share (with Nathan) the power to consent to his treatment and thereby make it lawful for his physicians to provide it.

According to the law in England and Wales, adolescents found to have decision-making capacity have the power to consent toand thereby, all else being equal, permittheir own medical treatment. However, adolescent refusals of treatment do not have the power to always render treatment impermissible; other partiesthat is, individuals who exercise parental responsibility, or courtsretain the authority to consent on the adolescents behalf. This is sometimes referred to as the concurrent consents doctrine.

The concurrent consents doctrine is puzzling, but intuitively attractive. It is puzzling because it is hard to grasp why an adolescents valid consent has the authority to permit treatment, while their valid refusal lacks the authority to render treatment impermissible. In the case of an adult who has decision-making capacity, both valid consent and refusal are normatively (and legally) determinate. The doctrine is intuitively attractive because it attempts to strike a balance between protecting potentially vulnerable adolescents and respecting their developing autonomy.

In our recent article, Overriding Adolescent Refusals of Treatment, published (open access) in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, we develop a well-being-based view that might help make philosophical sense of the concurrent consents doctrine. Our account emerges from detailed criticism of rival frameworks thatmight be used to providephilosophical support to the law

We consider and reject two views (by Neil Manson and Faye Tucker) that argue for the sharing of the power to validly consent to treatment for a period between adolescents and their parents and courts under an arrangement of transitional paternalism. We then consider and reject a stage of life view (building on Andrew Franklin-Halls work) on which the mere fact that an adolescent is at a stage in life before assuming full responsibility for her life may warrant others consenting to treatment on her behalf.

We argue instead for a well-being-based view, which may justify the concurrent consents doctrine. On this view, facts about the nature of adolescent well-being may in some cases justify allowing consents but not refusals to be normatively determinative. We offer a deeper philosophical rationale that captures and explains the plausible elements of the views we reject while avoiding their infelicities and defects.

To set the stage for our view, it is important to clarify some philosophical terminology. When we appeal to the notion of well-being, we are appealing to what is non-instrumentally prudentially good for an individual, that is, what is beneficial for, or in the interest of an individual. Something (e.g., happiness) is non-instrumentally good for one when its possession makes one better off in and of itself; it is not worth having simply because it causes what is good for one in and of itself. We contend that what is non-instrumentally good for adolescents is distinct from both what is non-instrumentally good for adults and from what is non-instrumentally good for young children. More specifically, our view is that adult well-being is primarily subjective in nature while the well-being of young children is primarily objective in nature. Well-being is subjective if it is the case that for something (eg, a stroll in the park) to make an individual non-instrumentally better off it has to be valued (eg, wanted) by that individual or in some way resonate with her from her own point of view. Well-being is objective if it is the case that something can be non-instrumentally good for an individual even if it is not the case that it is valued by or resonates with that individual.

We therefore favour variabilism about well-being and reject invariabilism about well-being. Invariabilism is the view that the same theory of well-being is true for all welfare subjects (adults, children, newborns, non-human animals, and so on). An example of this might be hedonism about well-being, according to which all welfare subjects well-being consists in pleasure. Variabilism denies invariabilismwhat is prudentially good for an individual will be different for different welfare subjects. According to variabilism, for example, a view about of the nature of well-being may be true for adults but false for small children and vice versa. Hedonism might, for example, be true for young children while a desire satisfaction theory might be true of adults.

We think variabilism has the resources to make philosophical sense of the concurrent consents doctrine. Roughly, we hold that the well-being of adolescents includes both subjective and objective components. If an adolescent values or cares about something (e.g., athletic prowess), it is non-instrumentally good for her to possess it. Subjective goods might include getting what one wants or happiness. However, there are also certain so-called objective goods that are non-instrumentally good for adolescents (regardless of what they value or want). Objective goods might include knowledge and freedom.

We argue that one such objective good is shielding, which consists in being insulated from the full brunt of, the full responsibility for, action on autonomous aims. Shielding is a variety of freedom: freedom from making certain kinds of decisions in the absence of a safety net of scrutiny and possible limitation on action.

How might the appeal to a distinct view of well-being for adolescents justify the concurrent consents doctrine?

Acting on autonomous aims is developmentally important for adolescents. Being able to exercise autonomous choice at least to some extent is useful from the point of view of preparing an adolescent for the kind of decisions she will have to make as an adult. When Cynthia and Nathan consider treatment, they contemplate whether to consent to or to refuse treatment (and which option to pursue in cases in which more than one intervention is offered). This involves exercising a broad range of skills, including understanding the facts of the situation, applying these to themselves, and taking a decision based on a sober assessment of what they most value. One might think, therefore, that the rule according to which adolescent medical consents always have the power to render treatment permissible is justified by the fact that it involves promoting instrumentally beneficial exercises of autonomy without the threat of serious costs. This account can explain why the power to consent is normatively determinative, namely, because the opportunity to consent allows the considerable instrumental benefits of the exercise of autonomy to accrue to the adolescent.

The instrumental benefits of exercising autonomy may also accrue in the case in which an adolescent refuses treatment. This may provide a reason to consider the refusal normatively determinative. However, it seems more plausible to attribute refusals lesser weight. This is because it is prudentially good for an adolescent to be shielded from making the decision without a safety net. In addition, the (sometimes) provisional nature of the values on which an adolescent acts and the fact that action on them may be very costlyespecially in the cases such as Cynthias and Nathans, which involve life-prolonging treatmentprovide a further reason not to give refusals full power. These various factors together provide strong reason to protect an adolescent from the consequences of deciding alone. These values seem to provide us with reason to sometimes treat refusals differentlythat is, as not always capable of rendering treatment impermissible.

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New Publication: 'Overriding Adolescent Refusals of Treatment' | Practical Ethics - Practical Ethics