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Indeed, the human male has often been so lost for an answer that he has instead gone on a misogynstic assault. A typical example would be the legendary Hollywood “Rat Pack” led by Frank Sinatra, who would disguise their self-doubts with remarks like: “Take the vote away from women – make slaves of ‘em.”

This should get them stirring at the Drones’ Club Scientists have discovered why men exist. The question has puzzled feminists over the decades, and few men have been able to provide a satisfactory reply. Indeed, the human male has often been so lost for an answer that he has instead gone on a misogynstic assault. A typical example would be the legendary Hollywood “Rat Pack” led by Frank Sinatra, who would disguise their self-doubts with remarks like: “Take the vote away from women – make slaves of ‘em.”
Such attitudes are mercifully rare nowadays, although the existence of male-only clubs such as the Carlton and the Garrick suggest that some men at least have something to fear.But the appropriately named Adam Chippindale and his colleague William Rice at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have shown, using that unsung hero of science, the fruit fly, that males are necessary because females need to reproduce sexually because that makes for a better selection of good genes.So, chaps, next time your wife or partner or daughter or sister asks you what you are for, just remember: fruit flies; sex; genes..

Diane Pretty deserves our gratitude for her courage in fighting for the right to die. She was never likely to win, and on the narrow point at issue the Court of Appeal was right to insist it would be unlawful for her husband to help her to die. By bringing her case and by taking it as far as the courts will allow, however, she pursued a point of principle and highlighted a failing in the law as it stands. Diane Pretty deserves our gratitude for her courage in fighting for the right to die. She was never likely to win, and on the narrow point at issue the Court of Appeal was right to insist it would be unlawful for her husband to help her to die. By bringing her case and by taking it as far as the courts will allow, however, she pursued a point of principle and highlighted a failing in the law as it stands.Euthanasia is practised frequently in this as in most other countries, but it is concealed under the heading of the management of pain or by the unacknowledged withholding of treatment.This situation is cruel for those, like Ms Pretty, who suffer incurable, painful and terminal diseases, and it is intolerable for doctors who are required to be dishonest if they are to be humane, increasing the dose of morphine in order to “allow the patient to go peacefully” while avoiding the issue of whether the patient could have lived longer in greater pain.It is salutary that juries have consistently refused to convict doctors who appear to have helped the incurably ill to die with dignity – another reason for strengthening rather than eroding the jury system and a telling indication that law itself is wrong.Ms Pretty’s action has drawn attention to the cruelty, unfairness and above all hypocrisy of the present law.

There are no moral absolutes here, and it is a symptom of modern fundamentalism, the “lust for certainty”, that so many people feel they have to assert so strongly that euthanasia, like abortion, contravenes some fundamental moral law, regardless of circumstances.The spectre of Dr Harold Shipman, the morphine-administering mass killer, is often thought to haunt this debate, but it is a mistake to assume that he makes the case against legalised euthanasia. On the contrary, a law on the Dutch model ought to give individual doctors less discretion over the use of pain relief. Any decision to assist a patient who has made a considered request to be allowed to die ought to be made in the open, under the law, and not in the pragmatic silences of informal morality.Under the law passed in the Netherlands earlier this year, any such decision would have to be approved by two doctors and reviewed by an independent panel. It is time Parliament acted in this country to allow people such as Ms Pretty to die with dignity without having to ask doctors, police and courts to turn a blind eye.. If any of the places holding a referendum on whether to have a directly elected mayor votes in favour of the concept, it is to be hoped that they have more luck than London. Ken Livingstone has been a dismal disappointment in his first year-and-a-half in office.