STRANGE BUT TRUE DEPARTMENT: This has almost nothing to do with bioethics – except, perhaps, to highlight the fact that there is much that we do not know about the body and the brain. An Oregon woman woke up after a trip to the dentist and found that she was speaking with a peculiar British accent. This is an instance of an exceedingly rare phenomenon called Foreign Accent Syndrome.

WE CAN’T ALWAYS BE SOLEMN DEPARTMENT: This has
almost nothing to do with bioethics – except, perhaps, to highlight the fact
that there is much that we do not know about the body and the brain. An Oregon
woman woke up after a trip to the dentist and found that she was speaking with
a peculiar British accent. This is an instance of an exceedingly rare phenomenon
called Foreign Accent Syndrome.

After trawling through YouTube, we
discovered that it is possible to acquire other accents as well. Last year, a UK
woman with a strong Devon accent had a severe migraine and ended up
sounding like a Chinese woman who speaks very fluent, albeit slightly
ungrammatical and accented, English.

Michael Cook
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Michael Cook

Michael Cook edits BioEdge, a bioethics newsletter, and MercatorNet, an on-line magazine whose focus is human dignity. He writes from Sydney, Australia.

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